ZeroAccess

ZeroAccess

James Wyke

SophosLabs UK
ZeroAccess

Abstract

ZeroAccess is a sophisticated kernel-mode rootkit that is rapidly becoming one of the

most widespread threats in the current malware ecosystem. ZeroAccess’ ability to run on both

32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, resilient peer-to-peer command and control infrastructure

and constant updates to its functionality over time show that ZeroAccess is a modern threat

capable of thriving on modern networks and modern Operating Systems.

In this paper we will explore the ZeroAccess threat; from the distribution mechanisms

used to spread it, through the installation procedure, memory residence and payload. We

examine how ZeroAccess works and what its ultimate goal is.
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Contents

ZeroAccess ...................................................................................................................................... 4
Distribution ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Exploit Packs .............................................................................................................................. 5
Social Engineering ...................................................................................................................... 5
Dropper ........................................................................................................................................... 7
Installation....................................................................................................................................... 8
Pseudo Random Domain Generator.......................................................................................... 11
32-Bit Installation ..................................................................................................................... 12
64-Bit Installation ..................................................................................................................... 15
Memory Residence ....................................................................................................................... 16
Rootkit....................................................................................................................................... 16
Payload ...................................................................................................................................... 18
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 21
References ..................................................................................................................................... 22
Appendix ....................................................................................................................................... 23
P2P RC4 Key ............................................................................................................................ 23
RSA Public key ......................................................................................................................... 23
ZeroAccess

ZeroAccess

ZeroAccess is a dangerous threat that has been circulating for several years. SophosLabs
has recently seen the number of machines infected with ZeroAccess increase sharply as there has
been a proliferation of samples appearing in the wild.

The following graph shows the upwards trend in the number of unique ZeroAccess related
samples seen by SophosLabs over the last 7 months:

Unique Samples

Feb-12

Jan-12

Dec-11

Nov-11

Oct-11

Sep-11

Aug-11

0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000

In the time that ZeroAccess has been in the wild there have been a number of revisions,
with modifications to its functionality, infection strategy and its persistence mechanisms on an
infected machine. However, the core purpose has remained: to assume full control of the
machine by adding it to the ZeroAccess botnet and to monetize the new asset by downloading
additional malware.

Primarily ZeroAccess is a kernel-mode rootkit, similar in ethos to the TDL family of

rootkits. It uses advanced techniques to hide its presence, is capable of functioning on both 32
and 64-bit flavors of Windows from a single installer, contains aggressive self defense
functionality and acts as a sophisticated delivery platform for other malware.
ZeroAccess

Distribution

Infection vectors for ZeroAccess are very similar to other high profile malware families
currently circulating in the wild. Although not entirely comprehensive the main distribution
methods for ZeroAccess can be split into two categories: Exploit Packs and social engineering.

Exploit Packs

ZeroAccess has become an increasingly popular payload to the various Exploit Packs
currently on the market, in particular BlackHole [1]. An exploit pack typically comes as a series
of php scripts that are stored on a web server under the control of the attacker. When a victim‟s
browser accesses the loaded website the server backend will attempt to exploit a vulnerability on
the target machine and execute the payload. Exploit packs usually contain a great many different
exploits targeting applications commonly found on Windows PCs such as Internet Explorer,
Acrobat, Flash and Java.

Traffic is driven to websites hosting Exploit Packs through a variety of means. A

common method is through the use of compromised sites. Legitimate sites that have been
compromised by the attacker (often through stolen FTP credentials or SQL injection) are used to
both host the exploit packs themselves and as redirectors to the main attack site. Typically, small
amounts of JavaScript code are inserted into pages of a compromised website that will send the
user to the attack site. Ad servers have also been compromised in this way which can result in
widespread infection very quickly if the ads are served to high profile websites. SEO (Search
Engine Optimisation) techniques are used to drive compromised websites up search engine
rankings, increasing the traffic that gets sent to the attack site. We have also seen this delivery
method initiated through email. An email is spammed out containing a link that when clicked
sends the victim to a compromised website hosting an Exploit Pack. Exploit Packs as an
infection vector for ZeroAccess are very effective and usually requires no input from the victim
other than browsing to an apparently legitimate website or clicking an innocuous-seeming link.

Social Engineering

The second main infection vector for ZeroAccess is through a variety of social
engineering techniques. At the heart of these is the goal of convincing a victim into running an
executable that they should not. The lure is often a piece of illicit software such as a game or a
copyright protection bypassing tool such as a crack or keygen. These Trojanised files are placed
on upload sites and on torrents and given filenames designed to trick the unwary into
downloading and running them.

