Suspicious DNS Query for Tor Onion Domain

ATT&CK techniques

C2 → Exfiltration

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1071.004DNS
Exfiltration
- T1048Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects DNS queries for .onion top-level domains, which correspond to Tor hidden services. Malware uses .onion command-and-control and exfiltration endpoints to anonymize traffic, and standard DNS resolution of .onion names is unusual on enterprise networks, indicating a Tor proxy or DNS-tunneling C2 channel.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1071.004 — drag to rearrange

Possible DNS Tunneling via Excessively Long Query Name

Suspicious DNS Exfiltration to azurestaticprovider Backdoor Domain

Suspicious Script Download via Curl and PowerShell by Dohdoor

Malicious Bulk Data Exfiltration via Rclone (via process_creation)

BITS Payload Downloaded via Commandline (via process_creation)

BITS Payload Downloaded via PowerShell (via powershell)

DoT (DNS Over TLS) Activation - Command (via process_creation)

DoT (DNS Over TLS) Activation - PowerShell (via powershell)

Possible C2 Beacon with Fixed Authorization URI Parameter via proxy

Suspicious DNS Query for Tor Onion Domain

Pivot detection · T1071.004 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →