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Certified Process Injection Analyst [CPIA] Review

12 Dec 2024 (727 Words, 5 Minutes)

certification CPIA cyberwarfare.live Red Team Certification

Introduction

Credential Link

Process Injection Analyst course

The Process Injection Analyst (CPIA) course is a really good resource to understand the barebones and Inner workings of the common process Injection techniques out there for the windows environment, couple of techniques discussed in course are: Check out the syllabus here

The course is taught in a purple team fashion, basically the Instructor walks through the source code - which demonstrates various Process Injection techniques, stepping through each of the functions, oftentimes debugging and showcasing each step of the Process Injection very closely and upfront. And then delving into the Threat Hunting/detection logic on Microsoft ATP - MDE (Microsoft Defender for Endpoint)’s dashboard.

All of the source code is available for us to download and tweak with. The deliverables also include the PPT slides, which also list the common NT APIs and Win32 APIs used during the said techniques. The Instructor won’t code the loader which does the Process Injection, but rather walk you through it, at the very fundamental levels, it’s the part where I found most of its value. For the most part, you’ll end up popping calc.exe or notepad.exe. There’s no malicious shellcode involved, except for one Instance where the Instructor tries a meterpreter shellcode. There’s also bonus material, an additional 7 hours webinar, which is again, very helpful.

In theory one can Implement their own shellcode and couple them with any of the Process Injection techniques taught in the course, or even mix them.

In essence, the course is really good for strengthening the fundamentals of Process Injection techniques, with a little bit of stealth perspective in place. It’s a great resource for any Red Teamer, Threat Hunter, Malware Analyst, Malware Developer and people who engage in Incident Response involving malicious binaries.

Certification Process

The CPIA certification process goes roughly like this:

Exam Instructions on reporting: NONE, Since it’s a MCQ based exam with mostly theoretical questions (19 In total), with an unlimited attempt.

Certification Exam Review

It’s MCQ based, unproctored, with no time limit, theoretical for the most part, however some questions will require a little bit of research, and the questions are easy.

Prerequisites

There are some prerequisites for consuming the courseware material in an effective way. Remember, your learning experience will be as good as you know these items mentioned below.

Do you have to be a master in these topics to consume the courseware material? The simple answer is NO. But, like I just said, the more you know, the better it is. Don’t be a victim of premature optimization.

Exam Preparation

Preparation for the exam is pretty straightforward, just follow the courseware and make good notes, you’ll be good to go. You can also refer to the workshop-webinar materials, they have a couple of webinars on Process Injection too.

Additional Resources

While the courseware is sufficient, I believe one can aid their learning experience with these helpful resources:

Closing Thoughts

An In Depth knowledge of Process Injection is helpful for achieving the goals of any modern Red Team engagement, It enhances the overall Malware Development and Malware Analysis process.

There are many more Process Injection techniques besides the ones taught in the courseware. Cyberwarfare.live has committed themselves in renewing their contents in every 3 years, hopefully they add even more Process Injection techniques for windows environment, they can also cover the *nix based ecosystem.

Other Important suggestions would include:

If you have any questions or need personal guidance then feel free to contact me here

Thanks for spending your time and giving it a read.
© 2024 Siddhartha Shree Kaushik