Detection rules › Sigma
Virtualbox Driver Installation or Starting of VMs
Adversaries can carry out malicious operations using a virtual instance to avoid detection. This rule is built to detect the registration of the Virtualbox driver or start of a Virtualbox VM.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Stealth | T1564.006 Hide Artifacts: Run Virtual Instance |
Event coverage
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
Rule body yaml
title: Virtualbox Driver Installation or Starting of VMs
id: bab049ca-7471-4828-9024-38279a4c04da
status: test
description: Adversaries can carry out malicious operations using a virtual instance to avoid detection. This rule is built to detect the registration of the Virtualbox driver or start of a Virtualbox VM.
references:
- https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2020/05/21/ragnar-locker-ransomware-deploys-virtual-machine-to-dodge-security/
- https://threatpost.com/maze-ransomware-ragnar-locker-virtual-machine/159350/
author: Janantha Marasinghe
date: 2020-09-26
modified: 2025-07-29
tags:
- attack.stealth
- attack.t1564.006
- attack.t1564
logsource:
category: process_creation
product: windows
detection:
selection_1:
CommandLine|contains:
- 'VBoxRT.dll,RTR3Init'
- 'VBoxC.dll'
- 'VBoxDrv.sys'
selection_2:
CommandLine|contains:
- 'startvm'
- 'controlvm'
condition: 1 of selection_*
falsepositives:
- This may have false positives on hosts where Virtualbox is legitimately being used for operations
level: low
Stages and Predicates
Stage 0: condition
1 of selection_*Stage 1: selection_1
selection_1:
CommandLine|contains:
- 'VBoxRT.dll,RTR3Init'
- 'VBoxC.dll'
- 'VBoxDrv.sys'
Stage 2: selection_2
selection_2:
CommandLine|contains:
- 'startvm'
- 'controlvm'
Indicators
Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.
| Field | Kind | Values |
|---|---|---|
CommandLine | match |
|