ThreatFox: VShell IOCs | SOC Hunt Feed

Hunt Hypothesis

This rule detects adversary activity involving specific indicators of compromise (IOCs) linked to the VShell malware, which often facilitates remote access and command execution on compromised endpoints. Proactively hunting for these IOCs in Azure Sentinel is critical because early identification of VShell presence allows the SOC team to isolate affected systems before attackers establish persistent footholds or exfiltrate sensitive data.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: VShell Total IOCs: 7 IOC Types: ip:port

Type	Value	Threat Type	First Seen	Confidence
ip:port	`72[.]11[.]138[.]109:8084`	botnet_cc	2026-07-30	100%
ip:port	`47[.]86[.]14[.]173:8080`	botnet_cc	2026-07-30	100%
ip:port	`192[.]236[.]223[.]240:80`	botnet_cc	2026-07-30	100%
ip:port	`45[.]221[.]118[.]246:8084`	botnet_cc	2026-07-30	100%
ip:port	`38[.]43[.]93[.]183:13389`	botnet_cc	2026-07-30	100%
ip:port	`120[.]24[.]31[.]212:20001`	botnet_cc	2026-07-30	100%
ip:port	`115[.]159[.]45[.]186:8084`	botnet_cc	2026-07-30	100%

KQL: Ip Hunt

// Hunt for network connections to known malicious IPs
// Source: ThreatFox - VShell
let malicious_ips = dynamic(["72.11.138.109", "45.221.118.246", "115.159.45.186", "47.86.14.173", "192.236.223.240", "120.24.31.212", "38.43.93.183"]);
CommonSecurityLog
| where DestinationIP in (malicious_ips) or SourceIP in (malicious_ips)
| project TimeGenerated, SourceIP, DestinationIP, DestinationPort, DeviceAction, Activity
| order by TimeGenerated desc

KQL: Ip Hunt Device

// Hunt in Defender for Endpoint network events
let malicious_ips = dynamic(["72.11.138.109", "45.221.118.246", "115.159.45.186", "47.86.14.173", "192.236.223.240", "120.24.31.212", "38.43.93.183"]);
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where RemoteIP in (malicious_ips)
| project Timestamp, DeviceName, RemoteIP, RemotePort, InitiatingProcessFileName, ActionType
| order by Timestamp desc

Required Data Sources

Sentinel Table	Notes
`CommonSecurityLog`	Ensure this data connector is enabled
`DeviceNetworkEvents`	Ensure this data connector is enabled

References

ThreatFox — VShell

False Positive Guidance

Here are specific false positive scenarios and corresponding filters for the ThreatFox: VShell IOCs detection rule:

Scenario: Automated Backup Verification by Admin Tooling
- Context: Enterprise backup solutions like Veeam Backup & Replication or Commvault often utilize VShell components to verify repository integrity and run health checks. These tools frequently query the specific IOCs (hashes, URLs, or registry keys) associated with VShell during nightly maintenance windows.
- Filter/Exclusion: Create a rule exclusion for processes named vbr.exe (Veeam), cmdagent.exe, or simcc.exe that initiate network connections to the VShell IOCs between 01:00 and 05:00 local time.
Scenario: Scheduled Patch Management Scans
- Context: System administrators using Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM) or Ansible Tower often deploy scheduled jobs that scan the environment for specific software versions. These agents may trigger a VShell IOC match when scanning installed binaries on Windows Server 2019/2022 nodes to ensure compliance with internal security baselines.
- Filter/Exclusion: Exclude alerts where the parent process is ccmexec.exe (SCCM) or ansible-runner and the source IP belongs to the designated Patch Management subnet (e.g., 10.50.x.x).
Scenario: Internal DevOps Pipeline Artifacts
- Context: In a CI/CD environment using Jenkins or GitLab Runners, build agents often pull dependencies from internal artifact repositories that host VShell libraries. During the “Build” and “Test” phases, these runners execute scripts that instantiate VShell components to validate container images or application logic, triggering the IOCs legitimately.