Valak
Zig DLL for Sliver implants. ChaCha20 encrypted sleep via indirect syscalls with synthetic callstack frames. HWBP AMSI/ETW bypass, no memory touched. FreshyCalls syscall extraction immune to inline hooks. CRT-free.
For initial delivery use Kage, minimal syscall-based shellcode loader.
ngl this is just for fun, im still running through the ziglings course etc trying to understand its syntax better alongside. Deepseek helped with these and based kage on my old c injector to see the differences.
Why Zig over C
No CRT. C programs pull in the C Runtime Library which adds DLL imports to your IAT. Zig just calls the OS. Smaller binary, less for AV to see. Zig ships its own libc, doesn't depend on it.
Detection engines mostly know C, C++, Rust, Go. As of mid-2026, only one confirmed APT-grade Zig implant exists (VoidLink, Chinese-affiliated).
Ghidra struggles with Zig binaries (open bug). IDA doesn't properly support it either. Makes reverse engineering harder.
Comptime makes sure struct layouts match the PE spec. Same low level control as C.
Valak replaces time.Sleep() in your implant's beacon loop with ChaCha20-encrypted sleep via indirect syscalls. During sleep your implant's .text is PAGE_NOACCESS, scanners get access violation. On wake, it restores and decrypts.
How it works
Every time Sliver would normally call time.Sleep(interval), Valak runs this instead:
1. ChaCha20 encrypts Sliver's .text section in memory (SystemFunction040)
2. Protects .text to PAGE_NOACCESS — read, write, and execute all blocked
3. NtDelayExecution(interval) via indirect syscall with random gadget
4. EDR scanner sees encrypted garbage or access violation, not Go runtime
5. On wake: protects back to PAGE_EXECUTE_READ, ChaCha20 decrypts
6. Returns to Sliver, which continues normal beacon operations
The callstack during sleep shows kernel32!BaseThreadInitThunk → ntdll!RtlUserThreadStart — what every legitimate Windows thread looks like. No gap, no zeroed return address.
Call patch_amsi() first, then patch_etw(). Both use DR0 on the current thread,
so the second call overwrites the first. AMSI is higher priority — one scan block
saves your whole process. ETW falls back to NtTraceControl which stops providers
at the kernel level without needing DR0.
Evasion stack
| Technique | How |
|---|---|
| ChaCha20 encrypted .text sleep | SystemFunction040/041 → NtDelayExecution + PAGE_NOACCESS |
| Synthetic callstack frames | kernel32!BaseThreadInitThunk → ntdll!RtlUserThreadStart |
| HWBP AMSI bypass | DR0 + VEH, no memory modified |
| ETW bypass | NtTraceControl on EDR GUIDs, fallback to HWBP on EtwEventWrite |
| FreshyCalls syscall extraction | ntdll export table sorted by RVA, immune to inline hooks |
| Indirect syscalls | Random gadget pool (64+ syscall;ret from ntdll .text) |
| Module stomping | .text overwrite into signed Microsoft DLL + PE header wipe |
| ntdll unhooking | Clean .text from \KnownDlls\ntdll.dll section object |
| Token theft | NtOpenProcess → NtOpenProcessToken → NtDuplicateToken |
| Memory wipe | @memset to zero on cleanup |
| CRT-free | No libc import, minimal IAT footprint |
Build
cd evasion && zig build -Dtarget=x86_64-windows-gnu -Doptimize=ReleaseFast
# → zig-out/bin/valak.dll
Sliver integration
./scripts/integrate.sh ~/projects/sliver
See docs/sliver-integration.md for prereqs and options.