ThreatFox: KongTuke IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt detects adversary activity involving specific indicators of compromise (IOCs) linked to the KongTuke malware family, which is known for targeting enterprise environments through sophisticated phishing and lateral movement tactics. Proactively hunting for these IOCs in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC team to identify early-stage infections before they escalate into broader network compromises, ensuring rapid containment and response.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: KongTuke Total IOCs: 3 IOC Types: domain, url

KQL: Domain Hunt

// Hunt for DNS queries to known malicious domains
// Source: ThreatFox - KongTuke
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["conareras.study"]);
DnsEvents
| where Name has_any (malicious_domains)
| project TimeGenerated, Computer, Name, IPAddresses, QueryType
| order by TimeGenerated desc

KQL: Url Hunt

// Hunt for access to known malicious URLs
// Source: ThreatFox - KongTuke
let malicious_urls = dynamic(["https://conareras.study/api/v1/session", "https://conareras.study/api/v1/verify"]);
UrlClickEvents
| where Url has_any (malicious_urls)
| project Timestamp, AccountUpn, Url, ActionType, IsClickedThrough
| order by Timestamp desc

Required Data Sources

References

• ThreatFox — KongTuke

False Positive Guidance

Here are 4 specific false positive scenarios for the ThreatFox: KongTuke IOCs detection rule, along with suggested filters and exclusions tailored for an enterprise environment:

• Scenario: Security Team Manual IOC Hunting

  • Context: The Threat Intelligence team manually imports new IOCs into the SIEM or EDR console to test coverage before full deployment. This often involves running a “Hunt” query against the specific KongTuke indicators (hashes, domains) on a subset of servers to verify detection logic.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Create an exclusion based on the source user account. Exclude alerts generated by accounts with names containing SOC_Admin, ThreatIntel_User, or Security_Ops. Additionally, filter out events where the process name is hunting_tool.exe (or your specific EDR agent’s manual query tool) running from the Security Operations subnet (e.g., 10.50.20.x).

• Scenario: Scheduled Antivirus Definition Updates

  • Context: Enterprise endpoints run scheduled daily updates for antivirus definitions (e.g., CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, or SentinelOne). The update package often includes a temporary extraction of KongTuke-related signatures or test files that match the rule’s IOCs before being cleaned up.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Implement a time-based exclusion window during known maintenance windows (e.g., 02:00–04:00 UTC). Filter out alerts where the parent process is DefenderSvc.exe, CrowdStrikeService.exe, or SentinelOneAgent.exe and the event type indicates “Definition Update” or “Signature Download.”

• Scenario: Patch Management Deployment Jobs

  • Context: Automated patch management tools (such as SCCM, Ivanti, or ManageEngine) deploy updates that include security patches.