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December 13, 2023

Defending Against Personalized Cyber Attacks

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13
Dec 2023
Stay informed about the latest trends in cyber threats with Darktrace experts, including how attacks are evolving and becoming more personalized.

Cyber-attacks are getting personal. The usual opportunistic “spray and pray” attacks that reach many would-be targets at once are still present, but as cyber defence has advanced, today’s more sophisticated campaigns take precise aim at a particular company.

Threat actors willingly put in extra time and effort to realize a bigger payday at the end of it, but developments in the tools they have at their disposal are also making targeted, personal attacks easier.

CAPTCHA-breaking AI techniques like computer vision and convolutional neural networks can be used to gather information on an organization’s attack surface, and Generative AI is able to perform OSINT collection on a specific target, or targets, within an organization. Once inside, attackers can further leverage AI to automatically tweak attacks and create novel, highly targeted threats that elude defenses.

A new white paper, The CISO’s Guide to Cyber AI, explains how CISOs and their teams can make smarter use of defensive AI and machine learning (ML) to protect today’s digital environments from these and more advanced novel threats.

Today’s threats don’t necessarily resemble past attacks  

Darktrace analytics pointed to a sharp rise in novel cyber-attacks earlier this year. Generative AI and large language model (LLM) tools continue to lower the barrier to entry for threat actors, making it easier than ever to build smarter, faster, more targeted attacks.

But while attacks are getting personal, security tools that apply AI in the wrong way won’t see these attacks coming.

Here’s why: most cyber security tools and platforms rely on a combination of supervised machine learning, deep learning, and transformers to train and inform their systems. This entails shipping your company’s data out to a large data lake housed somewhere in the cloud where it gets blended with attack data from thousands of other organizations. The resulting homogenized data set gets used to train AI systems — yours and everyone else’s — to recognize patterns of attack based on previously encountered threats.

At its conception, this was a reasonably smart way of approaching cyber security. For a long time, the assumption that today’s threats will resemble yesterday’s attacks was a valid one. But in an age where the commoditization of cyber-crime has lowered the bar-to-entry for attackers, and where Generative AI and other open-source tools are enabling personalized attacks at scale, this is no longer the case.

Darktrace has seen evidence this year of a marked rise in more sophisticated attack techniques. Between May and July this year, our Cyber AI Research Centre observed that multistage payload attacks, in which a malicious email encourages the recipient to follow a series of steps before delivering a payload or attempting to harvest sensitive information, have increased by an average of 59% across Darktrace customers. Some of this will be QR code phishing, the latest trend in attack tactics, others will include automation. The speed of these types of attacks will likely rise as greater automation and AI are adopted and applied by attackers.

This ‘historical’ approach is not able to identify threats that haven’t been seen before: attacks that use new malware, novel social engineering, and those that are targeted to your organization. There are no indicators of compromise (IoCs) to teach your system to recognize these kinds of attacks.

IoC-based defenses won’t necessarily spot strange and unusual activity by an authorized user, device, or known IP address until threat actors tip their hand — and by then it’s too late. Looking for repeat patterns works well for detecting threats that resemble past attacks, but this increasingly won’t be the case. The only way to spot unique and novel threats is to build cyber security that’s tailored to you, and that requires a whole new approach.

Smarter use of AI levels the playing field

Security teams and adversaries continue to innovate to gain the upper-hand, and the advantage of time.

Since AI equips even novice cyber criminals to mount sophisticated attacks, AI must evolve to do three things:

  • Understand and continue to learn what “normal” looks like for your unique digital environment
  • Detect and alert on any anomalous behavior the instant it occurs
  • Initiate a targeted response to contain threats and give your analysts more time, without disrupting the flow of business

Darktrace uses Self-Learning AI to understand what constitutes ‘normal’ for everyone and everything in your business, including cloud resources, identities, email accounts, endpoint devices, and even OT controllers. As the name suggests, Self-Learning AI trains itself, developing and maintaining deep understanding of ‘patterns of life’ for your business environment. Used in combination with other AI methods such as LLMs, generative AI, and supervised ML, Self-Learning AI identifies novel cyber-threats most static (backward-looking) tools miss.

The technology learns ‘on the job’ and from scratch, without relying on historical data or a massive upfront effort by your team to train the system. Probabilistic mathematics revise assumptions about behavior on a constant basis so the system keeps itself up-to-date without repeat efforts by your team.

