ThreatFox: XMRIG IOCs | SOC Hunt Feed

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt detects adversary behavior involving the deployment of XMRIG cryptocurrency mining tools to establish persistence and potentially exfiltrate resources through known indicators of compromise. A proactive search in Azure Sentinel is critical because XMRIG miners often operate silently within compromised hosts, allowing attackers to leverage system resources for long-term financial gain before triggering broader alerting mechanisms.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: XMRIG Total IOCs: 3 IOC Types: ip:port

Type	Value	Threat Type	First Seen	Confidence
ip:port	`68[.]233[.]116[.]124:22`	botnet_cc	2026-09-02	85%
ip:port	`43[.]156[.]71[.]43:22`	botnet_cc	2026-09-02	85%
ip:port	`103[.]105[.]67[.]170:22`	botnet_cc	2026-09-02	80%

KQL: Ip Hunt

// Hunt for network connections to known malicious IPs
// Source: ThreatFox - XMRIG
let malicious_ips = dynamic(["43.156.71.43", "103.105.67.170", "68.233.116.124"]);
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(["43.156.71.43", "103.105.67.170", "68.233.116.124"]);
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 — XMRIG

False Positive Guidance

Here are specific false positive scenarios and corresponding filters for the ThreatFox: XMRIG IOCs detection rule in an enterprise environment:

Scenario 1: DevOps Container Orchestration
- Context: Kubernetes or Docker nodes running cryptocurrency mining containers (e.g., xmr-stak or custom XMRIG builds) for internal benchmarking, load testing, or as part of a “Green Cloud” initiative where idle compute resources mine Monero.
- Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes spawned by container runtimes (e.g., containerd, dockerd) and specific image tags containing xmrig or monero.
  - Logic: ProcessName IN ('containerd', 'dockerd') AND ImageTag CONTAINS 'xmrig' OR ImageTag CONTAINS 'monero'.
Scenario 2: Scheduled Internal Security Audits
- Context: The internal Security Operations Center (SOC) or IT Admin team runs scheduled PowerShell scripts or Ansible playbooks that deploy XMRIG binaries to test network bandwidth, CPU thermal throttling, or to validate endpoint detection capabilities. These jobs often run during off-hours via Task Scheduler or Cron.
- Filter/Exclusion: Exclude executions triggered by specific service accounts (e.g., svc-security-audit, admin-batch) running on designated maintenance windows.
  - Logic: UserName IN ('svc-security-audit', 'admin-batch') AND StartTime BETWEEN 01:00 AND 06:00.
Scenario 3: Legacy Hardware Asset Management Tools
- Context: Enterprise asset management tools (such as SolarWinds N-World, Lansweeper, or PDQ Inventory) utilize XMRIG as a lightweight agent to report on real-time