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Potential communication with a Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) based hostname (ASIM Web Session schema)

Description

'This rule identifies communication with hosts that have a domain name that might have been generated by a Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA). DGAs are used by malware to generate rendezvous points that are difficult to predict in advance. This detection uses the top 1 million domain names to build a model of what normal domains look like nad uses the model to identify domains that may have been randomly generated by an algorithm. You can modify the triThreshold and dgaLengthThreshold query parameters to change Analytic Rule sensitivity. The higher the numbers, the less noisy the rule is. This analytic rule uses [ASIM](https://aka.ms/AboutASIM) and supports any built-in or custom source that supports the ASIM WebSession schema (ASIM WebSession Schema)'
Rule type
Scheduled
Version
1.1.5
Query frequency
6h
Query period
6h
Trigger
gt 0

Declared MITRE coverage

Declared sources

Metadata from the source file. No dependencies inferred from KQL.

Connectors

Data types

KQL query

Original query, unchanged.

let triThreshold = 500;
let querystarttime = 6h;
let dgaLengthThreshold = 8;
// fetch the cisco umbrella top 1M domains
let top1M =  (externaldata (Position:int, Domain:string)   [@"http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/umbrella-static/top-1m.csv.zip"]  with (format="csv", zipPattern="*.csv"));
// extract tri grams that are above our threshold - i.e. are common
let triBaseline =   top1M
  | extend Domain = tolower(extract("([^.]*).{0,7}$", 1, Domain))
  | extend AllTriGrams = array_concat(extract_all("(...)", Domain), extract_all("(...)", substring(Domain, 1)), extract_all("(...)", substring(Domain, 2)))
  | mvexpand Trigram=AllTriGrams to typeof(string)
  | summarize triCount=count() by Trigram
  | sort by triCount desc
  | where triCount > triThreshold
  | distinct Trigram;
// collect domain information from common security log, filter and extract the DGA candidate and its trigrams
let allDataSummarized =  _Im_WebSession
| where isnotempty(Url)
| extend Name = tolower(tostring(parse_url(Url)["Host"]))
| summarize NameCount=count() by Name
| where Name has "."
| where Name !endswith ".home" and Name !endswith ".lan"
// extract DGA candidate
| extend DGADomain = extract("([^.]*).{0,7}$", 1, Name)
| where strlen(DGADomain) > dgaLengthThreshold
// throw out domains with number in them
| where DGADomain matches regex "^[A-Za-z]{0,}$"
// extract the tri grams from summarized data
| extend AllTriGrams = array_concat(extract_all("(...)", DGADomain), extract_all("(...)", substring(DGADomain, 1)), extract_all("(...)", substring(DGADomain, 2)));
// throw out domains that have repeating tri's and/or >=3 repeating letters
let nonRepeatingTris =  allDataSummarized
| join kind=leftanti
(
    allDataSummarized
    | mvexpand AllTriGrams
    | summarize count() by tostring(AllTriGrams), DGADomain
    | where count_ > 1
    | distinct DGADomain
)
on DGADomain;
// find domains that do not have a common tri in the baseline
let dataWithRareTris =  nonRepeatingTris
| join kind=leftanti
(
    nonRepeatingTris
    | mvexpand AllTriGrams
    | extend Trigram = tostring(AllTriGrams)
    | distinct Trigram, DGADomain
    | join kind=inner
    (
        triBaseline
    )
    on Trigram
    | distinct DGADomain
)
on DGADomain;
dataWithRareTris
// join DGAs back on connection data
| join kind=inner
(
    _Im_WebSession
    | where isnotempty(Url)
    | extend Url = tolower(Url)
    | summarize arg_max(TimeGenerated, EventVendor,  SrcIpAddr) by Url
    | extend Name=tostring(parse_url(Url)["Host"])
    | summarize StartTime=min(TimeGenerated), EndTime=max(TimeGenerated) by Name, SrcIpAddr, Url
)
on Name
| project StartTime, EndTime, Name, DGADomain, SrcIpAddr, Url, NameCount

Declared entities

IPURL

Related content

Links established from declared identifiers and solution manifests.

Source provenance

GitHub

Displayed values come from files in Azure/Azure-Sentinel. They describe the published template, not your workspace configuration.

Source identifier
9176b18f-a946-42c6-a2f6-0f6d17cd6a8a
Additional source files 1Detections/ASimWebSession/PossibleDGAContacts.yamlsource ↗
GSTEP / CATALOG TRACKING

Added to catalog : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC
Last change observed : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC

GSTEP sync dates, separate from the source content’s publication dates.