ThreatFox: Unknown malware IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt targets the presence of four specific IOCs linked to an unidentified malware strain, which may indicate an active or dormant compromise within the environment. Proactively hunting for these indicators in Azure Sentinel is critical to identify potential lateral movement or persistence mechanisms before the unknown malware can execute its full payload or establish a foothold in the cloud infrastructure.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: Unknown malware Total IOCs: 4 IOC Types: ip:port

Type	Value	Threat Type	First Seen	Confidence
ip:port	`47[.]239[.]61[.]167:7443`	botnet_cc	2026-09-05	75%
ip:port	`216[.]126[.]225[.]87:443`	botnet_cc	2026-09-05	75%
ip:port	`185[.]227[.]152[.]231:7443`	botnet_cc	2026-09-04	75%
ip:port	`172[.]86[.]80[.]201:7443`	botnet_cc	2026-09-04	75%

KQL: Ip Hunt

// Hunt for network connections to known malicious IPs
// Source: ThreatFox - Unknown malware
let malicious_ips = dynamic(["185.227.152.231", "216.126.225.87", "172.86.80.201", "47.239.61.167"]);
CommonSecurityLog
| where DestinationIP in (malicious_ips) or SourceIP in (malicious_ips)
| project TimeGenerated, SourceIP, DestinationIP, DestinationPort, DeviceAction, Activity
| order by TimeGenerated desc

KQL: Ip Hunt Device

// Hunt in Defender for Endpoint network events
let malicious_ips = dynamic(["185.227.152.231", "216.126.225.87", "172.86.80.201", "47.239.61.167"]);
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where RemoteIP in (malicious_ips)
| project Timestamp, DeviceName, RemoteIP, RemotePort, InitiatingProcessFileName, ActionType
| order by Timestamp desc

Required Data Sources

Sentinel Table	Notes
`CommonSecurityLog`	Ensure this data connector is enabled
`DeviceNetworkEvents`	Ensure this data connector is enabled

References

ThreatFox — Unknown malware

False Positive Guidance

Scenario: A DevOps team uses curl or wget to download a specific build artifact or dependency package from a private artifact repository (e.g., Artifactory, Nexus) that shares the same hash or URL pattern as the IOC.
- Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes initiated by curl, wget, or powershell where the parent process is cmd.exe or bash.exe and the working directory is under /opt/builds or C:\builds. Alternatively, whitelist the specific artifact repository domain (e.g., artifactory.internal.com) in the network connection filter.
Scenario: An IT administrator runs a standard patch management tool like WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) or SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) which downloads update packages from Microsoft’s CDN or internal distribution points, potentially matching the IOC’s file hash or download URL.
- Filter/Exclusion: Exclude events where the parent process is wuauclt.exe (Windows Update Agent) or ccmexec.exe (SCCM Client). Additionally, filter out network connections to known Microsoft update domains such as *.windowsupdate.com or *.msft.net.
Scenario: A security team performs a vulnerability scan using tools like Nessus or Qualys, which may download a small probe or signature update file that coincidentally matches the IOC’s characteristics (e.g., same file size, extension, or hash).
- Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes associated with known vulnerability scanner agents such as nessusd.exe, qagent.exe, or qualysagent.exe. Ensure the exclusion applies to both file creation and network download events.
Scenario: A data engineering team uses Apache Kafka or Kinesis clients to pull large data batches, and the client library