Sudden Change In DNS Data Transfer Pattern From A Specific Host

Rule ID

PH_Rule_Stat_12B

Default Status

Enabled

Description

Detects sudden change in DNS data transfer pattern from a specific IP - over a 15 minute period, either the sent or received bytes is more than 3 standard deviations away from the mean and more than 1 MB of traffic is exchanged in the corresponding direction.

Severity

MITRE ATT&CK® Tactics

Command And Control

MITRE ATT&CK® Techniques

T1568.001

Dynamic Resolution: Fast Flux DNS

Adversaries may use Fast Flux DNS to hide a command and control channel behind an array of rapidly changing IP addresses linked to a single domain resolution. This technique uses a fully qualified domain name, with multiple IP addresses assigned to it which are swapped with high frequency, using a combination of round robin IP addressing and short Time-To-Live (TTL) for a DNS resource record.

https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1568/001

Impacts

Network

Data Source

FortiGate via Syslog or Netflow, Cisco IOS via Syslog or Netflow, Checkpoint via Syslog or Netflow, Palo Alto via Syslog or Netflow

Detection

Profiling

Remediation Guidance

No remediation guidance specified

Time Window

If the following pattern or patterns match an ingested event within the given time window in seconds, trigger an incident.

900 seconds

Trigger Conditions

If the following defined pattern/s occur within a 900 second time window.

DNSConn

SubPattern Definitions

SubPattern Name: DNSConn

This is the named definition of the event query, this is important if multiple subpatterns are defined to distinguish them.

SubPattern Query

This is the query logic that matches incoming events

destIpPort = 53 AND eventType IN (Group@PH_SYS_EVENT_PermitNetTraffic, Group@PH_SYS_EVENT_NetflowTraffic, Group@PH_SYS_EVENT_BiNetflowTraffic)

Group by Attributes

This defines how matching events are aggregated, only events with the same matching attribute values are grouped into one unique incident ID

srcIpAddr

Aggregate Constraint

This is most typically a numerical constraint that defines when the rule should trigger an incident

((SUM(sentBytes64)-STAT_AVG(SUM(sentBytes64):113))/STAT_STDDEV(SUM(sentBytes64):113) >= 3 AND STAT_STDDEV(SUM(sentBytes64):113) > 0 AND SUM(sentBytes64) >= 1048576) OR
	  ((SUM(recvBytes64)-STAT_AVG(SUM(recvBytes64):113))/STAT_STDDEV(SUM(recvBytes64):113) >= 3 AND STAT_STDDEV(SUM(recvBytes64):113) > 0 AND SUM(recvBytes64) >= 1048576)

Incident Attribute Mapping

This section defines which fields in matching raw events should be mapped to the incident attributes in the resulting incident.

The available raw event attributes to map are limited to the group by attributes and the aggregate event constraint fields for each subpattern

 srcIpAddr = DNSConn.srcIpAddr,
 sentBytes64 = DNSConn.SUM(sentBytes64),
 recvBytes64 = DNSConn.SUM(recvBytes64),
 avgSentBytes64 = DNSConn.STAT_AVG(SUM(sentBytes64):113),
 avgRecvBytes64 = DNSConn.STAT_AVG(SUM(recvBytes64):113),
 sdevSentBytes64 = DNSConn.STAT_STDDEV(SUM(sentBytes64):113),
 sdevRecvBytes64 = DNSConn.STAT_STDDEV(SUM(recvBytes64):113)

FortiSIEM Rules