ThreatFox: KongTuke IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

The KongTuke malware is likely exfiltrating sensitive data through covert network communications, which can be detected by unusual outbound traffic patterns. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to identify and mitigate data exfiltration attempts before significant data loss occurs.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: KongTuke Total IOCs: 2 IOC Types: sha256_hash, domain

KQL: Domain Hunt

// Hunt for DNS queries to known malicious domains
// Source: ThreatFox - KongTuke
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["dummy-tf-test-dummy-rfnsp2ni.example"]);
DnsEvents
| where Name has_any (malicious_domains)
| project TimeGenerated, Computer, Name, IPAddresses, QueryType
| order by TimeGenerated desc

KQL: Hash Hunt

// Hunt for files matching known malicious hashes
// Source: ThreatFox - KongTuke
let malicious_hashes = dynamic(["6316e735a026e0421e4ee274e36594bb510afbf8798e767f6a082d827b5082a0"]);
DeviceFileEvents
| where SHA256 in (malicious_hashes) or SHA1 in (malicious_hashes) or MD5 in (malicious_hashes)
| project Timestamp, DeviceName, FileName, FolderPath, SHA256, InitiatingProcessFileName
| order by Timestamp desc

Required Data Sources

References

• ThreatFox — KongTuke

False Positive Guidance

• Scenario: Legitimate scheduled job for system monitoring
  Description: A system administrator schedules a job using cron or Task Scheduler to run a monitoring script that connects to an internal logging server.
  Filter/Exclusion: Check for destination_ip matching internal logging servers, and filter by process.name like monitoring_script.sh or log_collector.exe.

• Scenario: Admin task using PowerShell for configuration backup
  Description: An administrator uses PowerShell to back up configuration files to a secure internal server, which may involve outbound connections.
  Filter/Exclusion: Filter by process.name containing powershell.exe and check for destination_ip matching known internal backup servers.

• Scenario: Network discovery tool scanning internal network
  Description: A network discovery tool like Nmap or SolarWinds is used to scan internal devices for inventory purposes.
  Filter/Exclusion: Filter by process.name containing nmap.exe or solarwinds.exe, and check for destination_ip within the internal network range.

• Scenario: Legitimate API call to external service for data synchronization
  Description: A service like AWS DataSync or Azure Data Factory is used to synchronize data between on-premises and cloud environments.
  Filter/Exclusion: Filter by process.name matching the service name and check for destination_ip matching known cloud provider endpoints.

• Scenario: Database backup process using a third-party tool
  Description: A database administrator uses a tool like MySQLDump or SQL Server Backup Utility to back up databases to an external storage service.
  Filter/Exclusion: Filter by process.name containing mysqldump.exe or sqlbackup.exe, and check for destination_ip matching known