It means that the domain has appeared in public or open-source malware intelligence feeds. These feeds collect indicators of compromise (IOCs) from security vendors, sandboxes, and malware-sharing communities.
Three questions every analyst asks before acting on this signal.
It means that the domain has appeared in public or open-source malware intelligence feeds. These feeds collect indicators of compromise (IOCs) from security vendors, sandboxes, and malware-sharing communities.
Domain-Level listings indicate that the root domain itself (e.g., example.com) has been reported as malicious — a strong indicator. Subdomain-Level refers to specific hostnames (e.g., login.example.com) and URL-Level to specific paths or resources (e.g., example.com/malware.exe), which may represent partial or historical associations.
It indicates that the domain appeared in malware feeds in the past but is no longer listed. This could mean the malicious infrastructure was dismantled, rebranded, or repurposed. However, historical association still increases risk.
A realistic shape of the entry the engine appends to the risk_signals array when this signal fires. Evidence keys are subgroup-default; per-signal overrides documented in the API reference.
{
"slug": "malware_sources",
"name": "Listed in Malware Feeds (Domain-Level)",
"group": "threat_intelligence_feed",
"subgroup": "malware_association",
"direction": "malicious",
"evidence": {
"sources_referencing": 12,
"malware_families": [
"emotet",
"qakbot"
],
"first_reference_days_ago": 11,
"confidence": 0.91
}
}1 other signal shares the same subgroup. They detect related behaviors and often co-fire on the same IOC.
The Verdict Gallery is a curated stream of real verdicts. Filter by this signal to see exactly which IOCs it caught, what other signals fired alongside it, and what the engine recommended.
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