Proving Karma Protects: The Challenge That Revealed the Power of Information Asymmetry

Why non-disclosure isn't just security theater—it's a fundamental defensive advantage in the eternal game of exploitation vs protection

In May 2024, we issued an unprecedented challenge to the global offensive security community: "Break Karma, if you can." We published a cryptographic hash of Karma's protection mechanisms—freezing our code in time—and invited threat actors, penetration testers, and post-exploitation framework developers to prove they could bypass it.

The challenge ran for nearly a month. Despite targeting some of the most sophisticated offensive tools in existence—Cobalt Strike, Brute Ratel C4, Sliver, Havoc C2, Nighthawk, and others—no one provided validated proof of bypass.

This blog explores what happened, why it matters, and what this reveals about the fundamental dynamics of offensive vs defensive security.

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The Problem: Post-Exploitation Frameworks Dominate

Modern cyberattacks follow a predictable pattern: initial compromise, followed by post-exploitation using sophisticated command-and-control (C2) frameworks. These frameworks have become the standard playbook for everyone from nation-state actors to ransomware gangs.

The Post-Exploitation Framework Ecosystem

Framework	Key Features	Primary Users
Cobalt Strike	Malleable C2, Beacon implants, sleep obfuscation, process injection	Red teams, ransomware gangs
Brute Ratel C4	Anti-EDR focus, heap/stack encryption, HTTPS/DNS channels	APTs, sophisticated attackers
Sliver	Open-source, mTLS/WireGuard transport, DLL injection	Red teams, budget-conscious threats
Havoc C2	Modern UI, indirect syscalls, sleep obfuscation, BOFs	Emerging threat actors
Nighthawk	Commercial grade, advanced OPSEC, obfuscated memory	Professional red teams
Shellter Pro	Payload obfuscation, AV evasion, polymorphic encoding	Malware developers

The Arms Race: "EDR Evasion" as a Marketing Feature

These frameworks compete on their ability to evade endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems. Marketing materials proudly claim:

• 🔴 "Bypasses all major EDR vendors"
• 🔴 "Undetectable by behavioral analysis"
• 🔴 "Evades memory scanning"
• 🔴 "Removes EDR hooks for blind operation"

The problem? They're usually right. Traditional EDR relies on signatures, behavioral heuristics, and API hooking—all of which can be circumvented with sufficient sophistication.

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The Karma Approach: Information Asymmetry as a Weapon

Karma takes a fundamentally different approach. Rather than chasing signatures or behaviors, we employ structural defenses that operate at the exploitation primitive level—making entire classes of attacks mechanically fail regardless of obfuscation.

Why Non-Disclosure Matters

Traditional security through obscurity is rightfully criticized when it's the only defense. But when combined with structural protections, information asymmetry becomes a force multiplier:

Aspect	Public Disclosure Model	Karma's Model
Attacker knowledge	Complete—code is public	Limited—techniques unknown
Time to develop bypass	Days—analyze code directly	Weeks/months—reverse engineer
Testing environment	Attacker-controlled lab	Must compromise real target
Cost to bypass	Low—public knowledge	High—requires research
Scalability of bypass	High—share with community	Low—custom per defense

The key insight: Making attackers work harder to develop bypasses fundamentally changes the economics of cyber attacks. When bypass development is expensive and time-consuming, only the most valuable targets justify the effort.

Karma's Structural Defense Philosophy

While we can't disclose the exact mechanisms under NDA, we can explain the philosophy:

// Traditional EDR approach:
IF shellcode_pattern_detected THEN block
→ Attacker obfuscates pattern, bypasses detection

// Karma approach:
shellcode_primitive = allocate_executable_memory()
→ BLOCKED AT STRUCTURAL LEVEL
→ Doesn't matter what the shellcode looks like
→ Can't obfuscate away the need for executable memory

// Result:
Attack fails mechanically, not heuristically

This is analogous to how ASLR and DEP work—they don't detect exploits, they make entire classes of exploits structurally impossible. Karma extends this philosophy to modern post-exploitation techniques.

