ThreatFox: SmartApeSG IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

The ThreatFox: SmartApeSG IOCs rule detects potential adversary activity linked to the SmartApeSG threat group, which is associated with malware distribution and command and control communications. SOC teams should proactively hunt for these IOCs in Azure Sentinel to identify and mitigate early-stage compromise attempts by this sophisticated threat actor.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: SmartApeSG Total IOCs: 5 IOC Types: domain, url

KQL: Domain Hunt

// Hunt for DNS queries to known malicious domains
// Source: ThreatFox - SmartApeSG
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["openmeadowlab.top"]);
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 - SmartApeSG
let malicious_urls = dynamic(["https://openmeadowlab.top/health/session-deploy.js", "https://openmeadowlab.top/health/public-layout", "https://openmeadowlab.top/health/signup-module.js", "https://copperbeacon.top/health/session-deploy.js"]);
UrlClickEvents
| where Url has_any (malicious_urls)
| project Timestamp, AccountUpn, Url, ActionType, IsClickedThrough
| order by Timestamp desc

Required Data Sources

References

• ThreatFox — SmartApeSG

False Positive Guidance

• Scenario: Legitimate scheduled job running SmartApeSG tool for system diagnostics
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes associated with scheduled tasks (e.g., schtasks.exe or at.exe) or filter by process name SmartApeSG.exe with a known legitimate command-line argument.

• Scenario: System administrator using SmartApeSG for network performance monitoring
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes initiated from administrative command-line tools (e.g., cmd.exe or powershell.exe) with a known admin task identifier or user context (e.g., NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM).

• Scenario: Regular maintenance task using SmartApeSG for log analysis
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes that match a known maintenance task name (e.g., SmartApeSG_Maintenance.exe) or filter by a specific time window (e.g., during off-peak hours).

• Scenario: SmartApeSG used in a DevOps pipeline for CI/CD environment testing
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes that originate from CI/CD agents (e.g., Jenkins.exe, Git.exe, or Docker.exe) or filter by a specific project or pipeline identifier.

• Scenario: SmartApeSG used in a security testing environment for vulnerability scanning
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes running in a sandboxed or isolated environment (e.g., sandbox.exe, vmtoolsd.exe, or qemu-system-x86_64.exe) or filter by a specific test environment tag.