The following is an example of a file purporting to be a keygen for DivX Plus 8.0 for
Windows. The file would be placed onto upload sites or offered as a torrent. The file is in fact an
NSIS self extractor that contains the advertised keygen program but also contains an encrypted
ZeroAccess

7zip file. When executed the self extractor unpacks the keygen program to
”%Profile%\Application Data\Keygen.exe” and executes it:

But in the background the 7zip file is dropped, extracted and the single file inside (the
ZeroAccess dropper) is executed. By observing API calls the 7zip password can be ascertained:

Here is an example where the lure was a copy of the game Skyrim [2]. Again the installer
is an NSIS archive. This time a file is dropped to ”%Profile%\Application
Data\skyrimlauncher.exe” and a screen is shown that purports to be the game installer:
ZeroAccess

While once again in the background an encrypted 7Zip file is dropped, extracted and the
contents executed, installing ZeroAccess.

Dropper

ZeroAccess droppers have changed as the rootkit itself has evolved. Currently, droppers
are usually packed with one from a group of complex polymorphic packers.

These packers are a typical example of the protection measures that modern malware
employs to both hinder analysis and to attempt to avoid detection by security tools. They are
updated several times a day and are always checked against AV scanners before they are
released into the wild. These packers contain a great many anti-emulation and anti-debug
techniques designed to defeat emulators inside AV engines and to make analysis inside a
controlled environment more difficult. The dropper has recently been using hardware
breakpoints as part of its unpacking routine which makes attaching a kernel debugger to the
target system (necessary to analyse the kernel-mode components) more challenging.
ZeroAccess

An interesting feature of ZeroAccess droppers is that a single dropper will install the 32-
bit or the 64-bit version of the malware depending on which OS it is executed under.

Installation

At installation ZeroAccess will first ascertain if it is running on 32 or 64-bit Windows.

This is achieved using the ZwQueryInformationProcess [3] API with ProcessWow64Information
as the ProcessInformationClass parameter:

This is where the decision between 32 bit and 64-bit installation path is made. The
installer will then attempt to give itself SE_DEBUG_PRIVILEGE [4] privileges using
RtlAdjustPrivileges:

If this is successful then installation will continue as normal, if the attempt fails (usually
because the process has been executed by a normal user) then ZeroAccess will attempt another
method of privilege escalation.
ZeroAccess

ZeroAccess must elevate its privileges to install successfully, but in order to do this from
a non-administrator account on UAC enabled versions of Windows, a UAC popup will appear.
End users are more likely to be suspicious of a file they have just downloaded from the internet
that they thought was an illegal keygen, crack or hacked version of a game; they may also be
suspicious if an unknown exe file causes a UAC popup while the user is browsing the web
(exploit pack infection vector). As a result the user may choose not to allow the program to
proceed, thus ZeroAccess installation may fail. To bypass this possible problem ZeroAccess
disguises itself by forcing the UAC popup to appear to come from a different, benign-seeming
program. A clean copy of the Adobe Flash Installer (InstallFlashPlayer.exe) is dropped to a
temporary directory and the DLL load order of Windows [5] is abused to ensure that ZeroAccess
is loaded into the clean file‟s process address space when it is executed. By dropping a DLL
called msimg32.dll (one of the DLL‟s that InstallFlashPlayer.exe imports) into the same
directory as the Flash installer file, Windows will load this DLL in preference to the genuine
msimg32.dll because Windows looks in the current directory before the system directory when
loading DLL‟s:

This means that the UAC popup now appears to be generated by the genuine Adobe
Flash Installer which is much more likely to be authorized:
ZeroAccess

The Flash installer will then continue while ZeroAccess silently infects the system in the
background, even if Flash is already installed:

ZeroAccess will next go about lowering security on the infected machine by disabling a
number of Windows security related services. The Windows Firewall is turned off and updates
will no longer be retrieved from Microsoft. The full list of services that it will attempt to disable
is below:

BFE (Base FilteringEngine Service)

iphlpsvc (IP Helper service)
mpssvc (Windows firewall service)
WinDefend (Windows Defender service)
wscsvc (Windows Security Center Service)
WinHttpAutoProxySvc (Proxy Auto Discovery Service)
ZeroAccess

Pseudo Random Domain Generator

During installation many ZeroAccess samples will report back to an IP address embedded
inside the executable with information about the infected machine. This is carried out with an
HTTP Get request with the “Host” field of the request set to a pseudo-randomly generated “.cn”
domain.
The generated domain name does not exist and does not need to exist as it is never looked
up and no attempt is made to connect to any URL on the generated domain. The domain uses the
current date and a seed value and one domain will be generated per day:
ZeroAccess

This DGA (Domain Generation Algorithm) system is used in various places throughout
ZeroAccess where communication needs to take place over HTTP. If the exact same HTTP
request is made with an incorrect “Host” field in the HTTP request then an empty response will
be returned. In this way it is used as a pseudo-authentication system to verify that the server is
only talking to a genuine ZeroAccess instance and not anything else such as security researchers
or search bots. The locale and the architecture of the infected machine are also added to the get
request in the “User-Agent” field:

The rest of ZeroAccess installation is markedly different on 32 and 64-bit platforms.

32-Bit Installation

When installed under 32-bit Windows ZeroAccess will install a kernel-mode rootkit. To
load its code into the kernel an existing driver will be overwritten on disk. The original driver file
and any subsequent files downloaded by ZeroAccess will be stored in encrypted form on a part
of the disk not normally accessible to other applications.

The stealth technique used by ZeroAccess to hide its files has changed over time.
Previous versions created an entire hidden volume to store their files but recent versions have
used a much simpler but no-less effective technique. A directory is created under
“%systemroot%” with a name designed to look like a legitimate directory created when a
Microsoft patch is installed. The directory name will be similar to:
“c:\windows\$NtUninstallKB35373$” with the last five digits being specific to the victim
machine. Files stored inside this folder are encrypted using a modified version of RC4 and to
ZeroAccess

make the folder inaccessible to programs using standard Windows APIs it is made into a
symbolic link pointing to “\systemroot\system32\config”:

The ACL (Access Control List) on the directory is also changed so that the target of the
link cannot be browsed to:
ZeroAccess

However, if the raw disk is accessed or the directory is examined offline from a Linux
OS the contents can be seen:

If the symlink directory is ignored and the full path is provided the encrypted files can
also be accessed:

A special device is created that the rootkit uses to read and write into the hidden folder,
decrypting and encrypting files on the fly, and the LowerDeviceObject of the DR0 device of
\Driver\Disk is hooked to hide the overwritten driver.
ZeroAccess

64-Bit Installation

Under 64-bit Windows ZeroAccess does not use any kernel-mode code; all its execution
takes place in user memory. The same technique of dropping the Flash Installer is used to elevate
privileges. Reboot persistence is achieved through a file dropped into the user‟s AppData folder
and a registry entry under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon:

Again ZeroAccess attempts to make its files difficult to access, this time using no rootkit
behaviour but by hiding inside the Global Assembly Cache (GAC). The GAC is a machine-wide
cache of .NET assemblies used by Windows. It is located at %windir%\assembly. To view
assemblies and add new ones, the Assembly Cache Viewer is used which is integrated into
Explorer. When the GAC directory is browsed then the Cache Viewer is launched:
ZeroAccess

The Cache viewer does not display the contents of the directory but displays information
about the installed assemblies. ZeroAccess abuses this functionality by creating a directory
inside the GAC folder and storing its files there. These files will not be observable by any casual
user who browses the folder with Explorer but they can be seen if the Cache Viewer shell
extension is disabled or from the command line:

Memory Residence

Once ZeroAccess is in memory there are two main areas of activity: the rootkit and the
payload.

Rootkit

If running under 32-bit Windows ZeroAccess will employ its kernel-mode rootkit. The
rootkit‟s purpose is to:

 Hide the infected driver on the disk

 Enable read and write access to the encrypted files
 Deploy self defense (some versions)

The primary function of the rootkit component of ZeroAccess is to hide the changes
made to the driver that was infected during installation. This is achieved by hooking the
ZeroAccess

LowerDeviceObject of the DR0 device of \Driver\Disk. A copy of the clean driver is stored in
memory. Any process that attempts to read the infected driver from the disk will be presented
with the clean driver.

If any of the components of ZeroAccess want to read or write to files stored inside the
hidden folder then they need to do this without using the normal Win32 APIs as Windows will
see the folder as a symbolic link and not realize it is also a genuine folder with files inside. The
files also need to be decrypted to make any sense out of them. The rootkit driver facilitates
seamless read and write to the hidden folder by creating a device named
ACPI#PNP0303#2&da1a3ff&0. When files are accessed through this device they are decrypted
on the fly.

Many versions of ZeroAccess employ aggressive self defense that is designed to protect
the rootkit from security and AV software. A process is created that is monitored by the rootkit.
If any application attempts to open this “bait” process then the rootkit will attack that application.
The bait process has data stored in an Alternate Data Stream so the process name appears with a
colon inside it:

First, the ACL of the file for the process that has opened the bait process is changed so
that the file can no longer be executed, using ZwSetSecurityObject:
ZeroAccess

The process itself is then attacked by injecting shell code into it that will terminate the
process. This means that on ZeroAccess infected systems many security tools will be terminated
and the ACL on their files will need to be changed before they can be executed again. This
symptom is a good indicator of ZeroAccess infection and it would appear that the authors may
have decided that this is too good an indicator of infection as most recent samples no longer
include the self defense.

Payload

The payload of ZeroAccess is to connect to a peer-to-peer botnet and download further

files. The network communication is initiated both from the kernel driver itself and from a
component injected into user memory, usually inside either the address space of explorer.exe or
svchost.exe, by the driver.

