ThreatFox: Potassium IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt targets known indicators of compromise associated with the Potassium threat actor to identify potential intrusions or lateral movement activities. Proactively hunting for these IOCs in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC to detect and isolate compromised assets before the adversary can establish persistence or escalate privileges.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: Potassium Total IOCs: 2 IOC Types: ip:port

Type	Value	Threat Type	First Seen	Confidence
ip:port	`89[.]185[.]82[.]38:15987`	botnet_cc	2026-09-28	100%
ip:port	`89[.]185[.]82[.]37:15987`	botnet_cc	2026-09-28	100%

KQL: Ip Hunt

// Hunt for network connections to known malicious IPs
// Source: ThreatFox - Potassium
let malicious_ips = dynamic(["89.185.82.38", "89.185.82.37"]);
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(["89.185.82.38", "89.185.82.37"]);
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 — Potassium

False Positive Guidance

Legacy Application Maintenance: An outdated Java-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) module or a specific legacy middleware component (e.g., TIBCO, WebSphere) may still reference older Potassium-related hash values or IP ranges in its configuration files or log outputs during routine maintenance windows.
- Filter/Exclusion: Exclude alerts where the source process is a known legacy application binary (e.g., java.exe with a specific JAR path, or websphere.exe) and the event type is a file read or log write rather than an active connection or execution.
Third-Party Security Agent Updates: Enterprise endpoint protection agents (such as CrowdStrike Falcon, Carbon Black, or SentinelOne) often download and verify IOC packages from vendor servers. If the Potassium IOCs are included in a broad threat intelligence feed distributed to agents, the agent’s update service might temporarily hold these IOCs in memory or disk cache, triggering a match.
- Filter/Exclusion: Exclude events where the parent process is the specific security agent’s updater service (e.g., FalconSensor.exe, cb.exe, or sentinelone-agent.exe) and the action is a file write to the agent’s local data directory (e.g., C:\ProgramData\CrowdStrike\ or C:\ProgramData\CB\).
Scheduled Threat Intelligence Sync Jobs: Many enterprises run scheduled PowerShell or Python scripts (e.g., via Task Scheduler or cron) to sync threat intelligence feeds (like MISP, OTX, or internal SIEM databases) with local databases or SIEMs. These jobs may parse and store Potassium IOCs as part of a larger dataset, causing the detection rule to flag the file creation or database insertion.
- Filter/Exclusion: Exclude alerts where the initiating process is powershell.exe or python.exe and the command line