Practical Examples Of Malware Infrastructure Discovery With Passive DNS

This article provides practical examples of using Passive DNS to uncover malicious infrastructure. By analyzing DNS records and utilizing pivots, analysts can identify related domains and enhance threat detection. Affected: cybersecurity analysts, organizations, malware victims

Keypoints :

  • Passive DNS serves as a database of DNS snapshots over time.
  • It allows analysts to discover relationships and commonalities in DNS records.
  • The article discusses five methods of uncovering malicious infrastructure using Passive DNS.
  • Analysts can pivot on IP addresses to find related domains.
  • Identifying domains linked to malware such as Coyote, EugenLoader, Xworm, DCRat, and Mint Stealer is demonstrated.
  • Utilizing HTML titles for pivoting can be beneficial when faced with Cloudflare-protected infrastructure.
  • Validin provides an intuitive interface for implementing Passive DNS.

MITRE Techniques :

  • T1071.001 – Application Layer Protocol: Analysts can utilize DNS protocols to uncover domain names linked to malware.
  • T1086 – PowerShell: Analysts may use PowerShell commands to automate DNS queries against Passive DNS databases.
  • T1195 – Transfer Data to Remote System: Pivots can lead to the identification of domains sharing infrastructure for command and control operations.

Indicator of Compromise :

  • [Domain] cloridatosys[.]com
  • [IP Address] 20.201.119[.]204
  • [Domain] protonpin[.]com
  • [IP Address] 206.206.123[.]151
  • [Domain] aprilxrwonew8450.duckdns[.]org
  • [Domain] 640740cm.nyashka[.]top
  • [Domain] mint-stealer[.]top

Full Story: https://www.validin.com/blog/practical_malware_infrastructure_discovery_with_pdns/