BlackHole v2 | SOC Hunt Feed

Hunt Hypothesis

The BlackHole v2 detection rule identifies potential malicious activity associated with the BlackHole malware family, which is known for delivering payloads through compromised networks. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to detect early-stage compromises and prevent lateral movement within cloud environments.

YARA Rule

rule BlackHole_v2 : PDF raw
{
	meta:
		author = "Glenn Edwards (@hiddenillusion)"
		version = "0.1"
		ref = "http://fortknoxnetworks.blogspot.no/2012/10/blackhhole-exploit-kit-v-20-url-pattern.html"
		weight = 3
		
	strings:
		$magic = { 25 50 44 46 }
		$content = "Index[5 1 7 1 9 4 23 4 50"
		
	condition:
		$magic in (0..1024) and $content
}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint — Custom indicators / advanced hunting
Email Gateway — Attachment scanning
File Share Monitoring — Periodic scanning of shared drives
YARA CLI — Manual threat hunting on endpoints

This rule contains 2 string patterns in its detection logic.

Source Rule

False Positive Guidance

Scenario: Scheduled system backup using Veeam Backup & Replication
Filter/Exclusion: Check for process parent or command line arguments containing "Veeam" or "backup", or filter by process name veeam.exe.
Scenario: Regularly executed Windows Task Scheduler job for log rotation or cleanup
Filter/Exclusion: Filter processes with parent process schtasks.exe or check for command line arguments containing "logrotate" or "clean", or filter by process name taskeng.exe.
Scenario: Microsoft Endpoint Protection (EPP) performing a scheduled scan
Filter/Exclusion: Filter processes with parent process mpsvc.exe or check for command line arguments containing "scan" or "fullscan", or filter by process name mpcmdrun.exe.
Scenario: Docker container running a legitimate application with network traffic resembling malicious behavior
Filter/Exclusion: Filter by container ID or name, or check for process parent dockerd.exe or containerd.exe.
Scenario: Windows Update or Group Policy client synchronizing settings
Filter/Exclusion: Filter processes with parent process svchost.exe or check for command line arguments containing "wuau", "gpolink", or "policy", or filter by process name wuauclt.exe.