ThreatFox: SmartApeSG IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt hypothesis targets adversary behavior characterized by network communications or file artifacts matching three specific Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) linked to the SmartApeSG threat actor. Proactively hunting for these IOCs in Azure Sentinel is critical because early identification of this high-severity activity enables the SOC team to isolate potential infections before they escalate into broader lateral movement or data exfiltration incidents.

IOC Summary

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

KQL: Domain Hunt

// Hunt for DNS queries to known malicious domains
// Source: ThreatFox - SmartApeSG
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["granitehearth.top"]);
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://granitehearth.top/status/status-parser", "https://granitehearth.top/status/health-effect.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

Here are specific false positive scenarios for the ThreatFox: SmartApeSG IOCs detection rule within an enterprise environment, including suggested filters and exclusions:

• Endpoint Protection Signature Updates via WSUS/SCCM

  • Scenario: The organization utilizes Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (MECM) or Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) to push security definitions. During the nightly maintenance window (e.g., 02:00 AM), the update agent downloads and installs a specific SmartApeSG signature package, triggering network connections to the vendor’s distribution servers that match the rule’s IOCs.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Create an exclusion for traffic originating from the SCCM Management Point server IP or the WSUS Server subnet. Additionally, filter out events where the process name is wsusclient.exe or ccmexec.exe connecting to the known SmartApeSG update domains.

• Automated Threat Intelligence Feed Ingestion by SIEM/SOAR

  • Scenario: The enterprise Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform, such as Splunk Enterprise Security or Microsoft Sentinel, runs a scheduled Python script every 4 hours to fetch the latest SmartApeSG Indicators of Compromise (IOCs). This internal polling job establishes outbound HTTPS connections to the ThreatFox API endpoints, generating logs that mimic external threat activity.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude traffic generated by the specific service account used for ingestion (e.g., svc-threat-ingest) running on the SIEM collector nodes. Add a rule condition to ignore events where the destination port is 443 and the user agent string contains “ThreatIntelligenceFetcher” or matches the internal script’s hostname.

• Corporate Web Proxy Whitelisting for Security Research

  • Scenario: The IT Security Operations