Detection rules › Kusto Query Language

Qakbot Discovery Activies

Source: upstream

This query searches for injected processes launching discovery activity. Qakbot has been observed leading to ransomware in numerous instances. It looks for discovery commands such as net.exe, whoami.exe, nslookup.exe, netstat.exe, arp.exe, and ping.exe.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Execution	`T1059` Command and Scripting Interpreter
Defense Evasion	`T1140` Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information
Discovery	`T1010` Application Window Discovery

Event coverage

Provider	Event ID	Title
Sysmon	1	Process creation
Security-Auditing	4688	A new process has been created.
Defender-DeviceProcessEvents	9001000	Process activity (any)

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: `source`

DeviceProcessEvents

Stage 2: `where`

InitiatingProcessFileName in ["explorer.exe", "mobsync.exe"]

Stage 3: `where`

or
  and
    FileName eq "arp.exe"
    InitiatingProcessCommandLine match "-a"
  and
    FileName eq "net.exe"
    InitiatingProcessCommandLine match ["view", "/all"]
  and
    FileName eq "netstat.exe"
    InitiatingProcessCommandLine match "-nao"
  and
    FileName eq "nslookup.exe"
    InitiatingProcessCommandLine match ["querytype=ALL", "timeout=10"]
  and
    FileName eq "ping.exe"
    InitiatingProcessCommandLine ends_with "127.0.0.1"
    InitiatingProcessCommandLine match "-t"
  and
    FileName eq "whoami.exe"
    InitiatingProcessCommandLine match "/all"

Stage 4: `summarize`

Stage 5: `where`

DiscoveryCommands ge "3"

Stage 6: `extend`

Stage 7: `extend`

Indicators

Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.

Field	Kind	Values
`DiscoveryCommands`	ge	`3`
`FileName`	eq	`arp.exe` `net.exe` `netstat.exe` `nslookup.exe` `ping.exe` `whoami.exe`
`InitiatingProcessCommandLine`	ends_with	`127.0.0.1`
`InitiatingProcessCommandLine`	match	`-a` corpus 4 (sigma 4) `-nao` `-t` `/all` `querytype=ALL` `timeout=10` `view`
`InitiatingProcessFileName`	in	`explorer.exe` `mobsync.exe`

Qakbot Discovery Activies

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Event coverage

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: source

Stage 2: where

Stage 3: where

Stage 4: summarize

Stage 5: where

Stage 6: extend

Stage 7: extend