ThreatFox: Venus Stealer IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt detects adversary behavior involving the deployment of known Venus Stealer indicators to exfiltrate sensitive credentials and system data from compromised endpoints. The SOC team should proactively hunt for these IOCs in Azure Sentinel to identify early-stage infections and mitigate potential data breaches before the stealer establishes persistence or spreads laterally across the network.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: Venus Stealer Total IOCs: 3 IOC Types: sha256_hash, md5_hash, sha1_hash

Type	Value	Threat Type	First Seen	Confidence
sha1_hash	`96a2407bfed101aaaf727a67481d0179297f6822`	payload	2026-08-04	95%
md5_hash	`a58f1ebc2fd3a5787708e3da7eba5058`	payload	2026-08-04	95%
sha256_hash	`10b6a8f017ecb14dfde4e8738415ce5feb3e617715f345c30549cf4f4c3d3fa1`	payload	2026-08-04	95%

KQL: Hash Hunt

// Hunt for files matching known malicious hashes
// Source: ThreatFox - Venus Stealer
let malicious_hashes = dynamic(["96a2407bfed101aaaf727a67481d0179297f6822", "a58f1ebc2fd3a5787708e3da7eba5058", "10b6a8f017ecb14dfde4e8738415ce5feb3e617715f345c30549cf4f4c3d3fa1"]);
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

Sentinel Table	Notes
`DeviceFileEvents`	Ensure this data connector is enabled

References

ThreatFox — Venus Stealer

False Positive Guidance

Here are 5 specific false positive scenarios for the ThreatFox: Venus Stealer IOCs detection rule, including suggested filters and exclusions tailored for an enterprise environment:

Scenario: Endpoint Protection Scheduled Scans
- Context: Enterprise EDR agents (e.g., CrowdStrike Falcon or Microsoft Defender for Endpoint) perform nightly scheduled scans that generate network traffic matching the Venus Stealer’s beaconing patterns. The detection logic may misinterpret these regular health check packets as the stealer’s command-and-control (C2) communication.
- Suggested Filter: Exclude alerts where the source process is C:\Program Files\CrowdStrike\fs_qr.exe or C:\Windows\System32\DPSvc.exe, and the destination port matches standard EDR update ports (e.g., 443, 8080) during maintenance windows (e.g., 01:00–05:00 UTC).
Scenario: Third-Party Backup Agent Heartbeats
- Context: Legacy backup solutions like Veeam Backup & Replication or Commvault agents often utilize specific IOCs for status reporting that overlap with the Venus Stealer’s file hashing and exfiltration signatures. These agents frequently connect to cloud repositories using similar TLS fingerprinting.
- Suggested Filter: Create an exclusion rule for processes named vrb.exe (Veeam) or commvault_agent.exe originating from known backup server subnets, specifically filtering out traffic where the User-Agent string contains “Veeam” or “Commvault”.
Scenario: Admin PowerShell Script Execution
- Context: System administrators frequently run custom PowerShell scripts to audit user profiles and export configuration data. These scripts often invoke Invoke-WebRequest against internal documentation servers, triggering network connections that mimic the Venus Stealer’s data ex