Login
NativeDump allows to dump the lsass process using only NTAPIs generating a Minidump file with only the streams needed to be parsed by tools like Mimikatz or Pypykatz (SystemInfo, ModuleList and Memory64List Streams).
Usage:
FreshRSS 
NativeDump.exe [DUMP_FILE]
The default file name is "proc_
The tool has been tested against Windows 10 and 11 devices with the most common security solutions (Microsoft Defender for Endpoints, Crowdstrike...) and is for now undetected. However, it does not work if PPL is enabled in the system.
Some benefits of this technique are: - It does not use the well-known dbghelp!MinidumpWriteDump function - It only uses functions from Ntdll.dll, so it is possible to bypass API hooking by remapping the library - The Minidump file does not have to be written to disk, you can transfer its bytes (encoded or encrypted) to a remote machine
The project has three branches at the moment (apart from the main branch with the basic technique):
ntdlloverwrite - Overwrite ntdll.dll's ".text" section using a clean version from the DLL file already on disk
delegates - Overwrite ntdll.dll + Dynamic function resolution + String encryption with AES + XOR-encoding
remote - Overwrite ntdll.dll + Dynamic function resolution + String encryption with AES + Send file to remote machine + XOR-encoding
After reading Minidump undocumented structures, its structure can be summed up to:
I created a parsing tool which can be helpful: MinidumpParser.
We will focus on creating a valid file with only the necessary values for the header, stream directory and the only 3 streams needed for a Minidump file to be parsed by Mimikatz/Pypykatz: SystemInfo, ModuleList and Memory64List Streams.
The header is a 32-bytes structure which can be defined in C# as:
public struct MinidumpHeader
{
public uint Signature;
public ushort Version;
public ushort ImplementationVersion;
public ushort NumberOfStreams;
public uint StreamDirectoryRva;
public uint CheckSum;
public IntPtr TimeDateStamp;
}
The required values are: - Signature: Fixed value 0x504d44d ("MDMP" string) - Version: Fixed value 0xa793 (Microsoft constant MINIDUMP_VERSION) - NumberOfStreams: Fixed value 3, the three Streams required for the file - StreamDirectoryRVA: Fixed value 0x20 or 32 bytes, the size of the header
Each entry in the Stream Directory is a 12-bytes structure so having 3 entries the size is 36 bytes. The C# struct definition for an entry is:
public struct MinidumpStreamDirectoryEntry
{
public uint StreamType;
public uint Size;
public uint Location;
}
The field "StreamType" represents the type of stream as an integer or ID, some of the most relevant are:
| ID | Stream Type |
|---|---|
| 0x00 | UnusedStream |
| 0x01 | ReservedStream0 |
| 0x02 | ReservedStream1 |
| 0x03 | ThreadListStream |
| 0x04 | ModuleListStream |
| 0x05 | MemoryListStream |
| 0x06 | ExceptionStream |
| 0x07 | SystemInfoStream |
| 0x08 | ThreadExListStream |
| 0x09 | Memory64ListStream |
| 0x0A | CommentStreamA |
| 0x0B | CommentStreamW |
| 0x0C | HandleDataStream |
| 0x0D | FunctionTableStream |
| 0x0E | UnloadedModuleListStream |
| 0x0F | MiscInfoStream |
| 0x10 | MemoryInfoListStream |
| 0x11 | ThreadInfoListStream |
| 0x12 | HandleOperationListStream |
| 0x13 | TokenStream |
| 0x16 | HandleOperationListStream |
First stream is a SystemInformation Stream, with ID 7. The size is 56 bytes and will be located at offset 68 (0x44), after the Stream Directory. Its C# definition is:
public struct SystemInformationStream
{
public ushort ProcessorArchitecture;
public ushort ProcessorLevel;
public ushort ProcessorRevision;
public byte NumberOfProcessors;
public byte ProductType;
public uint MajorVersion;
public uint MinorVersion;
public uint BuildNumber;
public uint PlatformId;
public uint UnknownField1;
public uint UnknownField2;
public IntPtr ProcessorFeatures;
public IntPtr ProcessorFeatures2;
public uint UnknownField3;
public ushort UnknownField14;
public byte UnknownField15;
}
The required values are: - ProcessorArchitecture: 9 for 64-bit and 0 for 32-bit Windows systems - Major version, Minor version and the BuildNumber: Hardcoded or obtained through kernel32!GetVersionEx or ntdll!RtlGetVersion (we will use the latter)
Second stream is a ModuleList stream, with ID 4. It is located at offset 124 (0x7C) after the SystemInformation stream and it will also have a fixed size, of 112 bytes, since it will have the entry of a single module, the only one needed for the parse to be correct: "lsasrv.dll".