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The Challenge: "Proof of Protection"

On May 19, 2024, we took an unusual step: we challenged the offensive security community to prove they could bypass Karma.

The Challenge Terms

The Hash: Cryptographic Proof of No-Cheating

Publishing the hash was crucial. It meant:

// Cryptographic hash published May 19, 2024
SHA-256(karma_protection_code) = [hash_value_published]

// What this proves:
1. Code is frozen at this point in time
2. Any changes would produce a different hash
3. We can't secretly update to counter specific attacks
4. Third parties can verify the hash hasn't changed
5. After challenge ends, hash can prove code state

// What attackers could do:
- Test against Karma freely
- Develop bypasses with certainty we won't adapt mid-test
- Publish their success without fear of post-hoc changes
- Prove we're "cheating" if hash changes

This addressed the core criticism of security testing: vendors who change their code after seeing attack techniques. The hash made that impossible—any code change would be immediately detectable.

The Nuance: What We Were Actually Testing

It's important to understand what this challenge did and didn't prove:

✅ What It Proved	❌ What It Didn't Prove
Non-disclosure provides defensive value Common C2 frameworks struggle against novel defenses Information asymmetry increases attacker costs Structural defenses resist obfuscation Public testing challenges are hard to validate	Karma is unbreakable (never claimed this) Zero-days can't bypass Karma (they might) Nation-states can't develop bypasses (they could) Disclosure won't enable bypasses (it will, eventually) All attacks are stopped (no system is perfect)

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The Results: What Happened During the Challenge

Public Response

The challenge generated significant discussion in the offensive security community:

Why the Lack of Validated Responses?

Several factors likely contributed to the absence of validated bypass proofs:

1. The Validation Problem

Proving a bypass requires:

• Access to a Karma-protected system - Not freely available for testing
• Documentation of the technique - Exposes the bypass method publicly
• Reproducible steps - Allows us to verify and potentially patch
• Third-party verification - Prevents false claims

This is fundamentally different from offensive tool vendors requesting evaluation devices. We didn't send out Karma-protected systems for attackers to test against at their leisure.

2. The Information Asymmetry Problem

Developing a bypass without knowing the defense mechanisms is significantly harder:

// Against public EDR (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, etc.):
1. Download trial or get evaluation device
2. Reverse engineer the agent
3. Identify hooks and monitoring points
4. Develop bypass techniques
5. Test locally until successful
6. Publish proof

TIME: Days to weeks
COST: Low (mostly time)

// Against non-disclosed defense (Karma):
1. Need access to protected system
2. Can't reverse engineer without access
3. Don't know what's being monitored
4. Must blindly try techniques
5. Each test risks detection
6. Can't validate locally
7. Must prove publicly (exposes method)

TIME: Weeks to months
COST: High (requires resources + risk)

3. The Economic Disincentive

For offensive framework vendors, bypassing Karma presented an unusual cost-benefit calculation:

Consideration	Analysis
Market size	Karma-X has limited market share compared to CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, etc.
Marketing value	Bypassing a major EDR vendor is great marketing; bypassing a smaller player less so
Development cost	Higher than normal due to non-disclosure and lack of test environment
Exposure risk	Must publicly disclose technique to prove bypass, enabling defenses
ROI	Low: High cost, moderate marketing value, technique disclosure required

The bottom line: It simply wasn't worth the effort for most offensive tool vendors. This isn't a failure on their part—it's rational economics. Why invest weeks of development to bypass a system with limited deployment when you could spend that time on more valuable targets?

And that's exactly our point: Information asymmetry changes the attacker's cost-benefit calculation, making your organization a less attractive target.

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Challenge Conclusion: What We Learned

On June 11, 2024, we withdrew the challenge as we began disclosing more technical details about Karma's operation. This disclosure was always the plan—transparency with customers requires sharing implementation details.

