SquatBot - HackTheBox Challenge Writeup

Challenge Information

Description

An AWS development company providing full-scale cloud consulting and AWS application development services has fallen victim to a security breach. Despite maintaining robust cyber hygiene practices and implementing safe development procedures, malware has successfully penetrated their defenses.

Your task is to analyze a memory dump obtained from the compromised server and investigate the malware’s behavior and attack vectors to understand how the breach occurred.

Challenge Objective

• Analyze the provided memory dump from the compromised server
• Identify malware behavior and execution patterns
• Determine the attack mechanism used to bypass security controls
• Extract forensic artifacts related to the compromise

Solution Overview

This forensics challenge requires memory analysis techniques to uncover malware behavior in a compromised AWS development environment. The investigation involves:

1. Memory Dump Analysis - Loading and examining the memory dump with appropriate forensics tools
2. Process Analysis - Identifying suspicious processes and their execution context
3. Malware Behavior - Tracking system calls, network connections, and file operations
4. Artifact Extraction - Collecting evidence of the attack and exploitation techniques

Key Steps

Step 1: Memory Dump Acquisition and Initial Analysis

Begin by examining the memory dump file and determining its properties:

# Identify dump file format and size
file memory.dump
ls -lh memory.dump

# Use volatility to analyze the dump
volatility3 -f memory.dump windows.info

Step 2: Process Enumeration

List all running processes at the time of the dump:

# Enumerate processes
volatility3 -f memory.dump windows.pslist

# Check for suspicious process trees
volatility3 -f memory.dump windows.pstree

Step 3: Malware Detection

Scan for suspicious processes and DLLs:

# List loaded DLLs
volatility3 -f memory.dump windows.dlllist

# Check for injected code or suspicious modules
volatility3 -f memory.dump windows.modules

Step 4: Network Connections

Examine network activity at the time of compromise:

# List network connections
volatility3 -f memory.dump windows.netscan

# Check listening ports
volatility3 -f memory.dump windows.netstat

Step 5: File System Analysis

Investigate file operations and persistence mechanisms:

# Dump files from memory
volatility3 -f memory.dump windows.filescan

# Extract suspicious files
volatility3 -f memory.dump -o dump/ windows.dumpfiles

Step 6: Registry Analysis

Check Windows registry for malware artifacts:

# Examine registry hives
volatility3 -f memory.dump windows.registry.printkey --key "Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Run"

# Check for persistence mechanisms
volatility3 -f memory.dump windows.registry.printkey --key "Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run"

Tools Used

• Volatility3 - Memory analysis framework for extracting artifacts from memory dumps
• strings - Searching for readable strings within binary data
• grep/regex - Pattern matching for artifact identification
• xxd/hexdump - Hex analysis of suspicious binaries
• file - File type identification

Key Learnings

1. Memory Forensics Depth - Memory dumps contain comprehensive forensic artifacts including process execution, loaded modules, network connections, and registry state
2. Malware Behavior Patterns - Understanding process injection, DLL loading, and persistence mechanisms is crucial for identifying compromises
3. AWS-Specific Vectors - Development environments may have trust relationships or credentials in memory that attackers exploit
4. Artifact Chain - Following the chain of artifacts (processes → DLLs → files → network → registry) reveals the complete attack narrative
5. Volatility Plugins - Specialized plugins help identify rootkits, injected code, and suspicious patterns that manual analysis might miss

Notes

The challenge emphasizes practical memory forensics skills essential for incident response in cloud-native environments. The compromised AWS development company’s case demonstrates how even security-conscious organizations can fall victim to sophisticated attacks targeting the development pipeline.