hatman injector int

Hunt Hypothesis

This detection targets adversaries utilizing Hatman’s injector mechanism to establish persistence or execute payloads within memory, a technique often employed by advanced threat actors to evade traditional signature-based defenses. Proactively hunting for this behavior in Azure Sentinel is critical because identifying these specific injection patterns early allows the SOC team to correlate them with lateral movement activities before they escalate into full-scale compromises.

YARA Rule

rule hatman_injector_int : hatman {
    condition:
        hatman_memcpy and hatman_origaddr and hatman_loadoff
}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint — Custom indicators / advanced hunting
• Email Gateway — Attachment scanning
• File Share Monitoring — Periodic scanning of shared drives
• YARA CLI — Manual threat hunting on endpoints
• Source Rule

False Positive Guidance

Here are 5 specific false positive scenarios for the hatman_injector_int detection rule in an enterprise environment, along with recommended filters or exclusions:

• Endpoint Protection Real-Time Scanning

  • Scenario: The endpoint protection agent (e.g., CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, or SentinelOne) performs real-time memory scanning. During file access or process startup, the antivirus engine injects its own DLLs into user processes to monitor behavior, mimicking the hatman injection signature.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude known security vendor executables from the detection scope. Create a whitelist for parent processes such as csagent.exe, MsMpEng.exe, and S1Service.exe.

• Scheduled Patch Management Deployments

  • Scenario: During business hours or maintenance windows, patch management tools (e.g., SCCM/MECM, Ivanti, or Jamf) deploy updates that require injecting configuration modules into running services to apply hotfixes without a reboot. This often triggers the injection logic within the hatman YARA rule.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Filter alerts based on scheduled time windows (e.g., 02:00–06:00 UTC) and exclude parent processes associated with patching agents like ccmexec.exe, IvAgentHost.exe, or JamfProHelper.

• Enterprise Software Updates (Self-Healing)

  • Scenario: Legacy enterprise applications, particularly Microsoft Office 365 or Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, utilize background update services that inject code into their own worker processes to verify integrity and apply “Click-to-Run” updates. This self-injection behavior frequently matches the hatman pattern.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude specific application paths and parent process names such as `Office