ThreatFox: AdaptixC2 IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This detection identifies adversary activity involving known AdaptixC2 command-and-control indicators to uncover potential lateral movement or data exfiltration attempts within the network. Proactive hunting for these specific IOCs in Azure Sentinel is critical to rapidly isolate compromised endpoints and disrupt early-stage threat operations before they escalate into broader incidents.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: AdaptixC2 Total IOCs: 3 IOC Types: ip:port

KQL: Ip Hunt

// Hunt for network connections to known malicious IPs
// Source: ThreatFox - AdaptixC2
let malicious_ips = dynamic(["193.233.220.65", "144.172.107.81", "171.113.116.219"]);
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(["193.233.220.65", "144.172.107.81", "171.113.116.219"]);
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where RemoteIP in (malicious_ips)
| project Timestamp, DeviceName, RemoteIP, RemotePort, InitiatingProcessFileName, ActionType
| order by Timestamp desc

Required Data Sources

References

• ThreatFox — AdaptixC2

False Positive Guidance

Here are 5 specific false positive scenarios for the ThreatFox: AdaptixC2 IOCs detection rule, including tailored filters and exclusions suitable for an enterprise environment:

• Scenario: Legitimate software updates from a known vendor (e.g., Microsoft or Adobe) trigger the rule because their update servers utilize IP addresses or domains that overlap with the AdaptixC2 IOC set.

  • Filter/Exclusion: Create an exclusion list in the SIEM for specific trusted update endpoints. For example, exclude traffic originating from *.update.microsoft.com and *.adobe.com where the destination port is 443 (HTTPS) and the user agent string contains “Microsoft Update” or “Adobe Updater”.

• Scenario: A scheduled PowerShell job running on a Domain Controller queries an external threat intelligence feed that shares a common hash signature with the AdaptixC2 C2 beacon, causing the hunt package to flag it as malicious.

  • Filter/Exclusion: Implement a rule exclusion based on process lineage and schedule time. Exclude alerts where the parent process is powershell.exe running under the context of a specific Service Account (e.g., DOMAIN\svc-threatfeed) during defined maintenance windows (e.g., 02:00–04:00 UTC).

• Scenario: The internal Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agent (such as CrowdStrike or SentinelOne) performs routine telemetry uploads to the cloud management console, which matches an AdaptixC2 network IOC due to similar TLS fingerprinting.

  • Filter/Exclusion: Add a host-based exclusion for EDR agents. Filter out alerts where the source process name is CrowdStrike.exe (or SentinelOneAgent.exe) and the destination IP belongs to the organization’s private cloud management subnet (e.g., 10.20.x.x).