Hello,

I pushed the malware stuff to that malware website you sometimes visit.

It is Sunday so please spend it with the most important people in your life (your anime action figures)

https://vx-underground.org/Updates

> check tele
> "smelly i think someone sent me malware"
> "they sent me weird .zip"
> "be careful"
> wtf i love malware
> download file
> look inside
> .txt + alternate data stream file
> ads doesnt work with 7z
> ok lol
> look inside
> 7z x "dox[.]zip" -so > payload.vbs
> winhttp request to github
> github\minecraftstuff\discordemojis.txt
> download discordemojis.txt
> look inside
> heavily obfuscated .bat file
> bonk with stick
> powershell script
> ???
> checks for av stuff
> does steganography
> downloads from ibb.co
> look inside
> quasar rat
> hides in made fonts directory in roaming

most work ive seen put into a malware payload in awhile with 2 stages and stego, usually its FAKE_GAME_INSTALLER.JPEG.EXE

didnt even dawn on me this was CVE-2025-8088

- n-day
- multi-staged payload
- stego usage
- quasar???

wtf lol

I decided to kind of spice things up a bit and pivot to malware defense stuff. I explored different thingies and fell down the rabbit hole of YARA stuff. I didn't want to dive into something like minifilters.

I've got this goofy setup where I can extract YARA rules from Windows Defender because of the research from _t_tani
.

I've got like, 20,000 YARA rules, or something, I don't know. It's a lot. Regardless, I was like, "maybe I should make a shrimple file scanner with all these YARA rules". This is what a basic static analysis engine does in usermode.

I saw a lot of people being like, "JUST YARA.EXE --FILE", and I was like, "that's kind of lame". I started bonking the YARA open source repo looking at different stuff.

I then had to fight YARA open source stuff because libyara64.lib wants to fight you to become libyara64.dll. People on GitHub complained too, but whatever, I figured it out.

My next goal is transform all the YARA rules into YARAC, or whatever it's called. In theory, I could then take a binary, or directory, and then use the YARA analysis engine to compare it to all the Microsoft YARA rules.

I then considered implementing basic parameters, or maybe a goofy ass UI, or something.

I then realized I'm basically making THORLite-Lite.

Basically I'm a noob at this and I'm sharing what I'm doing so you can heckle me and call me a noob and hopefully not a cat

Them: I'm sorry for your loss. I'm sure your family members are looking down from heaven, watching over you, and smiling

Me, a privacy person: They're watching me have sex and poop and stuff?

If heaven operates as a 24/7 surveillance state, this is a serious scandal, privacy violations galore, and possible human rights violation. We need to write to our representatives about this immediately

United States President Donald J. Trump posted this message on social media today.

Personal grievances the Trump administration it asserts it has with other countries and political theatrics aside, the notion that the United States even hints are exiting NATO is a PROFOUND cybersecurity issue.

Yes, NATO deals with traditional military stuff (land, sea, air, space), NATO also deals with things in the digital domain (cyberspace).

NATO (non-United States) has historically shared a great deal of intelligence with each other regarding state-sponsored threats to the United States. Likewise, the United States has shared intelligence on state-sponsored with our NATO allies.

It makes me incredibly nervous that this idea of exiting NATO is floated or threatened. NATO cybersecurity space deals a lot with ICS/SCADA (Industrial Control Systems, which is things like water treatments plants, nuclear energy facilities, telecommunication systems, etc) and anything else which possesses a military threat to the United States and it's citizens.

I am unsure of the impact leaving NATO would have on our cybersecurity intelligence. The idea makes me very nervous. The United States is constantly under siege from foreign adversaries (notably China, Russia, North Korea, Iran).

Additionally, I have great concern that if we left NATO it would damage our relationship with European allies which have been of significant importance apprehending Threat Actors who have done extreme damage to the United States. Part of the FBI's success in apprehending ransomware actors have been our strong relationship with EUROPOL, and European allies apprehending individuals residing outside the United States.

Chat, this unironically makes me very nervous.

I'll tell you one thing right now too, and I say this with 100% confidence. Adversaries of the United States understand this is premium real estate (metaphorically speaking) and this should be acted on immediately.

