ThreatFox: KongTuke IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

The hunt hypothesis detects potential command-and-control communication associated with the KongTuke malware, which is used to exfiltrate data and deploy additional payloads. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to identify and mitigate advanced persistent threats that leverage phishing emails as an initial attack vector.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: KongTuke Total IOCs: 2 IOC Types: url, domain

KQL: Domain Hunt

// Hunt for DNS queries to known malicious domains
// Source: ThreatFox - KongTuke
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["s4frlcnoplw.com"]);
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://s4frlcnoplw.com/d"]);
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

• Scenario: Legitimate scheduled job using a domain in the IOC list
  Description: A legitimate scheduled job (e.g., cron job on Linux or Task Scheduler on Windows) uses a domain that is mistakenly flagged as part of the KongTuke IOC list.
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude domains associated with known legitimate scheduling tools (e.g., cron, task scheduler, jenkins, ansible, airflow) or domains that match known enterprise infrastructure (e.g., internal.company.com, cloud.company.com).

• Scenario: Admin task using a domain for internal monitoring
  Description: An administrator is using a domain (e.g., monitoring.company.com) for internal network monitoring or logging purposes, which coincidentally matches a KongTuke IOC.
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude domains that are part of internal monitoring tools (e.g., splunk, sumologic, datadog, logz.io) or domains that match internal DNS records.

• Scenario: Phishing simulation exercise using a domain
  Description: A red team or security team is conducting a phishing simulation and uses a domain that is part of the KongTuke IOC list to mimic a real phishing attack.
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude domains that are associated with security testing tools (e.g., phishsim, sendgrid, mailinator, mock.smtp) or domains used in sanctioned security exercises.

• Scenario: Legitimate software update using a domain
  Description: A legitimate software update process (e.g., using wget or curl) connects to a domain that is flagged as part of the KongTuke IOC list, such as a public CDN or software repository.
  Filter/Exclusion: Exclude domains that are known to be used by legitimate software update services (e.g., `cdn.example