Detection: Detect hosts connecting to dynamic domain providers

Description

The following analytic identifies DNS queries from internal hosts to dynamic domain providers. It leverages DNS query logs from the Network_Resolution data model and cross-references them with a lookup file containing known dynamic DNS providers. This activity is significant because attackers often use dynamic DNS services to host malicious payloads or command-and-control servers, making it crucial for security teams to monitor. If confirmed malicious, this activity could allow attackers to bypass firewall blocks, evade detection, and maintain persistent access to the network.

Search

1
2| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count values(DNS.answer) as answer min(_time) as firstTime from datamodel=Network_Resolution by DNS.query host 
3| `drop_dm_object_name("DNS")` 
4| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
5| `dynamic_dns_providers` 
6| `detect_hosts_connecting_to_dynamic_domain_providers_filter`

Data Source

Name	Platform	Sourcetype	Source
Sysmon EventID 22	Windows	'xmlwineventlog'	'XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational'

Macros Used

Annotations

Default Configuration

This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:

Implementation

First, you'll need to ingest data from your DNS operations. This can be done by ingesting logs from your server or data, collected passively by Splunk Stream or a similar solution. Specifically, data that contains the domain that is being queried and the IP of the host originating the request must be populating the Network_Resolution data model. This search also leverages a lookup file, dynamic_dns_providers_default.csv, which contains a non-exhaustive list of Dynamic DNS providers. Please consider updating the local lookup periodically by adding new domains to the list of dynamic_dns_providers_local.csv. This search produces fields (query, answer, isDynDNS) that are not yet supported by ES Incident Review and therefore cannot be viewed when a notable event is raised. These fields contribute additional context to the notable event. To see the additional metadata, add the following fields, if not already present, to Incident Review. Event Attributes (Configure > Incident Management > Incident Review Settings > Add New Entry):

• Label: DNS Query, Field: query
• Label: DNS Answer, Field: answer
• Label: IsDynamicDNS, Field: isDynDNS Detailed documentation on how to create a new field within Incident Review may be found here: https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/ES/5.3.0/Admin/Customizenotables#Add_a_field_to_the_notable_event_details

Known False Positives

Some users and applications may leverage Dynamic DNS to reach out to some domains on the Internet since dynamic DNS by itself is not malicious, however this activity must be verified.

Associated Analytic Story

• Command And Control

• DNS Hijacking

• Data Protection

• Dynamic DNS

• Prohibited Traffic Allowed or Protocol Mismatch

• Suspicious DNS Traffic

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

Detection Testing

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

Source: GitHub | Version: 5