ThreatFox: Havoc IOCs

Hunt Hypothesis

This hypothesis posits that adversaries are actively deploying Havoc C2 infrastructure to establish persistent command and control channels within the environment. Proactive hunting in Azure Sentinel is critical to identify these specific IOCs early, preventing potential lateral movement and data exfiltration before the adversary can fully operationalize their beaconing capabilities.

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(["74.249.72.157"]);
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(["74.249.72.157"]);
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 5 specific false positive scenarios for the ThreatFox: Havoc IOCs detection rule in an enterprise environment, along with suggested filters or exclusions:

• Endpoint Management Patching and Agent Updates

  • Scenario: Enterprise Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) platforms like CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, or SentinelOne frequently download update packages or configuration scripts from internal distribution servers. If the vendor’s build pipeline uses a shared IP address or domain that overlaps with Havoc IOCs, legitimate agent heartbeat checks or patch deployment jobs will trigger alerts.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude traffic originating from known EDR management server IPs (e.g., 10.x.x.x range) and destination ports associated with the specific vendor’s update service (e.g., port 443 to *.crowdstrike.com). Additionally, whitelist the specific process names of the EDR agents (e.g., CwdHost.exe, MsMpEng.exe) when communicating with these IOCs.

• Software Supply Chain and CI/CD Pipeline Artifacts

  • Scenario: Internal DevOps teams utilize Jenkins, Azure DevOps, or GitHub Actions to build and deploy applications. These pipelines often pull dependencies, Docker images, or configuration manifests from artifact repositories (like Artifactory or Nexus) that may host Havoc-related test environments or shared libraries. A scheduled nightly build job pulling a specific library version could match the IOC hash or URL.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Create an exclusion rule for source IPs belonging to the CI/CD controller nodes and the artifact repository servers. Filter by process names associated with build agents (e.g., java.exe running under jenkins-agent, dockerd) and restrict the alert scope to business hours or specific scheduled maintenance windows (