“HackTool:Win32/ProcessHacker!MTB” – Friend or Foe?

You might see your antivirus or security software flag “HackTool:Win32/ProcessHacker!MTB.” Don’t panic! This detection usually refers to Process Hacker itself. Because it has such deep access to system processes and memory (the very features that make it great for security analysis), some security tools view it with suspicion. These capabilities could be misused by attackers.

Essentially, the alert acknowledges Process Hacker’s power. In the right hands, it’s an invaluable diagnostic tool; in the wrong hands, it could be problematic.

Why the Scary Warnings?

It’s not uncommon for robust tools like Process Hacker to set off alarms with major antivirus programs—Emsisoft, Bitdefender, and several others have been known to flag it. On platforms like VirusTotal, you might see dozens of security vendors marking it as potentially harmful (sometimes 30+ out of 70, for those who like stats).

Occasionally, users report that their antivirus blocks the download, or that uninstalling Process Hacker becomes a challenge—requiring dedicated cleanup with a tool like Malwarebytes. This can be unnerving, but it’s usually a case of security software erring on the side of caution, not evidence that Process Hacker is actually malicious.

What Should You Do?

• Double-check the download source. Always get Process Hacker from reputable sites—never sketchy third-party download portals.
• Scan with multiple tools. Curious or cautious? Use VirusTotal to see how different vendors rate the file.
• Be aware of false positives. Security tools may flag Process Hacker simply because of its potential, not because it’s done anything nefarious on your system.
• If uninstalling, and your antivirus is being stubborn, tools like Malwarebytes can help clean up any lingering files.

Bottom line: Don’t be surprised if red flags pop up. Process Hacker’s transparency and power are a double-edged sword—admired by IT pros, eyed warily by security software. With a little caution and common sense, you can use it safely and effectively.

The Power of Permissions: Why Running as Admin Matters

A quick but critical point: permissions are key. To get the full picture of what’s happening on a system, especially when hunting for malware, you need to run Process Hacker with administrative rights. This allows you to see all processes, including those owned by the system itself (like NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM). Without admin rights, your visibility is limited to user-level processes, which might not be enough for a thorough investigation.

Unraveling the Process Tree: Finding the Odd One Out

One of Process Hacker’s standout features is its process tree view. This visually shows parent-child relationships between processes. Why is this so important?

• Behavioral Clues: It helps you quickly assess if a process is behaving as expected.
• Spotting Anomalies: For instance, if you see cmd.exe (Command Prompt) or powershell.exe launched as a child process of Microsoft Word, that’s a major red flag. It could indicate a malicious document or a phishing attack in progress.

Double-clicking any process opens its properties, revealing a goldmine of information:

• Command-line arguments: Perfect for spotting obfuscated scripts or encoded payloads.
• Working directory: Where is this process operating from?
• Memory and security details.
• Parent process relationships.

Dissecting the ‘Processes’ Tab: Your Command Center

The ‘Processes’ tab is your real-time dashboard for everything running under the hood. It’s a bit like having the control tower view at O’Hare, minus the coffee jitters.

Here’s what you can see at a glance:

• Process name: Instantly tells you what’s currently active—no more guessing games.
• PID (Process ID): Each process sports a unique ID, making it easy to track or terminate the right one (especially handy when a rogue Chrome tab goes haywire).
• CPU usage: See which programs are burning through your processor.
• I/O activity: Gauge how much data a process is reading or writing—useful for catching anything overly chatty.
• Private bytes: A quick pulse-check on a process’s memory demands.
• User account: Spot which user launched the process, ideal for sniffing out questionable activity.
• Description: Extra context about what each process actually does, beyond just the name.

And because visual cues speed up investigations, the tab color-codes processes by type. Want to know which ones are system processes and which ones might be packed or out of the ordinary? Head to the ‘Hacker’ menu, choose ‘Options’, and then pop over to the ‘Highlighting’ tab. You’ll get a legend for all the color codes, making abnormal processes much faster to spot—no sudoku skills required.

Deep Dive: Essential Tabs for Malware Analysis

Let’s explore some of the crucial tabs within a process’s properties window:

1. Tokens Tab: Tokens define the permissions a process has. Attackers often try to hijack processes with elevated tokens to escalate their own privileges. This tab helps you see:

   • Which security tokens are in use.
   • If they are being abused for privilege escalation.
   • You can even experiment with live permission changes (carefully!).

