Malware authors: Best storage / hiding locations

Have you just injected a running process’ memory?  In most cases, unless your an adept author and have written a root-kit you want your malware to remain persistent via auto-run, registry, start-up etc.  Where do you store your persistent launcher?  A clever idea would be to determine what AV the victim is running — if any :-)   Once you determine which AV is running you should check whether or not any files or directories are excluded from scanning.  If so you’ve just found the perfect location for your loader.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

AVG – Configuration files in binary format; No registry entries

Microsoft Security Essentials:  HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware\Exclusions\Paths

Trend: Check out these registry locations:

  • HKLM\SOFTWARE\TrendMicro\NSC\TmProxy\WhiteList\;
  • HKLM\SOFTWARE\TrendMicro\PC-cillinNTCorp\CurrentVersion\Prescheduled Scan Configuration (ExcludedFile & Excluded Folder keys)
  • HKLM\SOFTWARE\TrendMicro\PC-cillinNTCorp\CurrentVersion\Real Time Scan Configuration (ExcludedFile & Excluded Folder keys)
  • HKLM\SOFTWARE\TrendMicro\PC-cillinNTCorp\CurrentVersion\Scan Now Configuration (ExcludedFile & Excluded Folder keys)

**Here’s a Microsoft KB article about their recommended locations for exclusion: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822158

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