ThreatFox: SmartApeSG IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt targets known indicators of compromise associated with the SmartApeSG threat actor, aiming to identify potential footholds or lateral movement activities within the environment. Proactively hunting for these IOCs in Azure Sentinel is critical to detect early-stage intrusions and mitigate the high-severity risks posed by this targeted threat group before they can establish persistence or exfiltrate data.

IOC Summary

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

KQL: Domain Hunt

// Hunt for DNS queries to known malicious domains
// Source: ThreatFox - SmartApeSG
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["io.honeysucklefolio.co"]);
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 - SmartApeSG
let malicious_urls = dynamic(["https://io.honeysucklefolio.co/status/legacy-view.js"]);
UrlClickEvents
| where Url has_any (malicious_urls)
| project Timestamp, AccountUpn, Url, ActionType, IsClickedThrough
| order by Timestamp desc

Required Data Sources

References

• ThreatFox — SmartApeSG

False Positive Guidance

• Legacy Application Deployment via Group Policy

  • Scenario: An IT administrator deploys a legacy line-of-business application (e.g., an old Java-based inventory tool) that contains a known hash or IP address from the SmartApeSG IOC list. This application is pushed to a large segment of the user base via Group Policy Objects (GPO) or SCCM, causing the IOC to appear on hundreds of endpoints simultaneously during the deployment window.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude detections where the process path matches the specific legacy application executable (e.g., C:\Program Files\LegacyInventory\app.exe) and the parent process is gpupdate.exe or ccmexec.exe (SCCM client). Alternatively, create a baseline exclusion for the specific SHA-256 hash if it is confirmed as benign for that specific application version.

• Third-Party Security Tool Telemetry

  • Scenario: A third-party endpoint detection and response (EDR) or vulnerability scanner (e.g., Qualys, Tenable, or CrowdStrike Falcon) performs a network scan or asset discovery task. The tool’s agent communicates with a known SmartApeSG IP address (used for cloud-based reporting or license validation) or loads a shared library with a matching hash during the scan cycle, triggering the hunt rule on all managed agents.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude detections where the parent process is a known security tool service (e.g., qualysagent.exe, tsserver.exe, or falconctl.exe). If the IOC is an IP address, exclude connections from the security tool’s service account or specific service ports (e.g., TCP 443 or 8443) to the known SmartApeSG IP.

• Scheduled Backup or Sync Job

  • Scenario: A scheduled task (e.g