2. Modules Tab: Modules are typically DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries) that a process loads to perform various functions. You’ll see:

   • Legitimate Windows DLLs.
   • Third-party libraries.
   • Critically, any malicious DLLs injected by attackers. A classic example is the BlackEnergy malware used in the 2016 Ukraine power grid attack, which leveraged malicious DLLs. Process Hacker would have shown these loaded modules.

3. Memory Tab: This tab gives you insight into how a process is using memory, including:

   • Access types (read-only, read/write, execute).
   • Locations of memory segments.
   • Crucially, the ability to dump memory regions for offline analysis with tools like Volatility or Bulk Extractor. This is invaluable for analyzing fileless malware or memory injection techniques.

4. Handles Tab: Handles show how a process is interacting with operating system resources. This includes:

   • Files: What files does it have open?
   • Registry Keys: Is it modifying persistence locations like Run keys?
   • Mutexes: Often used by malware to ensure only one instance is running or for other control purposes.
   • Semaphores and other objects. This data is vital for identifying persistence mechanisms.

Mining the Memory: Extracting and Filtering Strings Like a Pro

Strings hidden in process memory are a treasure trove for any malware hunter—and Process Hacker makes uncovering them remarkably straightforward. Here’s how you can dig through a process’s active memory for suspicious clues or indicators of compromise (IOCs):

1. Open Process Properties:
   Right-click the suspicious process—maybe it’s something generic like smsfwdr.exe spinning out of nowhere—and select “Properties.” You’ll land on the General tab, but we’re aiming deeper.

2. Navigate to the Memory Tab:
   Flip over to the “Memory” tab. Here’s where things get interesting.

3. Pull the Strings:
   Hit the “Strings…” button. This will comb through the live memory space of the process, pulling out any readable character sequences—usernames in plain text, embedded URLs, paths, scripts, even command-line fragments attackers hoped you’d never see.

4. Filter with Purpose:
   Search results can get noisy fast, so make use of the “Filter” feature. By enabling “Regex (case-insensitive),” you can zero in on patterns—like IP addresses, URLs, or suspicious command parameters—without manually sifting through piles of benign strings.

For example: Want to snag rogue IP addresses? Drop in a regex such as
(?:(?:\d|[01]?\d\d|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|[01]?\d\d|\d)(?:\/\d{1,2})?
and Process Hacker surfaces anything matching that pattern.

Looking for odd URLs or callbacks? Use a URL regex to catch even the obfuscated gems attackers like to hide.

1. Investigate and Act:
   Each string that matches your search could be a direct clue: command and control infrastructure, exfiltration endpoints, or embedded commands. Cross-check any IPs or URLs with your threat intel feeds or network controls to block or investigate further.

In short, Process Hacker turns memory forensics from a black box into an open book—just remember, not every string is gold, but you only need one smoking-gun clue to start unraveling the attacker’s playbook.

Hunting for Indicators: Using Regex in Process Hacker’s Memory Tab

Now, here’s where things get really interesting: the “Strings” feature within the Memory tab. Process Hacker doesn’t just let you peek into memory—you can actively sift through it for suspicious patterns using regular expressions (regex). This comes in handy when you’re after elusive indicators like IP addresses or URLs that malware loves to stash in memory.

Here’s how to put regex to work in your malware hunt:

• Under the Memory tab, click the “Strings…” button. This opens a searchable list of all human-readable strings tucked away in the process’s memory.
• Noticed too much noise? Tap the “Filter” button and enable “Regex (case-insensitive).”
• Now you can enter a custom regex pattern tailored to your investigative needs:
• Searching for IP addresses? Try a pattern like:
  </span> <span style="color: #0C882A;">(?:(?:\d|[01]?\d\d|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|[01]?\d\d|\d)(?:/\d{1,2})?</span> <span style="color: #0C882A;">
• Looking for URLs or C2 endpoints? Craft a regex like:
  </span> <span style="color: #0C882A;">([A-Za-z]+://)([-\w]+(?:\.\w[-\w]*)+)(:\d+)?(/[^.!,?”<>\[\]{}\s\x7F-\xFF]*(?:[.!,?]+[^.!,?”<>\[\]{}\s\x7F-\xFF]+)*)?</span> <span style="color: #0C882A;">
• This targeted approach cuts through noise and highlights strings matching your indicators, often surfacing command-and-control locations or opportunistic URLs that attackers hide in memory.

