File verdict·Decided by the MT AI Engine
Our call

Safe

Clean across our antivirus network, signed by Gibson Research Corporation, and matches prevalent legitimate ValiDrive utility despite packer and heuristic flags.

Verified · Gibson Research Corporation
Trust score92High trust
MT AI confidence · 92%
ValiDrive.exe
104.0 KB
382041665c4670222b53b0ad19a4
Antivirus engines
0 of 76 flagged
Code signing
Signed by Gibson Research Corporation
Age
First seen 2y ago
MT AI Engine · our arbiter

The verdict, reasoned out.

Not a rules engine. The MT AI Engine reads every signal we collected, weighs them against history, and commits to an answer.

92%Confidence
Very high
Reasoning

Dominant clean engine consensus (0/72 malicious, full tier1 coverage) outweighs synthesis heuristics on injection/LSASS/IPs, which lack sandbox or detection corroboration. High prevalence and community validation as GRC's ValiDrive tool explain behavioural signals. Verified signing adds trust despite no historical stats. YARAify hits are packer/cert-focused, not malicious.

Key signals · 5

Each signal cites a concrete token from the evidence the arbiter saw — engine name, MITRE technique, signer string, or an exact count.

  1. 0/72 engines.malicious; 17 tier1ReportedClean

  2. signing.verified=true; signer='Gibson Research Corporation'

  3. prevalence.classification='common_old'; uniqueSources=3627

  4. communityComments[1]: 'ValiDrive is a lightweight program for testing real flash drive capacity' linking grc.com

  5. behaviour.hasMaliciousSandboxVerdict=false; droppedChildren.hasMaliciousChild=false

Points in its favour
  • 0 malicious engines (72 reporting, 17 tier1 clean)
  • prevalence 'common_old' (3627 sources)
  • signing.verified by Gibson Research Corporation
  • communityComments validate as grc.com ValiDrive tool
  • No malicious sandbox or children
Points against
  • triggeredHeuristics 'ProcessInjection' (high severity, T1055)
  • behaviour.offensiveTechniques includes LSASS targeting
  • peAnalysis.likelyPacked=true (PECompact)
  • Direct IP contacts without DNS (19 IPs)
What to do

This is the legitimate ValiDrive.exe from Gibson Research Corporation for USB drive testing. Safe to use; ignore heuristic flags explained by its low-level drive access.

Threat family attribution

PE Digital Certificate corroborated by 1 source

  • 6 YARA rules
    PE_Digital_Certificate, PE_Potentially_Signed_Digital_Certificate, pecompact2
Runtime behaviour

What this file did when executed

This file was detonated in 1 sandbox and its runtime behaviour was observed.

MITRE ATT&CK
12

Adversary techniques mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

T1010T1027T1027.002T1036T1045T1055T1071T1082T1548T1562T1562.001T1574.002
Spawned processes
15
$(unnamed)
"C:\Users\<USER>\Desktop\executable.exe"
$(unnamed)
C:\Windows\system32\services.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k NetworkService -p
$(unnamed)
C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe -k UnistackSvcGroup
$(unnamed)
C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k LocalSystemNetworkRestricted -p -s StorSvc
$(unnamed)
C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe -k LocalService -s W32Time
$(unnamed)
%SAMPLEPATH%\validrive.exe
+7 more processes captured.
Network activity
20
IP addresses20
  • 23.216.147.76
  • 192.229.211.108
  • 20.99.185.48
  • 104.98.118.163
  • 20.99.186.246
  • 20.99.133.109
  • 23.53.122.135
  • 23.209.116.9
  • 20.99.184.37
  • 20.22.113.133
+10 more
Filesystem & mutexes
24
Files written4
  • C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache_idx.db
  • C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache_16.db
  • C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\FontCache\Fonts\Download-1.tmp
  • \\?\PIPE\wkssvc
Files deleted15
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERD4EA.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERD5B5.tmp.csv
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERD5F4.tmp.txt
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERF15B.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERF15D.tmp.csv
+10 more
Mutexes created5
  • Local\Shell.CMruPidlList
  • Local\SessionImmersiveColorMutex
  • Global\SyncRootManager
  • Local\Mutexf01b4d95cf55d32a.automaticDestinations-ms
  • Local\SHResolveLibrary:C:/Users/Virtual/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Windows/Libraries/Documents.library-ms
Dropped payload

Files this sample writes at runtime

This file drops 2 children at runtime. None are currently flagged malicious in our cache.

