ThreatFox: Venus Stealer IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt detects adversary behavior where the Venus Stealer malware establishes initial access and exfiltrates sensitive credentials by leveraging specific indicators of compromise (IOCs) within the Azure Sentinel environment. A SOC team should proactively hunt for these IOCs to identify early-stage infections before the stealer compromises critical data, given its high severity potential to facilitate lateral movement and ransomware deployment.

IOC Summary

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

Type	Value	Threat Type	First Seen	Confidence
md5_hash	`54e487a440d73b2e2ada3b012c221268`	payload	2026-07-25	95%
sha256_hash	`377f0aa03ac75e555ef3c7299faa1725452cd18966c4ce53622719dd6e5f5cf8`	payload	2026-07-25	95%
sha1_hash	`81a339cf0c00148b6339afba449570e3a9304337`	payload	2026-07-25	95%

KQL: Hash Hunt

// Hunt for files matching known malicious hashes
// Source: ThreatFox - Venus Stealer
let malicious_hashes = dynamic(["54e487a440d73b2e2ada3b012c221268", "377f0aa03ac75e555ef3c7299faa1725452cd18966c4ce53622719dd6e5f5cf8", "81a339cf0c00148b6339afba449570e3a9304337"]);
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, along with suggested filters and exclusions tailored for an enterprise environment:

Scenario: Automated Endpoint Protection Scans
- Context: Enterprise EDR agents (e.g., CrowdStrike Falcon or Microsoft Defender) perform scheduled deep scans that generate network traffic matching the specific file hashes or domain connections associated with Venus Stealer IOCs. These are legitimate health checks rather than malicious activity.
- Filter/Exclusion: Exclude process paths containing C:\Program Files\CrowdStrike\ or C:\Windows\System32\defender.exe where the parent process is the EDR service itself (e.g., csfalcon.exe). Additionally, filter out events occurring during known maintenance windows (e.g., 02:00–04:00 UTC).
Scenario: Scheduled Backup and Archiving Jobs
- Context: Automated backup solutions (such as Veeam or Commvault) running on file servers often access specific external repositories or upload logs to cloud storage. If the Venus Stealer IOCs include common cloud domains (e.g., AWS S3 endpoints or Azure Blob URLs), these legitimate data transfers will trigger the rule.
- Filter/Exclusion: Create a whitelist for source IP ranges belonging to the backup infrastructure subnet and exclude destination URLs matching known backup service patterns (e.g., *.backup-vault.com or specific S3 bucket paths). Ensure the process name matches the backup agent executable (e.g., VeeamAgent.exe).
Scenario: Software Deployment via Configuration Management
- Context: IT administrators use tools like SCCM, Intune, or Ansible to push software updates and configuration scripts. These agents frequently download installer packages from internal repositories that may share the same hash signatures