Scanbox Chinese Deep Panda APT Malware http://goo.gl/MUUfjv and http://goo.gl/WXUQcP

Hunt Hypothesis

The detection identifies potential reconnaissance activity by the Scanbox malware associated with the Chinese Deep Panda APT, leveraging malicious URLs to establish initial access. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to identify early-stage APT activity and prevent further compromise.

YARA Rule

rule ScanBox_Malware_Generic {
	meta:
		description = "Scanbox Chinese Deep Panda APT Malware http://goo.gl/MUUfjv and http://goo.gl/WXUQcP"
		author = "Florian Roth"
		reference1 = "http://goo.gl/MUUfjv"
		reference2 = "http://goo.gl/WXUQcP"
		date = "2015/02/28"
		hash1 = "8d168092d5601ebbaed24ec3caeef7454c48cf21366cd76560755eb33aff89e9"
		hash2 = "d4be6c9117db9de21138ae26d1d0c3cfb38fd7a19fa07c828731fa2ac756ef8d"
		hash3 = "3fe208273288fc4d8db1bf20078d550e321d9bc5b9ab80c93d79d2cb05cbf8c2"
	strings:
		/* Sample 1 */
		$s0 = "http://142.91.76.134/p.dat" fullword ascii
		$s1 = "HttpDump 1.1" fullword ascii
		
		/* Sample 2 */
		$s3 = "SecureInput .exe" fullword wide
		$s4 = "http://extcitrix.we11point.com/vpn/index.php?ref=1" fullword ascii
		
		/* Sample 3 */
		$s5 = "%SystemRoot%\\System32\\svchost.exe -k msupdate" fullword ascii
		$s6 = "ServiceMaix" fullword ascii		
		
		/* Certificate and Keywords */
		$x1 = "Management Support Team1" fullword ascii
		$x2 = "DTOPTOOLZ Co.,Ltd.0" fullword ascii
		$x3 = "SEOUL1" fullword ascii
	condition:
		( 1 of ($s*) and 2 of ($x*) ) or 
		( 3 of ($x*) )
}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint — Custom indicators / advanced hunting
• Email Gateway — Attachment scanning
• File Share Monitoring — Periodic scanning of shared drives
• YARA CLI — Manual threat hunting on endpoints

This rule contains 9 string patterns in its detection logic.

• Source Rule

False Positive Guidance

• Scenario: Legitimate Software Update via HTTP
  Description: A system administrator is performing a scheduled software update using a legitimate HTTP-based update tool, which coincidentally uses URLs similar to the malicious ones in the rule.
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude traffic from known update servers (e.g., update.example.com, software.update.org) or filter by source IP of trusted internal update servers.

• Scenario: Internal Red Team Exercise
  Description: A red team is conducting a simulated attack using benign payloads hosted on an internal HTTP server, which matches the URLs in the detection rule.
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude traffic from internal red team IP ranges or use a custom field like red_team_activity to mark such traffic.

• Scenario: Scheduled System Maintenance Task
  Description: A scheduled task is running a system maintenance script that downloads a legitimate diagnostic tool from an internal HTTP server, which has a URL resembling the malicious ones.
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude traffic from internal maintenance servers (e.g., maint.example.com) or filter by process name like maintenance_tool.exe.

• Scenario: User-Initiated File Download
  Description: A user is downloading a legitimate file (e.g., a PDF or document) from a trusted internal URL that has a similar structure to the malicious URLs in the rule.
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude traffic from known internal file servers or filter by user context (e.g., user = trusted_user).

• Scenario: Web Server Hosting Internal Documentation
  Description: An internal web server hosts documentation or configuration files, and the URL structure matches the malicious URLs in the rule.
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude traffic to internal documentation servers (e.g., docs.example.com) or use a custom field like internal_documentation.