Sigma rule: DNS Query To Common Malware Hosting and Shortener Services

Rule

Title

DNS Query To Common Malware Hosting and Shortener Services

Status

experimental

Level

medium

Author

Ahmed Nosir (@egycondor)

Date

2025-06-02

File

rules/windows/dns_query/dns_query_win_common_malware_hosting_services.yml

Commit

ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Detects DNS queries to domains commonly used by threat actors to host malware payloads or redirect through URL shorteners.
These include platforms like Cloudflare Workers, TryCloudflare, InfinityFree, and URL shorteners such as tinyurl and lihi.cc.
Such DNS activity can indicate potential delivery or command-and-control communication attempts.

Log source

product

windows

category

dns_query

Detection

selection:
    QueryName|contains:
        - 'msapp.workers.dev'
        - 'trycloudflare.com'
        - 'infinityfreeapp.com'
        - 'my5353.com'
        - 'reurl.cc'
        - 'lihi.cc'
        - 'tinyurl.com'
condition: selection

False positives (as the rule lists them)

• Legitimate use of these services is possible but rare in enterprise environments

Tags

• attack.command-and-control
• attack.t1071.004

MITRE ATT&CK ids this rule names

• T1071.004

References

• https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/apt41-innovative-tactics

Read on 2026-11-03T00:58:21.399Z under licence sigma-drl-1.1@d5f4c36a from https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/rules/windows/dns_query/dns_query_win_common_malware_hosting_services.yml