URLhaus: 176-65-139-240 Malicious URLs

Hunt Hypothesis

This detection identifies adversary activity involving malicious web traffic originating from the IP address 176.65.139.240, which is known to host phishing or malware distribution URLs. The SOC team should proactively hunt for this indicator in Azure Sentinel to rapidly isolate compromised endpoints and prevent lateral movement before attackers can establish persistence within the network.

IOC Summary

Threat: 176-65-139-240 Total URLs: 2 Active URLs: 0

KQL: Url Dns Hunt

// Hunt for DNS resolution of URLhaus malicious domains
// Threat: 176-65-139-240
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["176.65.139.240"]);
DnsEvents
| where Name has_any (malicious_domains)
| project TimeGenerated, Computer, Name, IPAddresses
| order by TimeGenerated desc

KQL: Url Proxy Hunt

// Hunt for web traffic to URLhaus malicious domains
let malicious_domains = dynamic(["176.65.139.240"]);
CommonSecurityLog
| where RequestURL has_any (malicious_domains) or DestinationHostName has_any (malicious_domains)
| project TimeGenerated, SourceIP, RequestURL, DestinationHostName, DeviceAction
| order by TimeGenerated desc

Required Data Sources

References

• URLhaus

False Positive Guidance

Here are 3-5 specific false positive scenarios and corresponding filters for the URLhaus: 176-65-139-240 Malicious URLs detection rule in a legitimate enterprise environment:

• Automated Security Tool Updates: Endpoint Protection agents (e.g., CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint) or SIEM connectors often poll https://updates.security-vendor.com hosted on the IP 176.65.139.240 to fetch daily threat intelligence feeds and signature updates.

  • Suggested Filter: Create an exclusion rule allowing traffic from specific internal security service accounts (e.g., svc-crowdstrike-updater) or whitelisting the destination URL path /api/v1/feeds/signatures.

• Scheduled Compliance Reporting Jobs: Enterprise Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions like Symantec DLP or Forcepoint often run nightly scheduled jobs to upload compliance logs and audit trails to a central reporting node hosted at this IP address.

  • Suggested Filter: Exclude traffic occurring during the defined maintenance window (e.g., 02:00–04:00 UTC) originating from the specific host group DLP-Reporters destined for the URL path /compliance/upload.

• Third-Party Cloud Backup Services: Automated backup agents (such as Veeam or Rubrik) may utilize this IP address to communicate with a cloud storage gateway for metadata synchronization and incremental backup verification.

  • Suggested Filter: Implement a filter based on the User-Agent string containing specific keywords like Veeam-Backup or Rubrik-Aggregator, ensuring only traffic from these known agents is excluded from the alert logic.

• IT Admin Manual Configuration Tasks: System administrators frequently access a centralized configuration management dashboard (e.g., Ansible Tower or Puppet Enterprise