The typical structure for this stream is a 4-byte value containing the number of entries followed by 108-byte entries for each module:
public struct ModuleListStream
{
public uint NumberOfModules;
public ModuleInfo[] Modules;
}
As there is only one, it gets simplified to:
public struct ModuleListStream
{
public uint NumberOfModules;
public IntPtr BaseAddress;
public uint Size;
public uint UnknownField1;
public uint Timestamp;
public uint PointerName;
public IntPtr UnknownField2;
public IntPtr UnknownField3;
public IntPtr UnknownField4;
public IntPtr UnknownField5;
public IntPtr UnknownField6;
public IntPtr UnknownField7;
public IntPtr UnknownField8;
public IntPtr UnknownField9;
public IntPtr UnknownField10;
public IntPtr UnknownField11;
}
The required values are: - NumberOfStreams: Fixed value 1 - BaseAddress: Using psapi!GetModuleBaseName or a combination of ntdll!NtQueryInformationProcess and ntdll!NtReadVirtualMemory (we will use the latter) - Size: Obtained adding all memory region sizes since BaseAddress until one with a size of 4096 bytes (0x1000), the .text section of other library - PointerToName: Unicode string structure for the "C:\Windows\System32\lsasrv.dll" string, located after the stream itself at offset 236 (0xEC)
Third stream is a Memory64List stream, with ID 9. It is located at offset 298 (0x12A), after the ModuleList stream and the Unicode string, and its size depends on the number of modules.
public struct Memory64ListStream
{
public ulong NumberOfEntries;
public uint MemoryRegionsBaseAddress;
public Memory64Info[] MemoryInfoEntries;
}
Each module entry is a 16-bytes structure:
public struct Memory64Info
{
public IntPtr Address;
public IntPtr Size;
}
The required values are: - NumberOfEntries: Number of memory regions, obtained after looping memory regions - MemoryRegionsBaseAddress: Location of the start of memory regions bytes, calculated after adding the size of all 16-bytes memory entries - Address and Size: Obtained for each valid region while looping them
There are pre-requisites to loop the memory regions of the lsass.exe process which can be solved using only NTAPIs:
With this it is possible to traverse process memory by calling: - ntdll!NtQueryVirtualMemory: Return a MEMORY_BASIC_INFORMATION structure with the protection type, state, base address and size of each memory region - If the memory protection is not PAGE_NOACCESS (0x01) and the memory state is MEM_COMMIT (0x1000), meaning it is accessible and committed, the base address and size populates one entry of the Memory64List stream and bytes can be added to the file - If the base address equals lsasrv.dll base address, it is used to calculate the size of lsasrv.dll in memory - ntdll!NtReadVirtualMemory: Add bytes of that region to the Minidump file after the Memory64List Stream
After previous steps we have all that is necessary to create the Minidump file. We can create a file locally or send the bytes to a remote machine, with the possibility of encoding or encrypting the bytes before. Some of these possibilities are coded in the delegates branch, where the file created locally can be encoded with XOR, and in the remote branch, where the file can be encoded with XOR before being sent to a remote machine.
NoArgs is a tool designed to dynamically spoof and conceal process arguments while staying undetected. It achieves this by hooking into Windows APIs to dynamically manipulate the Windows internals on the go. This allows NoArgs to alter process arguments discreetly.
The tool primarily operates by intercepting process creation calls made by the Windows API function CreateProcessW. When a process is initiated, this function is responsible for spawning the new process, along with any specified command-line arguments. The tool intervenes in this process creation flow, ensuring that the arguments are either hidden or manipulated before the new process is launched.
Hooking into CreateProcessW is achieved through Detours, a popular library for intercepting and redirecting Win32 API functions. Detours allows for the redirection of function calls to custom implementations while preserving the original functionality. By hooking into CreateProcessW, the tool is able to intercept the process creation requests and execute its custom logic before allowing the process to be spawned.
The Process Environment Block (PEB) is a data structure utilized by Windows to store information about a process's environment and execution state. The tool leverages the PEB to manipulate the command-line arguments of the newly created processes. By modifying the command-line information stored within the PEB, the tool can alter or conceal the arguments passed to the process.
Process Hacker View:
Process Monitor View:
Injection into Command Prompt (cmd): The tool injects its code into the Command Prompt process, embedding it as Position Independent Code (PIC). This enables seamless integration into cmd's memory space, ensuring covert operation without reliance on specific memory addresses. (Only for The Obfuscated Executable in the releases page)
Windows API Hooking: Detours are utilized to intercept calls to the CreateProcessW function. By redirecting the execution flow to a custom implementation, the tool can execute its logic before the original Windows API function.
