Description
'Identifies clients with a high NXDomain count, which could be indicative of a DGA (cycling through possible C2 domains where most C2s are not live).
Alerts are generated when a new IP address is seen (based on not being associated with NXDomain records in the prior 10-day baseline period).'
- Rule type
- Scheduled
- Version
- 1.0.3
- Declared status
- Available
- Query frequency
- 1d
- Query period
- 10d
- 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 starttime = 10d;
let endtime = 1d;
let threshold = 100;
let nxDomainDnsEvents = DnsEvents
// ResultCode 3 => 'NXDOMAIN'
| where ResultCode == 3
| where QueryType in~ ("A", "AAAA")
| where ipv4_is_match("127.0.0.1", ClientIP) == False
| where Name !has "/"
| where Name has ".";
nxDomainDnsEvents
| where TimeGenerated > ago(endtime)
// sld = Second Level Domain
| extend sld = tostring(split(Name, ".")[-2])
| summarize StartTimeUtc = min(TimeGenerated), EndTimeUtc = max(TimeGenerated), dcount(sld), sampleNXDomainList=make_set(Name, 100) by ClientIP
| where dcount_sld > threshold
// Filter out previously seen IPs
// Returns all the records from the left side that don't have matches from the right
| join kind=leftanti (nxDomainDnsEvents
| where TimeGenerated between(ago(starttime)..ago(endtime))
| extend sld = tostring(split(Name, ".")[-2])
| summarize dcount(sld) by ClientIP, bin(TimeGenerated,1d)
| where dcount_sld > threshold
) on ClientIP
| order by dcount_sld desc
Declared entities
Related content
Links established from declared identifiers and solution manifests.
Source provenance
GitHubDisplayed values come from files in Azure/Azure-Sentinel. They describe the published template, not your workspace configuration.
- Commit
9800e51↗- Source identifier
a0907abe-6925-4d90-af2b-c7e89dc201a6
GSTEP / CATALOG TRACKING
Added to catalog : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC
Last change observed : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC