ThreatFox: CECbot IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hypothesis targets the presence of known CECbot indicators, which are frequently used by threat actors to establish initial footholds or execute malicious payloads within Azure environments. Proactively hunting for these IOCs allows the SOC to identify compromised assets early, preventing the botnet from leveraging cloud resources for command-and-control or lateral movement before it escalates to a high-severity incident.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: CECbot Total IOCs: 3 IOC Types: domain

KQL: Domain Hunt

// Hunt for DNS queries to known malicious domains
// Source: ThreatFox - CECbot
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["iwonderifulovemeaswell.vg", "lovefromallareas.at", "iloveuevenifudontlovemeback.is"]);
DnsEvents
| where Name has_any (malicious_domains)
| project TimeGenerated, Computer, Name, IPAddresses, QueryType
| order by TimeGenerated desc

Required Data Sources

References

• ThreatFox — CECbot

False Positive Guidance

• Scenario: A legacy application server running an older version of a CECbot-compatible client library (e.g., for legacy ERP or supply chain integration) is performing routine heartbeat checks or data synchronization, which matches the specific hash or network beaconing pattern of the CECbot IOCs.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes from the specific legacy application directory (e.g., C:\Program Files\LegacyERP\bin\) or filter by the specific user account used for the service (e.g., svc_legacy_app) if the IOC is process-based.
• Scenario: An IT administrator is manually testing a new endpoint detection tool or a specific CECbot variant in a isolated lab VM that is temporarily connected to the production network segment, triggering the network-based IOC (e.g., specific DNS query or IP connection) during the test window.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude hosts tagged with Environment: Lab or Role: Test in your CMDB or asset management system, or suppress alerts for the specific lab subnet (e.g., 10.20.0.0/24) during known maintenance windows.
• Scenario: A scheduled PowerShell script used for automated log rotation or backup verification inadvertently downloads or executes a utility script that shares a similar file hash or behavioral signature with one of the CECbot IOCs, particularly if the script is fetched from an internal repository that hasn’t been fully scanned by EDR.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude execution from known internal script repositories (e.g., \\corp\scripts\) or filter by the parent process being a scheduled task service (svchost.exe or taskeng.exe) with a specific task name (e.g., Daily_Log_Rotation).
• Scenario: A developer is debugging a custom internal tool that mimics CECbot’s communication protocol for