Custom Process Creation Function: Upon intercepting a CreateProcessW call, the custom function is executed, creating the new process and manipulating its arguments as necessary.
PEB Modification: Within the custom process creation function, the Process Environment Block (PEB) of the newly created process is accessed and modified to achieve the goal of manipulating or hiding the process arguments.
Execution Redirection: Upon completion of the manipulations, the execution seamlessly returns to Command Prompt (cmd) without any interruptions. This dynamic redirection ensures that subsequent commands entered undergo manipulation discreetly, evading detection and logging mechanisms that relay on getting the process details from the PEB.
Option 1: Compile NoArgs DLL:
You will need microsoft/Detours">Microsoft Detours installed.
Compile the DLL.
Option 2: Download the compiled executable (ready-to-go) from the releases page.
In 2020, the United States brought charges against four men accused of building a bulletproof hosting empire that once dominated the Russian cybercrime industry and supported multiple organized cybercrime groups. All four pleaded guilty to conspiracy and racketeering charges. But there is a fascinating and untold backstory behind the two Russian men involved, who co-ran the world’s top spam forum and worked closely with Russia’s most dangerous cybercriminals.
From January 2005 to April 2013, there were two primary administrators of the cybercrime forum Spamdot (a.k.a Spamit), an invite-only community for Russian-speaking people in the businesses of sending spam and building botnets of infected computers to relay said spam. The Spamdot admins went by the nicknames Icamis (a.k.a. Ika), and Salomon (a.k.a. Sal).
Spamdot forum administrator “Ika” a.k.a. “Icamis” responds to a message from “Tarelka,” the botmaster behind the Rustock botnet. Dmsell said: “I’m actually very glad that I switched to legal spam mailing,” prompting Tarelka and Ika to scoff.
As detailed in my 2014 book, Spam Nation, Spamdot was home to crooks controlling some of the world’s nastiest botnets, global malware contagions that went by exotic names like Rustock, Cutwail, Mega-D, Festi, Waledac, and Grum.
Icamis and Sal were in daily communications with these botmasters, via the Spamdot forum and private messages. Collectively in control over millions of spam-spewing zombies, those botmasters also continuously harvested passwords and other data from infected machines.
As we’ll see in a moment, Salomon is now behind bars, in part because he helped to rob dozens of small businesses in the United States using some of those same harvested passwords. He is currently housed in a federal prison in Michigan, serving the final stretch of a 60-month sentence.
But the identity and whereabouts of Icamis have remained a mystery to this author until recently. For years, security experts — and indeed, many top cybercriminals in the Spamit affiliate program — have expressed the belief that Sal and Icamis were likely the same person using two different identities. And there were many good reasons to support this conclusion.
For example, in 2010 Spamdot and its spam affiliate program Spamit were hacked, and its user database shows Sal and Icamis often accessed the forum from the same Internet address — usually from Cherepovets, an industrial town situated approximately 230 miles north of Moscow. Also, it was common for Icamis to reply when Spamdot members communicated a request or complaint to Sal, and vice versa.
Image: maps.google.com
Still, other clues suggested Icamis and Sal were two separate individuals. For starters, they frequently changed the status on their instant messenger clients at different times. Also, they each privately discussed with others having attended different universities.
KrebsOnSecurity began researching Icamis’s real-life identity in 2012, but failed to revisit any of that research until recently. In December 2023, KrebsOnSecurity published new details about the identity of “Rescator,” a Russian cybercriminal who is thought to be closely connected to the 2013 data breach at Target.
That story mentioned Rescator’s real-life identity was exposed by Icamis in April 2013, as part of a lengthy farewell letter Ika wrote to Spamdot members wherein Ika said he was closing the forum and quitting the cybercrime business entirely.
To no one’s shock, Icamis didn’t quit the business: He simply became more quiet and circumspect about his work, which increasingly was focused on helping crime groups siphon funds from U.S. bank accounts. But the Rescator story was a reminder that 10 years worth of research on who Ika/Icamis is in real life had been completely set aside. This post is an attempt to remedy that omission.
The farewell post from Ika (aka Icamis), the administrator of both the BlackSEO forum and Pustota, the successor forum to Spamit/Spamdot.
Icamis and Sal offered a comprehensive package of goods and services that any aspiring or accomplished spammer would need on a day-to-day basis: Virtually unlimited bulletproof domain registration and hosting services, as well as services that helped botmasters evade spam block lists generated by anti-spam groups like Spamhaus.org. Here’s snippet of Icamis’s ad on Spamdot from Aug. 2008, wherein he addresses forum members with the salutation, “Hello Gentlemen Scammers.”
