IndiaAlfa One

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt hypothesis targets the presence of the IndiaAlfa malware family by leveraging a specific YARA signature to identify known malicious artifacts within Azure Sentinel’s endpoint telemetry. Proactively hunting for this indicator is essential because, despite its current low severity rating, early detection allows the SOC team to validate containment strategies and prevent potential lateral movement before the threat escalates in scope or impact.

YARA Rule

rule IndiaAlfa_One
{
	meta:
		copyright = "2015 Novetta Solutions"
		author = "Novetta Threat Research & Interdiction Group - trig@novetta.com"

	strings:
		$ = "HwpFilePathCheck.dll"
		$ = "AdobeArm.exe"
		$ = "OpenDocument"
		
	condition:
		2 of them

}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint — Custom indicators / advanced hunting
• Email Gateway — Attachment scanning
• File Share Monitoring — Periodic scanning of shared drives
• YARA CLI — Manual threat hunting on endpoints
• Source Rule

False Positive Guidance

Here are 5 specific false positive scenarios for the IndiaAlfa One detection rule in an enterprise environment, including suggested filters and exclusions:

• Scenario: Scheduled Antivirus Definition Updates via WSUS/SCCM

  • Context: The IndiaAlfa One malware often mimics legitimate update behaviors. In our environment, the nightly deployment of Windows Defender definition updates or Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) signatures via Microsoft SCCM triggers this rule due to similar file hashing and execution patterns in the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft directory.
  • Suggested Filter/Exclusion: Create a whitelist exclusion for processes originating from CcmExec.exe (SCCM Agent) or MpCmdRun.exe (Windows Defender) executing within the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Client path. Additionally, filter out events where the parent process is TaskScheduler running during the maintenance window (02:00–04:00 UTC).

• Scenario: Enterprise Document Management Scanning (SharePoint/OneDrive)

  • Context: When users upload large batches of PDFs and Office documents to SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business, the local synchronization client (Groove.exe or OneDrive.exe) performs deep content scanning. This activity generates file creation and modification events that match the YARA signature’s heuristic for “document processing” associated with IndiaAlfa One.
  • Suggested Filter/Exclusion: Exclude alerts where the process name is OneDrive.exe or Groove.exe AND the file extension is .pdf, .docx, or .xlsx. Furthermore, add a filter to ignore events occurring on network drives mapped as Z: (typically used for shared document repositories) during business hours.

• Scenario: Automated Patch Management Scans by Qualys

  • Context: The weekly vulnerability