Naughty Sandbox -2021-05-31- -naughty Sandbox-

Unlike sterile sandboxes that minimize processes, this build ran a hyper-aggresive set of hooks. It injected amsi.dll hooks that returned "Clean" to every scan, even when malware was obviously malicious. This is the "Naughty" element: it lies to the malware to make the malware feel safe.

If you are trying to recreate this specific environment for historical threat hunting, follow these parameters exactly. This is the only way to get the hash-behavior matching that the original keyword references. Naughty Sandbox -2021-05-31- -Naughty Sandbox-

Prerequisites:

The Crucial Registry Keys: To mimic the "Naughty" behavior of lying to malware, you must apply these specific reg changes: Unlike sterile sandboxes that minimize processes, this build

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CI\Policy]
"VerifiedAndReputablePolicyState"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin"=dword:00000000
 The Crucial Registry Keys: To mimic the "Naughty"

While we love the Naughty Sandbox, malware authors hate it. By late June 2021, malware families like Dridex added specific checks for the "Naughty Sandbox" tell-tales. If you are running this sandbox today (2024/2025), look for malware that: