ThreatFox: Havoc IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hypothesis posits that adversaries are leveraging Havoc C2 infrastructure to establish persistent command and control channels within the network. Proactive hunting in Azure Sentinel is critical to identify early-stage Havoc IOCs before they mature into full-scale lateral movement or data exfiltration campaigns.

IOC Summary

Malware Family: Havoc Total IOCs: 2 IOC Types: ip:port

KQL: Ip Hunt

// Hunt for network connections to known malicious IPs
// Source: ThreatFox - Havoc
let malicious_ips = dynamic(["107.172.22.3", "41.216.189.153"]);
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(["107.172.22.3", "41.216.189.153"]);
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where RemoteIP in (malicious_ips)
| project Timestamp, DeviceName, RemoteIP, RemotePort, InitiatingProcessFileName, ActionType
| order by Timestamp desc

Required Data Sources

References

• ThreatFox — Havoc

False Positive Guidance

Here are 4 specific false positive scenarios for the ThreatFox: Havoc IOCs detection rule in an enterprise environment, along with suggested filters or exclusions:

• Scenario: Security Team Red Teaming and Active Directory Testing

  • Context: Internal security engineers frequently deploy the Havoc framework (or similar C2 tools) to conduct authorized penetration tests against internal subnets. These tests involve simulating Havoc beacon traffic that matches the rule’s IOCs, but originate from known “Red Team” workstations or jump servers rather than compromised endpoints.
  • Suggested Filter: Exclude traffic where the Source IP belongs to the Security Operations VLAN (e.g., 10.20.50.0/24) OR where the User Agent string contains specific tags like _REDTEAM_TEST. Additionally, create a whitelist for known test hostnames (e.g., SRV-REDBOX-01, WS-PENTEST-03).

• Scenario: Automated Patch Management and Software Deployment

  • Context: Enterprise deployment tools such as Microsoft SCCM, Ivanti, or Ansible Tower often push updates to the Havoc C2 Server itself or related infrastructure components. During these scheduled maintenance windows, the deployment agents may initiate connections to Havoc-specific endpoints (e.g., for license validation or configuration sync), triggering alerts that mimic initial infection signals.
  • Suggested Filter: Create an exclusion based on Process Name and Parent Process. Specifically, exclude events where the parent process is a known management agent (e.g., ccmexec.exe, IvantiAgent.exe, or ansible-runner) AND the destination port matches the Havoc listener port. Alternatively, suppress alerts during defined maintenance windows (e.g., Sundays 02:00–0