Detecting Fileless Malware Techniques

When to Use

• EDR alerts indicate suspicious behavior from trusted system binaries (PowerShell, mshta, wmic, regsvr32)
• Investigating attacks that leave no traditional malware files on disk
• Analyzing WMI event subscriptions, registry-stored payloads, or scheduled task abuse for persistence
• Building detection rules for LOLBin (Living Off the Land Binary) abuse in enterprise environments
• Memory forensics reveals malicious code but no corresponding files exist on the filesystem

Do not use for traditional file-based malware; standard static and dynamic analysis methods are more appropriate for disk-resident malware.

Prerequisites