ThreatFox: SmartApeSG IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt targets the presence of SmartApeSG indicators of compromise, which are associated with a high-severity threat actor likely leveraging these specific assets for initial access or lateral movement. Proactively hunting for these IOCs in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC to identify compromised endpoints or network artifacts before the adversary can establish a persistent foothold or escalate privileges within the environment.

IOC Summary

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

KQL: Domain Hunt

// Hunt for DNS queries to known malicious domains
// Source: ThreatFox - SmartApeSG
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["gorsegazette.co"]);
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://gorsegazette.co/profile/router-validator.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: A DevOps team uses a CI/CD pipeline (e.g., Jenkins or GitHub Actions) to deploy a new microservice, and the build artifact or container image contains a known SmartApeSG hash or IP address embedded in a dependency library or configuration file that hasn’t been updated yet.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude alerts where the source process is a known build agent (e.g., jenkins.exe, docker.exe, kubectl) or where the file path resides within standard build directories (e.g., C:\Jenkins\workspace\, /var/lib/docker/).
• Scenario: An endpoint protection agent (e.g., CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne) performs a scheduled full-system scan and temporarily loads a SmartApeSG IOA signature or test payload into memory to validate detection capabilities, triggering the hunt package.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude alerts where the parent process is a known EDR agent service (e.g., FalconSensor.exe, SentinelOne.exe) or where the alert type is explicitly tagged as “Signature Match” rather than “Behavioral Anomaly.”
• Scenario: A network administrator runs a manual vulnerability scan using a tool like Nessus or Qualys, which probes internal hosts with known SmartApeSG IOCs to test firewall rules or detect existing infections, causing legitimate traffic or file writes to match the IOCs.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude alerts during known maintenance windows or where the source IP belongs to the designated vulnerability scanner subnet (e.g., 10.20.30.0/24) and the destination is a known test host.
• Scenario: A software vendor ships an update for a line-of-business application (e.g., Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office) that includes a third-party library with a known SmartApeSG hash,