ThreatFox: KongTuke IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt detects adversary behavior characterized by network connections to four specific Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) linked to the KongTuke malware campaign. The SOC team should proactively search for these signals in Azure Sentinel to identify early-stage infections and prevent lateral movement before the threat escalates within the cloud environment.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: KongTuke Total IOCs: 4 IOC Types: url, domain

KQL: Domain Hunt

// Hunt for DNS queries to known malicious domains
// Source: ThreatFox - KongTuke
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["henreques.lol"]);
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://henreques.lol/file.js", "https://henreques.lol/api/v1/session", "https://henreques.lol/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 5 specific false positive scenarios for the ThreatFox: KongTuke IOCs detection rule in an enterprise environment, including suggested filters and exclusions:

• Endpoint Protection Scanning of Quarantine Archives

  • Scenario: During scheduled maintenance windows (e.g., weekends), the enterprise Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solution, such as CrowdStrike Falcon or Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, performs a deep scan of the central quarantine repository. This process often extracts and analyzes archived threat intelligence feeds containing historical KongTuke IOCs to verify signature updates, triggering network connections to the specific IP addresses or file hashes defined in the rule.
  • Suggested Filter: Exclude traffic originating from EDR management servers (e.g., Host_Name contains “EDR-Manager” or Process_Image matches \CrowdStrike\*) connecting to known internal threat intelligence repositories during maintenance hours (02:00–04:00 UTC).

• Automated Threat Intelligence Feed Ingestion

  • Scenario: The Security Operations Center utilizes a dedicated ingestion server running Splunk Add-on for Microsoft Windows or Elastic SIEM to pull daily updates from external threat intelligence platforms. As part of the validation workflow, the system downloads and parses the latest KongTuke IOC list (including specific URLs and file hashes) before distributing them to downstream firewalls, causing legitimate hits against the detection logic.
  • Suggested Filter: Create an exclusion for source IP addresses belonging to the “Threat-Intelligence-Ingestion” subnet or filter events where User_Account is a service account (e.g., svc_threat_ingest) and the destination port matches standard intelligence feed ports (80/443) during business hours.

• Scheduled Antivirus Definition Updates

  • Scenario: The global patch