If the Russian Federation or People's Republic of China can push a narrative it is of the benefit of the United States people to exit NATO, it isolates us from the global stage and (at least cybersecurity wise) is absolutely terrifying (to me, atleast). The Russian Federation and People's Republic of China can easily push slop propaganda on places like TikTok or Instagram to coerce the people into moving into cyber-isolationism.

I'm not educated on geopolitical stuff with war, or economies, but I know a little about computers and stuff.

This would be an absolute strategic failure from the United States to do this.

Threat Actors are probably shadowboxing in their underwear right now at the idea of the United States being alone

> be me
> reading on yara stuff
> reviewing yara
> basically user-mode static analysis engine
> reading, reading, reviewing
> realize ive never written a yara rule before
> thinking...
> realize yara is excluded from AV engines
> no av would flag yara lib or dll
> used everywhere
> thinking ...
> what if...
> make yara rules for identifying security products
> make yara rules for environment identification
> edr and/or av would ignore
> "hehe hes checking if its malicious"
> its free real estate

what are they going to do? make a yara rule to identify yara and flag their own tools as malware?

I have a really deep appreciation for YARA and the work VirusTotal's engineers put into YARA.

YARA is interesting because they encountered some challenges when developing their static analysis engine and they handled it really, really, really well.

Initially I was under the assumption YARA read rules by parsing strings and applying them to binaries in-memory (mapping). However, being a doofus, I failed to consider the fact YARA contains BOOLEAN logic in their rules. Hence, reading the files and parsing them as text wouldn't be able to reliably handle the logic present inside the YARA files.

YARA contains an internal VM and transforms the text into byte code. The caveat being the VM isn't turing complete and does not possess any ability to interact with anything else. This was done intentionally though because it acts as a sandbox.

Regardless, it uses the transformed byte code to perform operations on the in-memory mapped binary using (sort of) simple logic but containing a custom implemented callstack for doing stuff. Furthermore, YARA also has a custom heap management system (they're using the ARENA algorithm).

What makes this even more impressive is all of this written in C, is cross platform for Windows, Linux, and MacOS, and easily compiles.

This is a significant software engineering project and they did an extremely good job.

I'm also surprised by the lack of write ups discussing YARA internals. YARA is a very clear demonstration on how AVs and/or EDRs can perform static analysis on binaries.

It's possible people have reviewed it to learn, but simply didn't share it because it's open source, but still it's kind of unusual to me.

I saw over 9000 write ups on YARA rules, but very few explaining the internal mechanisms of YARA

I am genuinely impressed by mainstream media outlets ability to find absolute nobodies in cybersecurity. It's remarkable. I am often left speechless.

There has been dozens occasions, especially as of recent, where some media outlet will be like, "Today as a special guest is world-renowned cybersecurity expert and ethical hacker Joe McCyberSecurity".

I'm like, who the fuck is Joe McCybersecurity? I've been doing cybersecurity and malware stuff for a long time and I've never once seen or heard of Joe McCybersecurity. If he is world-renowned, I would THINK I would have seen them or heard of them.

The camera then pans over to Joe McCybersecurity and it is the most generic cookie cutter white dude in a cheap suit and the tag below him will say something like, "Joe McCybersecurity, Ethical Hacker, CEO of Cybersecurity McJoe Industries"

I'm like, "Cybersecurity McJoe Industries? What the fuck is that?". I look it up and it's a generic WordPress website hosted on GoDaddy with an expired SSL cert.

Joe McCybersecurity then babbles incomprehensible nonsense for about 60 seconds until the TV host goes "woaw" and it cuts to a commercial.

Absolute cinema.

Meanwhile in Brazil: Arch Linux has to suspend access from Brazil because kids could use Arch Linux, or something, and something about pedophiles.

I actually have no idea what the politicians are even saying anymore. It's all bullshit and it's fucking over FOSS.

To avoid confusion, I'm not positioning myself as like, the authority figure on who is an expert and who isn't an expert in cybersecurity.

My point is that cybersecurity tends to be very close and tight-knit and you would expect someone world-renowned to be immediately identifiable by someone else who works in the industry.

My post is meant to be funny and criticize TV people