ThreatFox: KongTuke IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

The ThreatFox: KongTuke IOCs rule detects potential adversary activity linked to the KongTuke threat group, which is associated with high-severity malicious behavior. SOC teams should proactively hunt for these IOCs in Azure Sentinel to identify and mitigate early-stage compromises before they escalate.

IOC Summary

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

KQL: Domain Hunt

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

KQL: Url Hunt

// Hunt for access to known malicious URLs
// Source: ThreatFox - KongTuke
let malicious_urls = dynamic(["https://afshapiro.com/search"]);
UrlClickEvents
| where Url has_any (malicious_urls)
| project Timestamp, AccountUpn, Url, ActionType, IsClickedThrough
| order by Timestamp desc

Required Data Sources

References

• ThreatFox — KongTuke

False Positive Guidance

• Scenario: Scheduled Job for Log Rotation
  Description: A legitimate scheduled job runs to rotate and archive logs, which may include files matching the IOC pattern.
  Filter/Exclusion: process.name != "logrotate" or process.name != "rsyslogd"

• Scenario: Admin Task for System Monitoring
  Description: An administrator uses a tool like tcpdump or Wireshark to monitor network traffic for troubleshooting purposes.
  Filter/Exclusion: process.name != "tcpdump" or process.name != "wireshark"

• Scenario: Kubernetes Pod Initialization
  Description: A Kubernetes pod is initializing and temporarily creates files or processes that match the IOC pattern during setup.
  Filter/Exclusion: process.parent.name == "kubelet" or process.parent.name == "kubeadm"

• Scenario: Database Backup Job
  Description: A database backup tool like mysqldump or pg_dump is running and generates temporary files that may match the IOC.
  Filter/Exclusion: process.name != "mysqldump" or process.name != "pg_dump"

• Scenario: CI/CD Pipeline Artifact Download
  Description: A CI/CD tool like Jenkins or GitLab CI downloads artifacts, which may include files with names matching the IOC.
  Filter/Exclusion: process.name != "java" (for Jenkins) or process.name != "gitlab-runner"