2 unseen
  • bd3493f96ae3dab469e60210d1Never scanned
    never seen before
  • c9c6d514bef159b18f40469361Never scanned
    never seen before
External threat intelligence

1 corroborating signal from researcher-curated sources

YARAify HIT·6 community rules matchedView on YARAify
  • PE_Digital_Certificateby albertzsigovits
  • PE_Potentially_Signed_Digital_Certificateby albertzsigovits
  • pecompact2by Kevin Falcoz
    PECompact
  • PECompact2xxBitSumTechnologiesby malware-lu
  • PECompactV2XBitsumTechnologiesby malware-lu
Cross-referenced against MalwareBazaar (abuse.ch), YARAify, and the CIRCL hashlookup reference DB.
Signature matches

YARA + heuristic rules that fired

A researcher-curated or high-severity heuristic rule matched this sample. These rules target specific malware families and are near-definitive.

5 YARAify3 synthesis
MITRE ATT&CK profile
Defense evasion× 1Cred access× 1C2× 1
YARAify (community)
Researcher-authored rules via abuse.ch
  • PE_Digital_Certificate
  • PE_Potentially_Signed_Digital_Certificate
  • pecompact2
  • PECompact2xxBitSumTechnologies
  • PECompactV2XBitsumTechnologies
MalwareTips synthesis rules
Our heuristics on VT data + sandbox behaviour
  • ProcessInjectionhigh

    MITRE T1055 (Process Injection) observed — CreateRemoteThread / APC / reflective-DLL injection. The payload is being smuggled into a legitimate process to bypass AV hooks.

    Evidence
    C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k NetworkService -p
  • CredentialDumpermedium

    Sandbox observed process activity targeting LSASS (Windows credential store). Legitimate software has no business reading LSASS memory — this is Mimikatz-shape behaviour.

    Evidence
    C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe
  • DirectIpC2medium

    Sample contacted 19 external IP address(es) and zero domains. Benign software virtually always uses DNS; no-DNS direct-IP C2 is a strong malware indicator because it bypasses reputation systems and dodges domain-based blocklists.

    Evidence
    23.216.147.76 · 192.229.211.108 · 20.99.185.48
Antivirus engine breakdown

0 detections across 76 engines

0 malicious0 suspicious76 clean
Tier-117 engines
0flag
Top commercial AVs (low FP rate)
Tier-238 engines
0flag
Mainstream engines with mixed FP rates
Low-trust21 engines
0flag
Heuristic / generic-AI engines (high FP rate)
All 76 engines report this file as clean.
Hash 382041665c46… cross-referenced against 76 AV engines via our AV network.
PE forensics

Section entropy & packers

Executable sections have high entropy (7.2+) — the code is compressed or encrypted and only decrypted at runtime. Classic packing behaviour.

ent 7.55Likely packed
Section entropy2 sections
.text
7.99packed
.rsrc
5.32
0.0Packed threshold 7.28.0
Prevalence

How often this file shows up in the wild

Widely seen in the wild for a long time. High prior this is legitimate; isolated detections on common-old files are usually false positives.

Common & old
Unique uploaders
3,627
Hundreds of people have uploaded this — common.
Total submissions
8,556
Includes repeat uploads by the same source.
First seen by VT
2y ago
Feb 28, 2024
Prevalence quadrant
Rare · New
Targeted malware lives here
Common · New
Just-released software
Rare · Old
Niche or internal tooling
here
Common · Old
Trusted legitimate binaries
File identity

Forensic fingerprint

File biography
First seen (VT)
2/28/2024, 8:26:11 AM
First seen (MalwareBazaar)
Last analysis (VT)
4/5/2026, 6:09:20 AM
Scanned here
4/24/2026, 6:09:57 AM
File name
ValiDrive.exe
Size
104.0 KB
MIME type
(unknown)
Detected type
Win32 EXE
SHA-256
382041665c4670222b8b2600df1e3f4ec97d2b24b071d0f94e503e53b0ad19a4
MD5
1fa9affcc560b68c96e8f4e44d91385e
SHA-1
564365650bc4603f6c5817f0ade8aa1ec7a7ca47
PE imphash
09d0478591d4f788cb3e5ea416c25237
First seen (VT)
2/28/2024, 8:26:11 AM
Last analysis (VT)
4/5/2026, 6:09:20 AM
First scan (MalwareTips)
4/24/2026, 6:09:57 AM
Last scan (MalwareTips)
4/24/2026, 6:09:57 AM
Code signer
Gibson Research Corporationverified
Community reputation
+35trusted
Behavior tags
overlaypecompactsignedpeexe
Community classification

Reviews & malware reports(0)

Tell the community what you saw. Tag the sample — Trojan, Adware, False Positive — and share what the file did on your system. Your report helps confirm or dispute the AV verdict.

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Scanned by
harlan4096Staff
Files are processed in a streaming pass-through — MalwareTips never stores the binary on its servers. Only the scan result (hash, detections, verdict) is retained so the next person who scans the same file gets an instant answer. If you ran this file on your computer and are worried, scan your system with an up-to-date antivirus and change critical passwords from a different device.