We are glad to present you our services!
Many are already aware (and are our clients), but publicity is never superfluous.Domains.
– all major gtlds (com, net, org, info, biz)
– many interesting and uninteresting cctlds
– options for any topic
– processing of any quantities
– guarantees
– exceptionally low prices for domains for white and gray schemes (including any SEO and affiliate spam )
– control panel with balances and auto-registration
– all services under the Ikamis brand, proven over the years;)Servers.
– long-term partnerships with several [data centers] in several parts of the world for any topic
– your own data center (no longer in Russia ;)) for gray and white topics
– any configuration and any hardware
– your own IP networks (PI, not PA) and full legal support
– realtime backups to neutral sites
– guarantees and full responsibility for the services provided
– non-standard equipment on request
– our own admins to resolve any technical issues (services are free for clients)
– hosting (shared and vps) is also possibleNon-standard and related services.
– ssl certificates signed by geotrust and thawte
– old domains (any year, any quantity)
– beautiful domains (keyword, short, etc.)
– domains with indicators (any, for SEO, etc.)
– making unstable gtld domains stable
– interception and hijacking of custom domains (expensive)
– full domain posting via web.archive.org with restoration of native content (preliminary applications)
– any updates to our panels to suit your needs upon request (our own coders)All orders for the “Domains” sections and “Servers” are carried out during the day (depending on our workload).
For non-standard and related services, a preliminary application is required 30 days in advance (except for ssl certificates – within 24 hours).
Icamis and Sal frequently claimed that their service kept Spamhaus and other anti-spam groups several steps behind their operations. But it’s clear that those anti-spam operations had a real and painful impact on spam revenues, and Salomon was obsessed with striking back at anti-spam groups, particularly Spamhaus.
In 2007, Salomon collected more than $3,000 from botmasters affiliated with competing spam affiliate programs that wanted to see Spamhaus suffer, and the money was used to fund a week-long distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against Spamhaus and its online infrastructure. But rather than divert their spam botnets from their normal activity and thereby decrease sales, the botmasters voted to create a new DDoS botnet by purchasing installations of DDoS malware on thousands of already-hacked PCs (at a rate of $25 per 1,000 installs).
As an affiliate of Spamdot, Salomon used the email address ad1@safe-mail.net, and the password 19871987gr. The breach tracking service Constella Intelligence found the password 19871987gr was used by the email address grichishkin@gmail.com. Multiple accounts are registered to that email address under the name Alexander Valerievich Grichishkin, from Cherepovets.
In 2020, Grichishkin was arrested outside of Russia on a warrant for providing bulletproof hosting services to cybercriminal gangs. The U.S. government said Grichishkin and three others set up the infrastructure used by cybercriminals between 2009 to 2015 to distribute malware and attack financial institutions and victims throughout the United States.
Those clients included crooks using malware like Zeus, SpyEye, Citadel and the Blackhole exploit kit to build botnets and steal banking credentials.
“The Organization and its members helped their clients to access computers without authorization, steal financial information (including banking credentials), and initiate unauthorized wire transfers from victims’ financial accounts,” the government’s complaint stated.
Grichishkin pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and was sentenced to four years in prison. He is 36 years old, has a wife and kids in Thailand, and is slated for release on February 8, 2024.
The identity of Icamis came into view when KrebsOnSecurity began focusing on clues that might connect Icamis to Cherepovets (Ika’s apparent hometown based on the Internet addresses he regularly used to access Spamdot).
Historic domain ownership records from DomainTools.com reveal that many of the email addresses and domains connected to Icamis invoke the name “Andrew Artz,” including icamis[.]ws, icamis[.]ru, and icamis[.]biz. Icamis promoted his services in 2003 — such as bulk-domains[.]info — using the email address icamis@4host.info. From one of his ads in 2005:
Domains For Projects Advertised By Spam
I can register bulletproof domains for sites and projects advertised by spam(of course they must be legal). I can not provide DNS for u, only domains. The price will be:
65$ for domain[if u will buy less than 5 domains]
50$ for domain[more than 5 domains]
45$ for domain[more than 10 domains]
These prices are for domains in the .net & .com zones.
If u want to order domains write me to: icamis@4host.info
In 2009, an “Andrew Artz” registered at the hosting service FirstVDS.com using the email address icamis@4host.info, with a notation saying the company name attached to the account was “WMPay.” Likewise, the bulletproof domain service icamis[.]ws was registered to an Andrew Artz.
The domain wmpay.ru is registered to the phonetically similar name “Andrew Hertz,” at andrew@wmpay.ru. A search on “icamis.ru” in Google brings up a 2003 post by him on a discussion forum designed by and for students of Amtek, a secondary school in Cherepovets (Icamis was commenting from an Internet address in Cherepovets).
The website amtek-foreva-narod.ru is still online, and it links to several yearbooks for Amtek graduates. It states that the yearbook for the Amtek class of 2004 is hosted at 41.wmpay[.]com.
The yearbook photos for the Amtek class of 2004 are not indexed in the Wayback Machine at archive.org, but the names and nicknames of 16 students remain. However, it appears that the entry for one student — the Wmpay[.]com site administrator — was removed at some point.
In 2004, the administrator of the Amtek discussion forum — a 2003 graduate who used the handle “Grand” — observed that there were three people named Andrey who graduated from Amtek in 2004, but one of them was conspicuously absent from the yearbook at wmpay[.]ru: Andrey Skvortsov.
To bring this full circle, Icamis was Andrey Skvortsov, the other Russian man charged alongside Grichiskin (the two others who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges were from Estonia and Lithuania). All of the defendants in that case pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO).
[Author’s note: No doubt government prosecutors had their own reasons for omitting the nicknames of the defendants in their press releases, but that information sure would have saved me a lot of time and effort].
Skvortsov was sentenced to time served, and presumably deported. His current whereabouts are unknown and he was not reachable for comment via his known contact addresses.
The government says Ika and Sal’s bulletproof hosting empire provided extensive support for a highly damaging cybercrime group known as the JabberZeus Crew, which worked closely with the author of the Zeus Trojan — Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev — to develop a then-advanced strain of the Zeus malware that was designed to defeat one-time codes for authentication. Bogachev is a top Russian cybercriminal with a standing $3 million bounty on his head from the FBI.
The JabberZeus Crew stole money by constantly recruiting money mules, people in the United States and in Europe who could be enticed or tricked into forwarding money stolen from cybercrime victims. Interestingly, Icamis’s various email addresses are connected to websites for a vast network of phony technology companies that claimed they needed people with bank accounts to help pay their overseas employees.
Icamis used the email address tech@safe-mail.net on Spamdot, and this email address is tied to the registration records for multiple phony technology companies that were set up to recruit money mules.
One such site — sun-technology[.]net — advertised itself as a Hong Kong-based electronics firm that was looking for “honest, responsible and motivated people in UK, USA, AU and NZ to be Sales Representatives in your particular region and receive payments from our clients. Agent commission is 5 percent of total amount received to the personal bank account. You may use your existing bank account or open a new one for these purposes.”
In January 2010, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that the JabberZeus crew had just used money mules to steal $500,000 from tiny Duanesburg Central School District in upstate New York. As part of his sentence, Skvortsov was ordered to pay $497,200 in restitution to the Duanesburg Central School District.
The JabberZeus Crew operated mainly out of the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk, which was always pro-Russia and is now occupied by Russian forces. But when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the alleged leader of the notorious cybercrime gang — Vyacheslav Igoravich Andreev (a.ka. Penchukov) — fled his mandatory military service orders and was arrested in Geneva, Switzerland. He is currently in federal custody awaiting trial, and is slated to be arraigned in U.S. federal court tomorrow (Jan. 9, 2024). A copy of the indictment against Andreev is here (PDF).
Andreev, aka “Tank,” seen here performing as a DJ in Ukraine in an undated photo from social media.
HardHat is a multiplayer C# .NET-based command and control framework. Designed to aid in red team engagements and penetration testing. HardHat aims to improve the quality of life factors during engagements by providing an easy-to-use but still robust C2 framework.
It contains three primary components, an ASP.NET teamserver, a blazor .NET client, and C# based implants.
Alpha Release - 3/29/23 NOTE: HardHat is in Alpha release; it will have bugs, missing features, and unexpected things will happen. Thank you for trying it, and please report back any issues or missing features so they can be addressed.
Discord Join the community to talk about HardHat C2, Programming, Red teaming and general cyber security things The discord community is also a great way to request help, submit new features, stay up to date on the latest additions, and submit bugs.
documentation can be found at docs
To configure the team server's starting address (where clients will connect), edit the HardHatC2\TeamServer\Properties\LaunchSettings.json changing the "applicationUrl": "https://127.0.0.1:5000" to the desired location and port. start the teamserver with dotnet run from its top-level folder ../HrdHatC2/Teamserver/
Code contributions are welcome feel free to submit feature requests, pull requests or send me your ideas on discord.
