↳ GitHub sourceAnalytics ruleMedium

Potential DGA detected

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

IP

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
a0907abe-6925-4d90-af2b-c7e89dc201a6
Additional source files 3Solutions/Windows Server DNS/Analytic Rules/DNS_HighNXDomainCount_detection.yamlsource ↗Detections/DnsEvents/DNS_HighNXDomainCount_detection.yamlmigration-note ↗Solutions/Windows Server DNS/Data/Solution_DNS.jsonsolution-membership ↗
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.