Key Takeaways from the Challenge

1. Non-disclosure provides measurable defensive value. The increased difficulty of developing bypasses changes attacker economics.
2. Information asymmetry is a force multiplier, not a crutch. When combined with structural defenses, it significantly increases protection.
3. Public testing challenges face validation problems. Without controlled environments, proving bypasses becomes difficult for legitimate researchers and impossible for malicious actors to verify.
4. Security is about raising the bar, not achieving perfection. We never claimed Karma was unbreakable—only that it provides significant defensive advantages.
5. The economics of offense matter. Making bypass development expensive and time-consuming reduces the number of actors who can afford to target you.

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The Philosophy: Security as Brinksmanship

Security isn't a static state—it's an ongoing game of brinksmanship between offense and defense. The question isn't "Can attackers eventually bypass this?" but rather "How much will it cost them, and how long will it take?"

The Spectrum of Attacker Capability

Attacker Type	Capabilities	Public EDR	Karma-X
Script Kiddies	Use public tools, no customization	✅ Blocked	✅ Blocked
Commodity Criminals	Minor tool customization, public bypasses	❌ Often bypassed	✅ Blocked
Sophisticated Gangs	Custom tools, known EDR bypasses	❌ Frequently bypassed	✅ Usually blocked
APT Groups	Target-specific research, custom exploits	❌ Regularly bypassed	⚠️ Significantly harder
Nation-States	Unlimited resources, zero-days, months of research	❌ Bypassed with effort	⚠️ Eventually bypassed

The goal isn't to stop nation-state actors (though Karma makes their job harder). The goal is to stop the 99% of attacks that come from less sophisticated adversaries who can't or won't invest months developing custom bypasses.

The Value of Raising the Bar

Every additional hour of development time, every additional dollar of research cost, and every additional risk of exposure makes your organization less attractive as a target:

// Attacker decision tree:

Target A (Traditional EDR):
  - Known bypass techniques: ✅
  - Development time: 2-3 days
  - Success probability: 85%
  - Cost: $5,000 in labor
  → ATTRACTIVE TARGET

Target B (Karma-X protected):
  - Known bypass techniques: ❌
  - Development time: 6-8 weeks (maybe)
  - Success probability: Unknown (30%? 50%?)
  - Cost: $50,000+ in labor
  → UNATTRACTIVE TARGET

// Result: Attacker chooses Target A
Your organization survives not by being impenetrable,
but by being less attractive than alternatives

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The Future: Balanced Disclosure

As of this writing, we're transitioning from complete non-disclosure to balanced disclosure:

What We're Disclosing

• ✅ High-level architectural principles
• ✅ Classes of attacks that Karma prevents
• ✅ General approach to structural defenses
• ✅ Integration points and APIs
• ✅ Performance characteristics

What Remains Under NDA

• 🔒 Specific implementation details
• 🔒 Exact techniques for exploit prevention
• 🔒 Kernel-level protection mechanisms
• 🔒 Novel defensive primitives
• 🔒 Future development roadmap

Why this balance? Customers need to understand how Karma works to trust it and integrate it effectively. But full disclosure would make bypass development trivial, negating the information asymmetry advantage.

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Conclusion: Security is a Process, Not a Product

The "Proof of Protection" challenge wasn't about proving Karma is perfect. It was about demonstrating that information asymmetry, combined with structural defenses, provides measurable security value.

What we proved:

• ✅ Non-disclosure makes bypass development significantly harder
• ✅ Common post-exploitation frameworks struggle against novel defenses
• ✅ Economic incentives drive attacker behavior
• ✅ Security doesn't require perfection—just sufficient difficulty

What we acknowledge:

• ⚠️ Determined attackers can eventually develop bypasses
• ⚠️ Disclosure reduces information asymmetry advantages
• ⚠️ We cannot control every aspect of every protected system
• ⚠️ Security is an ongoing arms race, not a solved problem

What this means for you:

• 🛡️ Karma-X provides protection that exceeds traditional EDR
• 🛡️ Information asymmetry makes your organization less attractive
• 🛡️ Structural defenses resist common obfuscation techniques
• 🛡️ You get cutting-edge protection backed by continuous innovation

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Whether adversary nation or criminal actors, Karma-X significantly reduces exploitation risk of any organization. Update to deploy new defensive techniques to suit your organization's needs as they are offered.

Security is a game of brinksmanship. Make your organization the harder target.

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