With these matches in hand, you can cross-reference them against threat intelligence feeds or your network firewall rules to see if your environment is communicating with anything suspicious. If you spot an unknown IP address or web address, it’s your cue to dig deeper—or block it outright.

By wielding regex with Process Hacker’s memory tools, you transform raw memory dumps into actionable breadcrumbs for threat hunting.
4. Handles Tab: Handles show how a process is interacting with operating system resources. This includes:

- **Files:** What files does it have open?- **Registry Keys:** Is it modifying persistence locations like Run keys?- **Mutexes:** Often used by malware to ensure only one instance is running or for other control purposes.- **Semaphores and other objects.** This data is vital for identifying persistence mechanisms.

Zeroing In: Tracing Network Connections Per Process

Curious if that suspicious process is calling home to a command-and-control server? Process Hacker has your back with its dedicated Network tab. Here’s how you can use it for laser-focused network sleuthing:

• Filter by Process Name: Simply enter your process of interest (let’s say, smsfwdr) in the search bar. Instantly, you’ll see only the network activity for that specific process—no sifting through a sea of connections from other apps.
• See Real-Time Connections: The panel displays all active and recent connections for the chosen process, including the local and remote IP addresses, protocols, and port numbers in use.
• Spot the Suspicious: Watch for outbound connections to unfamiliar or geo-suspicious IP addresses, unusual port usage, or links to known malicious infrastructure. This makes it much easier to pinpoint C2 activity right as it happens.

This targeted view helps you distinguish routine traffic from potentially malicious communications—an essential step in modern threat hunting.

Decoding File Activity: The ‘Disk’ Tab at a Glance

Curious about how processes interact with your hard drives in real time? The ‘Disk’ tab in Process Hacker offers a live look under the hood, letting you see precisely which files are in use—and by whom. Here’s what you’ll find:

• Which process is doing what: See the name and process ID (PID) of every process accessing disk files.
• File locations in action: Quickly pinpoint which files on disk are being read from or written to by each process.
• Activity rates: Monitor real-time read and write speeds for each process—helpful for spotting programs that are unusually hungry for disk access.
• Total disk impact: Get a combined total of read and write throughput, so you can identify which processes put the biggest load on your drives.
• Prioritization and performance: Keep tabs on each process’s input/output (I/O) priority and response times. Slow response or high I/O priority might signal a rogue or misbehaving process.

This snapshot is invaluable when you’re trying to spot data exfiltration, crypto miners quietly churning away, or simply which app is causing your hard drive light to flicker like a disco ball.

Exploring the Services Tab: Peering into the Background

Now, let’s talk about the Services tab—the unsung hero for tracking what’s really happening behind the scenes. While you may not see these services on your desktop, they’re quietly running in the background, sometimes carrying out legitimate tasks, other times harboring something far more nefarious.

The Services tab pulls back the curtain by listing critical details for each service, including:

• The official service name and its more user-friendly display name.
• The service type (for example, is it a system driver or a typical service?).
• Its current status—is it running, stopped, or somewhere in between?
• The start mode (does the service launch automatically at boot, only on demand, or perhaps never?).
• The associated process ID, if the service is currently tied to a running process.

Keeping an eye on these fields lets you spot unusual or suspicious services—maybe an unknown driver running at startup, or a “trusted” service that appears out of nowhere. All of this adds up to a clearer picture when hunting for stealthy attackers or digital squatters lurking on your system.

When the Trail Goes Cold: Understanding “No Additional Details”

Sometimes, even with Process Hacker, you might encounter a suspicious process with no readily available technical details or threat intelligence. This usually means:

• The threat is very new (zero-day) or expertly designed to evade detection.
• Current threat intelligence feeds haven’t yet cataloged its specific behaviors or Indicators of Compromise (IOCs).

Don’t let this stop you. Use the context clues you can gather from Process Hacker – unusual parent-child relationships, strange loaded modules, suspicious network activity (more on that in a future discussion!), or odd token privileges – to guide your manual investigation.