URLhaus: 45-88-186-163 Malicious URLs

Hunt Hypothesis

This detection identifies adversary activity involving known malicious URLs from the IP range 45.88.186.163, which are frequently associated with phishing campaigns and malware distribution. Proactively hunting for these specific indicators in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC team to rapidly isolate compromised endpoints and prevent lateral movement before broader network impact occurs.

IOC Summary

Threat: 45-88-186-163 Total URLs: 2 Active URLs: 0

KQL: Url Dns Hunt

// Hunt for DNS resolution of URLhaus malicious domains
// Threat: 45-88-186-163
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["45.88.186.163"]);
DnsEvents
| where Name has_any (malicious_domains)
| project TimeGenerated, Computer, Name, IPAddresses
| order by TimeGenerated desc

KQL: Url Proxy Hunt

// Hunt for web traffic to URLhaus malicious domains
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["45.88.186.163"]);
CommonSecurityLog
| where RequestURL has_any (malicious_domains) or DestinationHostName has_any (malicious_domains)
| project TimeGenerated, SourceIP, RequestURL, DestinationHostName, DeviceAction
| order by TimeGenerated desc

Required Data Sources

References

• URLhaus

False Positive Guidance

Here are 4 specific false positive scenarios for the URLhaus: 45-88-186-163 Malicious URLs detection rule, including suggested filters and exclusions tailored for a legitimate enterprise environment:

• Scenario: Automated Security Scanner Traffic

  • Context: Internal vulnerability scanners (e.g., Tenable Nessus, Qualys, or Rapid7 InsightVM) periodically probe external endpoints to verify accessibility. These tools often generate HTTP/HTTPS requests to known IP ranges that may be flagged by URLhaus as “suspicious” due to high-volume scanning activity, even if the specific IP 45-88-186-163 is part of a trusted cloud infrastructure or CDN node used by the scanner.
  • Suggested Filter/Exclusion: Create an exclusion rule based on the Source Host (e.g., exclude traffic originating from the dedicated “Scanner” AD Group) and the User Agent string. If the User Agent contains keywords like Tenable.Nessus, QualysGuard, or Rapid7, suppress the alert.

• Scenario: Scheduled Cloud Backup & Sync Jobs

  • Context: Enterprise backup solutions (e.g., Veeam, Rubrik, or Microsoft Azure Backup) often maintain persistent connections to cloud storage endpoints. The IP 45-88-186-163 might be a specific gateway node for a SaaS provider (such as an AWS CloudFront edge location or an Office 365 endpoint) used by these scheduled jobs. During peak backup windows, the high frequency of requests can trigger the rule despite the traffic being benign and expected.
  • Suggested Filter/Exclusion: Implement a time-based exclusion for known maintenance windows (e.g., `02:00 - 06