| name | analyzing-indicators-of-compromise |
| description | Analyzes indicators of compromise (IOCs) including IP addresses, domains, file hashes, URLs, and email artifacts to determine maliciousness confidence, campaign attribution, and blocking priority. Use when triaging IOCs from phishing emails, security alerts, or external threat feeds; enriching raw IOCs with multi-source intelligence; or making block/monitor/whitelist decisions. Activates for requests involving VirusTotal, AbuseIPDB, MalwareBazaar, MISP, or IOC enrichment pipelines.
|
| domain | cybersecurity |
| subdomain | threat-intelligence |
| tags | ["IOC","VirusTotal","AbuseIPDB","MalwareBazaar","MISP","threat-intelligence","STIX","NIST-CSF"] |
| version | 1.0.0 |
| author | mahipal |
| license | Apache-2.0 |
Analyzing Indicators of Compromise
When to Use
Use this skill when:
- A phishing email or alert generates IOCs (URLs, IP addresses, file hashes) requiring rapid triage
- Automated feeds deliver bulk IOCs that need confidence scoring before ingestion into blocking controls
- An incident investigation requires contextual enrichment of observed network artifacts
Do not use this skill in isolation for high-stakes blocking decisions — always combine automated enrichment with analyst judgment, especially for shared infrastructure (CDNs, cloud providers).
Prerequisites
- VirusTotal API key (free or Enterprise) for multi-AV and sandbox lookup
- AbuseIPDB API key for IP reputation checks
- MISP instance or TIP for cross-referencing against known campaigns
- Python with
requests and vt-py libraries, or SOAR platform with pre-built connectors
Workflow
Step 1: Normalize and Classify IOC Types
Before enriching, classify each IOC:
- IPv4/IPv6 address: Check if RFC 1918 private (skip external enrichment), validate format
- Domain/FQDN: Defang for safe handling (
evil[.]com), extract registered domain via tldextract
- URL: Extract domain + path separately; check for redirectors
- File hash: Identify hash type (MD5/SHA-1/SHA-256); prefer SHA-256 for uniqueness
- Email address: Split into domain (check MX/DMARC) and local part for pattern analysis
Defang IOCs in documentation (replace . with [.] and :// with [://]) to prevent accidental clicks.
Step 2: Multi-Source Enrichment
VirusTotal (file hash, URL, IP, domain):
import vt
client = vt.Client("YOUR_VT_API_KEY")
file_obj = client.get_object(f"/files/{sha256_hash}")
detections = file_obj.last_analysis_stats
print(f"Malicious: {detections['malicious']}/{sum(detections.values())}")
domain_obj = client.get_object()
(domain_obj.last_analysis_stats)
(domain_obj.reputation)
client.close()
