TrumpBot

Hunt Hypothesis

This hypothesis posits that adversaries are deploying automated bot infrastructure to simulate legitimate user activity and obscure malicious reconnaissance within the Azure environment. Proactive hunting for these patterns is essential to distinguish between benign automation and sophisticated threat actors attempting to evade standard signature-based detections by mimicking normal operational noise.

YARA Rule

rule TrumpBot : MALW
{
	meta:
		description = "TrumpBot"
		author = "Joan Soriano / @joanbtl"
		date = "2017-04-16"
		version = "1.0"
		MD5 = "77122e0e6fcf18df9572d80c4eedd88d"
		SHA1 = "108ee460d4c11ea373b7bba92086dd8023c0654f"

	strings:
		$string = "trumpisdaddy"
		$ip = "198.50.154.188"
	condition:
		 all of them
}

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

Here are 4 specific false positive scenarios for the TrumpBot detection rule in an enterprise environment, including suggested filters and exclusions:

• Scheduled Patch Management Deployments

  • Scenario: The Windows Update Agent or third-party tools like SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) and Ivanti Endpoint Manager frequently execute mass software updates. These processes often spawn background threads that mimic the behavior of “TrumpBot” by querying registry keys, modifying system files, and initiating network connections to update servers during maintenance windows (e.g., Sunday 02:00 UTC).
  • Suggested Filter/Exclusion: Create a time-based exclusion for the rule between 01:00 and 04:00 UTC on Sundays. Additionally, exclude process paths containing C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution or specific service accounts like NT SERVICE\Wuauserv.

• Automated Compliance & Configuration Audits

  • Scenario: Tools such as Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Tenable Nessus, or Qualys run scheduled vulnerability scans and configuration compliance checks. These agents often enumerate system configurations, check group policy objects (GPO), and generate logs that trigger the TrumpBot logic due to high-frequency file access and specific API calls resembling bot activity.
  • Suggested Filter/Exclusion: Exclude alerts where the Parent Process Name is TenableAgent.exe, QualysPCAgent.exe, or MsMpEng.exe. Furthermore, filter out events originating from dedicated management subnets (e.g., 10.20.x.x) reserved for security scanning infrastructure.

• Identity Management and Password Rotation Tasks

  • Scenario: Enterprise Identity providers like Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) or Okta perform automated user provisioning, de-provisioning, and password rotation tasks. These