When initially installed, ZeroAccess includes with it a file that contains a list of 256
(0x100) IP addresses. Each IP address is followed by a dword time value that probably indicates
the last contact time for each IP address as the list is sorted by the time value, highest first. This
is the initial list of peers that the infected machine knows about in the botnet. The bot will
attempt to contact each IP address in the list on a fixed port number that is stored inside the bot
executable file. Once a successful connection is made commands will be issued. The bot also
listens on the same high numbered TCP port that outgoing connections use, thus it attempts to
become another node in the peer-to-peer botnet. However, it should be noted that the infected
machine will need to be directly accessible from the internet with a public IP address for other
peers to connect to it. Otherwise the infected machine will effectively become a passive node
that can only connect to other nodes and obtain data; it cannot be connected to by other nodes.

All communication across the peer-to-peer network is encrypted with RC4 using a fixed
key. This key has been observed to be the same for all variants of ZeroAccess encountered, even
variants that use different port numbers and are instructed to download different types of
malware. Upon successful connection to another node the bot will first issue a „getL‟ command.
This command is regularly repeated and is the main way of keeping up to date with other nodes.
The other node then responds with a „retL‟ command which includes the list of 256 (IP address,
time) pairs that it currently holds and a list of files and timestamps for each file that it has
downloaded. This keeps new nodes in the botnet updated with the currently accessible peers. A
„getF‟ command is then issued by the bot for each file contained in the list. This downloads the
file and stores it under the hidden folder. Some variants will also store the downloaded files in a
directory under the user‟s %AppData% path. Each downloaded file contains a resource named
“33333” that contains a digital signature for the file. The bot verifies the signature is genuine
using an RSA public key embedded inside it before the file is executed:
ZeroAccess

ZeroAccess has been seen to be downloading two main families of malware. The first is a
type of click fraud [6] malware that appears to be very tightly bound to ZeroAccess, so much so
that it may have been authored by the ZeroAccess owners. This malware can redirect browser
search results to URL‟s of the author‟s choosing and will periodically query a server that will
send back an xml file that contains a list of URL‟s and referrer URL‟s:
ZeroAccess

The infected machine will send HTTP requests to each URL specified in the “<url>” tag
with the Referer field of the HTTP request set to the URL from the “<ref>” field. This generates
income for the affiliate whose ID is embedded in the referrer URL. The click fraud payload can
be said to be very tightly bound to ZeroAccess itself because the same DGA (Domain
Generation Algorithm) is used to generate the Host field of the HTTP request when retrieving
URL data:

The other main payload is a spambot. When this payload is downloaded it installs itself,
downloads spam templates and target email addresses and sends spam. It is likely that the
authors of the spambot are renting a portion of the ZeroAccess botnet to deliver their malware.

The two differing version are most easily identified by the port numbers that they use. The
click fraud downloading variant tends to use ports 21810 and 22292 whereas the spambot
downloading variety uses port 34354.
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Conclusion

We have explored where ZeroAccess infections come from, how the rootkit establishes
control over a system and what activities it carries out once installed.

We can say that ZeroAccess is an advanced malware delivery platform that is controlled
through a difficult to crack peer-to-peer infrastructure. Once it gains a foothold on a system it
can be very difficult to remove. It has adapted as its target environment has evolved, adding
compatibility for 64-bit architectures and multi-user, multi-privilege systems.

ZeroAccess remains hidden on an infected machine while downloading more visible

components that generate revenue for the botnet owners. Currently the downloaded malware is
mostly aimed at sending spam and carrying out click fraud, but previously the botnet has been
instructed to download other malware and it is likely that this will be the case again in the future.
ZeroAccess should be considered an advanced and dangerous threat that requires a fully
featured, multi-layered protection strategy.
ZeroAccess

References

[1] Sophos Security Threat Report 2012, Anatomy of an attack: Drive-by downloads and

Blackhole, http://www.sophos.com/en-us/security-news-trends/reports/security-threat-

report/html-09.aspx

[2] Skyrim, http:// www.elderscrolls.com/skyrim/

[3] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms687420%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

[4] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb530716%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

[5] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682586%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud
ZeroAccess

Appendix

P2P RC4 Key

The RC4 key used in all P2P communications is the MD5 of the fixed dword value:
0xCD6734FE.

RSA Public key

The RSA public key used to verify the signature on the downloaded files uses a 512 bit
modulus which is considered weak:

-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----

MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBAM6rnSxDOEEP8safnkTPWes+fNxaJtBc
Mc8rAjpE3hgC0ZQBxCAb48WQ8UmH4UDnSTMK0rCaqgG7vzfktgQUVYsCAwEAAQ==
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----