The result is that areas of risk, as well as real-time emerging attacks, are brought to the surface – regardless of whether those attacks have been seen before in the wild.

Surgical attacks warrant surgical response

Supervised ML continues to serve a purpose, but the dawning age of novel and AI-led attacks favors a more proactive approach to securing the cloud. Tools must take greater responsibility for their own education and greater initiative via autonomous response.

What some solutions call response ultimately amounts to sending alerts and opening tickets that create more needless work for analysts. Other tools claim to automate response, but either take very limited actions like automating the process of ticket creation, or overly ambitious steps like quarantining entire systems.

Darktrace’s dynamic understanding of your environment enables a truly autonomous and precise cloud-native response. Its understanding of ‘normal’ for every user and device allows it to enforce ‘normal’ – cutting out only the malicious activity, while allowing normal business to continue functioning.

How this response will take place will depend on where Darktrace is deployed in your environment. In the network, it might mean blocking specific, anomalous connections over a certain port. In the cloud, it could mean detaching EC2 instances and applying security groups to contain only assets at risk. In email, this could be locking links or flattening attachments.

Get personal with ‘One on One’ Security

The widespread accessibility of generative AI has altered the threat landscape permanently, allowing cyber-criminals to deploy unique and personalized attacks at scale and at machine speed. In the near future, we can expect to see more novel and sophisticated phishing attacks, new automated creation of malicious code, sustained attack campaigns targeting an individual or company, and even deep fakes designed to elicit human trust.

To meet the needs of today and tomorrow, cyber security needs to leverage AI deeply and intelligently – not just using it to automate outdated historical approaches, or bolting generative AI onto existing products to keep up with the latest trend. Since 2013 Darktrace has been using AI in a fundamentally unique way: a system that learns your unique organization and understands what’s normal at a granular level. Only with this personalized understanding can you be confident in your ability as an organization to identify and shut down novel threats on the first encounter.

This form of personalized, ‘One on One’ security is a no longer a ‘nice to have’ for defenders. ‘Spray and pray’ tactics will continue to exist, but the attacks most likely to slip through the net and cause you damage are the sophisticated, the personal, and the never-before-seen. That’s what Self-Learning AI was built for – learning your business to deliver personalized cyber security, meeting every attack one-on-one.

The CISO’s Guide to Cyber AI overviews the differences between common AI approaches in cyber security and offers a high-level checklist for choosing the ideal solution for stopping attacks — including new novel threats.  To learn more about making the smartest use of AI to stop novel and targeted cloud attacks, download the guide today.

Inside the SOC
Darktrace cyber analysts are world-class experts in threat intelligence, threat hunting and incident response, and provide 24/7 SOC support to thousands of Darktrace customers around the globe. Inside the SOC is exclusively authored by these experts, providing analysis of cyber incidents and threat trends, based on real-world experience in the field.
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October 4, 2024

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Inside the SOC

From Call to Compromise: Darktrace’s Response to a Vishing-Induced Network Attack

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What is vishing?

Vishing, or voice phishing, is a type of cyber-attack that utilizes telephone devices to deceive targets. Threat actors typically use social engineering tactics to convince targets that they can be trusted, for example, by masquerading as a family member, their bank, or trusted a government entity. One method frequently used by vishing actors is to intimidate their targets, convincing them that they may face monetary fines or jail time if they do not provide sensitive information.

What makes vishing attacks dangerous to organizations?

Vishing attacks utilize social engineering tactics that exploit human psychology and emotion. Threat actors often impersonate trusted entities and can make it appear as though a call is coming from a reputable or known source.  These actors often target organizations, specifically their employees, and pressure them to obtain sensitive corporate data, such as privileged credentials, by creating a sense of urgency, intimidation or fear. Corporate credentials can then be used to gain unauthorized access to an organization’s network, often bypassing traditional security measures and human security teams.

Darktrace’s coverage of vishing attack

On August 12, 2024, Darktrace / NETWORK identified malicious activity on the network of a customer in the hospitality sector. The customer later confirmed that a threat actor had gained unauthorized access through a vishing attack. The attacker successfully spoofed the IT support phone number and called a remote employee, eventually leading to the compromise.

Figure 1: Timeline of events in the kill chain of this attack.

Establishing a Foothold

During the call, the remote employee was requested to authenticate via multi-factor authentication (MFA). Believing the caller to be a member of their internal IT support, using the legitimate caller ID, the remote user followed the instructions and confirmed the MFA prompt, providing access to the customer’s network.

This authentication allowed the threat actor to login into the customer’s environment by proxying through their Virtual Private Network (VPN) and gain a foothold in the network. As remote users are assigned the same static IP address when connecting to the corporate environment, the malicious actor appeared on the network using the correct username and IP address. While this stealthy activity might have evaded traditional security tools and human security teams, Darktrace’s anomaly-based threat detection identified an unusual login from a different hostname by analyzing NTLM requests from the static IP address, which it determined to be anomalous.

Observed Activity

  • On 2024-08-12 the static IP was observed using a credential belonging to the remote user to initiate an SMB session with an internal domain controller, where the authentication method NTLM was used
  • A different hostname from the usual hostname associated with this remote user was identified in the NTLM authentication request sent from a device with the static IP address to the domain controller
  • This device does not appear to have been seen on the network prior to this event.

Darktrace, therefore, recognized that this login was likely made by a malicious actor.

Internal Reconnaissance

Darktrace subsequently observed the malicious actor performing a series of reconnaissance activities, including LDAP reconnaissance, device hostname reconnaissance, and port scanning:

  • The affected device made a 53-second-long LDAP connection to another internal domain controller. During this connection, the device obtained data about internal Active Directory (AD) accounts, including the AD account of the remote user
  • The device made HTTP GET requests (e.g., HTTP GET requests with the Target URI ‘/nice ports,/Trinity.txt.bak’), indicative of Nmap usage
  • The device started making reverse DNS lookups for internal IP addresses.
Figure 2: Model alert showing the IP address from which the malicious actor connected and performed network scanning activities via port 9401.
Figure 3: Model Alert Event Log showing the affected device connecting to multiple internal locations via port 9401.

Lateral Movement

The threat actor was also seen making numerous failed NTLM authentication requests using a generic default Windows credential, indicating an attempt to brute force and laterally move through the network. During this activity, Darktrace identified that the device was using a different hostname than the one typically used by the remote employee.

Cyber AI Analyst

In addition to the detection by Darktrace / NETWORK, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst launched an autonomous investigation into the ongoing activity. The investigation was able to correlate the seemingly separate events together into a broader incident, continuously adding new suspicious linked activities as they occurred.

Figure 4: Cyber AI Analyst investigation showing the activity timeline, and the activities associated with the incident.

Upon completing the investigation, Cyber AI Analyst provided the customer with a comprehensive summary of the various attack phases detected by Darktrace and the associated incidents. This clear presentation enabled the customer to gain full visibility into the compromise and understand the activities that constituted the attack.

Figure 5: Cyber AI Analyst displaying the observed attack phases and associated model alerts.

Darktrace Autonomous Response

Despite the sophisticated techniques and social engineering tactics used by the attacker to bypass the customer’s human security team and existing security stack, Darktrace’s AI-driven approach prevented the malicious actor from continuing their activities and causing more harm.

Darktrace’s Autonomous Response technology is able to enforce a pattern of life based on what is ‘normal’ and learned for the environment. If activity is detected that represents a deviation from expected activity from, a model alert is triggered. When Darktrace’s Autonomous Response functionality is configured in autonomous response mode, as was the case with the customer, it swiftly applies response actions to devices and users without the need for a system administrator or security analyst to perform any actions.

In this instance, Darktrace applied a number of mitigative actions on the remote user, containing most of the activity as soon as it was detected:

  • Block all outgoing traffic
  • Enforce pattern of life
  • Block all connections to port 445 (SMB)
  • Block all connections to port 9401
Figure 6: Darktrace’s Autonomous Response actions showing the actions taken in response to the observed activity, including blocking all outgoing traffic or enforcing the pattern of life.

Conclusion

This vishing attack underscores the significant risks remote employees face and the critical need for companies to address vishing threats to prevent network compromises. The remote employee in this instance was deceived by a malicious actor who spoofed the phone number of internal IT Support and convinced the employee to perform approve an MFA request. This sophisticated social engineering tactic allowed the attacker to proxy through the customer’s VPN, making the malicious activity appear legitimate due to the use of static IP addresses.

Despite the stealthy attempts to perform malicious activities on the network, Darktrace’s focus on anomaly detection enabled it to swiftly identify and analyze the suspicious behavior. This led to the prompt determination of the activity as malicious and the subsequent blocking of the malicious actor to prevent further escalation.

While the exact motivation of the threat actor in this case remains unclear, the 2023 cyber-attack on MGM Resorts serves as a stark illustration of the potential consequences of such threats. MGM Resorts experienced significant disruptions and data breaches following a similar vishing attack, resulting in financial and reputational damage [1]. If the attack on the customer had not been detected, they too could have faced sensitive data loss and major business disruptions. This incident underscores the critical importance of robust security measures and vigilant monitoring to protect against sophisticated cyber threats.

Credit to Rajendra Rushanth (Cyber Security Analyst) and Ryan Traill (Threat Content Lead)

Appendices

Darktrace Model Detections

  • Device / Unusual LDAP Bind and Search Activity
  • Device / Attack and Recon Tools
  • Device / Network Range Scan
  • Device / Suspicious SMB Scanning Activity
  • Device / RDP Scan
  • Device / UDP Enumeration
  • Device / Large Number of Model Breaches
  • Device / Network Scan
  • Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Breaches (Enhanced Monitoring)
  • Device / Reverse DNS Sweep
  • Device / SMB Session Brute Force (Non-Admin)

List of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

IoC - Type – Description

/nice ports,/Trinity.txt.bak - URI – Unusual Nmap Usage

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Tactic – ID – Technique

INITIAL ACCESS – T1200 – Hardware Additions

DISCOVERY – T1046 – Network Service Scanning

DISCOVERY – T1482 – Domain Trust Discovery

RECONNAISSANCE – T1590 – IP Addresses

T1590.002 – DNS

T1590.005 – IP Addresses

RECONNAISSANCE – T1592 – Client Configurations

T1592.004 – Client Configurations

RECONNAISSANCE – T1595 – Scanning IP Blocks

T1595.001 – Scanning IP Blocks

T1595.002 – Vulnerability Scanning

References

[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/securing-helpdesks-from-hackers-what-we-can-learn-from-the-mgm-breach/

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About the author
Rajendra Rushanth
Cyber Analyst

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October 3, 2024

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Cloud

Introducing real-time multi-cloud detection & response powered by AI

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We are delighted to announce the general availability of Microsoft Azure support for Darktrace / CLOUD, enabling real-time cloud detection and response across dynamic multi-cloud environments. Built on Self-Learning AI, Darktrace / CLOUD leverages Microsoft’s new virtual network flow logs (VNet flow) to offer an agentless-first approach that dramatically simplifies detection and response within Azure, unifying cloud-native security with Darktrace’s innovative ActiveAI Security Platform.

As organizations increasingly adopt multi-cloud architectures, the need for advanced, real-time threat detection and response is critical to keep pace with evolving cloud threats. Security teams face significant challenges, including increased complexity, limited visibility, and siloed tools. The dynamic nature of multi-cloud environments introduces ever-changing blind spots, while traditional security tools struggle to provide real-time insights, often offering static snapshots of risk. Additionally, cloud security teams frequently operate in isolation from SOC teams, leading to fragmented visibility and delayed responses. This lack of coordination, especially in hybrid environments, hinders effective threat detection and response. Compounding these challenges, current security solutions are split between agent-based and agentless approaches, with agentless solutions often lacking real-time awareness and agent-based options adding complexity and scalability concerns. Darktrace / CLOUD helps to solve these challenges with real-time detection and response designed specifically for dynamic cloud environments like Azure and AWS.

Pioneering AI-led real-time cloud detection & response

Darktrace has been at the forefront of real-time detection and response for over a decade, continually pushing the boundaries of AI-driven cybersecurity. Our Self-Learning AI uniquely positions Darktrace with the ability to automatically understand and instantly adapt to changing cloud environments. This is critical in today’s landscape, where cloud infrastructures are highly dynamic and ever-changing.  

Built on years of market-leading network visibility, Darktrace / CLOUD understands ‘normal’ for your unique business across clouds and networks to instantly reveal known, unknown, and novel cloud threats with confidence. Darktrace Self-Learning AI continuously monitors activity across cloud assets, containers, and users, and correlates it with detailed identity and network context to rapidly detect malicious activity. Platform-native identity and network monitoring capabilities allow Darktrace / CLOUD to deeply understand normal patterns of life for every user and device, enabling instant, precise and proportionate response to abnormal behavior - without business disruption.

Leveraging platform-native Autonomous Response, AI-driven behavioral containment neutralizes malicious activity with surgical accuracy while preventing disruption to cloud infrastructure or services. As malicious behavior escalates, Darktrace correlates thousands of data points to identify and instantly respond to unusual activity by blocking specific connections and enforcing normal behavior.

Figure 1: AI-driven behavioral containment neutralizes malicious activity with surgical accuracy while preventing disruption to cloud infrastructure or services.

Unparalleled agentless visibility into Azure

As a long-term trusted partner of Microsoft, Darktrace leverages Azure VNet flow logs to provide agentless, high-fidelity visibility into cloud environments, ensuring comprehensive monitoring without disrupting workflows. By integrating seamlessly with Azure, Darktrace / CLOUD continues to push the envelope of innovation in cloud security. Our Self-learning AI not only improves the detection of traditional and novel threats, but also enhances real-time response capabilities and demonstrates our commitment to delivering cutting-edge, AI-powered multi-cloud security solutions.

  • Integration with Microsoft Virtual network flow logs for enhanced visibility
    Darktrace / CLOUD integrates seamlessly with Azure to provide agentless, high-fidelity visibility into cloud environments. VNet flow logs capture critical network traffic data, allowing Darktrace to monitor Azure workloads in real time without disrupting existing workflows. This integration significantly reduces deployment time by 95%1 and cloud security operational costs by up to 80%2 compared to traditional agent-based solutions. Organizations benefit from enhanced visibility across dynamic cloud infrastructures, scaling security measures effortlessly while minimizing blind spots, particularly in ephemeral resources or serverless functions.
  • High-fidelity agentless deployment
    Agentless deployment allows security teams to monitor and secure cloud environments without installing software agents on individual workloads. By using cloud-native APIs like AWS VPC flow logs or Azure VNet flow logs, security teams can quickly deploy and scale security measures across dynamic, multi-cloud environments without the complexity and performance overhead of agents. This approach delivers real-time insights, improving incident detection and response while reducing disruptions. For organizations, agentless visibility simplifies cloud security management, lowers operational costs, and minimizes blind spots, especially in ephemeral resources or serverless functions.
  • Real-time visibility into cloud assets and architectures
    With real-time Cloud Asset Enumeration and Dynamic Architecture Modeling, Darktrace / CLOUD generates up-to-date architecture diagrams, giving SecOps and DevOps teams a unified view of cloud infrastructures. This shared context enhances collaboration and accelerates threat detection and response, especially in complex environments like Kubernetes. Additionally, Cyber AI Analyst automates the investigation process, correlating data across networks, identities, and cloud assets to save security teams valuable time, ensuring continuous protection and efficient cloud migrations.
Figure 2: Real-time visibility into Azure assets and architectures built from network, configuration and identity and access roles.

Unified multi-cloud security at scale

As organizations increasingly adopt multi-cloud strategies, the complexity of managing security across different cloud providers introduces gaps in visibility. Darktrace / CLOUD simplifies this by offering agentless, real-time monitoring across multi-cloud environments. Building on our innovative approach to securing AWS environments, our customers can now take full advantage of robust real-time detection and response capabilities for Azure. Darktrace is one of the first vendors to leverage Microsoft’s virtual network flow logs to provide agentless deployment in Azure, enabling unparalleled visibility without the need for installing agents. In addition, Darktrace / CLOUD offers automated Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) that continuously assesses cloud configurations against industry standards.  Security teams can identify and prioritize misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and policy violations in real-time. These capabilities give security teams a complete, live understanding of their cloud environments and help them focus their limited time and resources where they are needed most.

This approach offers seamless integration into existing workflows, reducing configuration efforts and enabling fast, flexible deployment across cloud environments. By extending its capabilities across multiple clouds, Darktrace / CLOUD ensures that no blind spots are left uncovered, providing holistic, multi-cloud security that scales effortlessly with your cloud infrastructure. diagrams, visualizes cloud assets, and prioritizes risks across cloud environments.

Figure 3: Unified view of AWS and Azure cloud posture and compliance over time.

The future of cloud security: Real-time defense in an unpredictable world

Darktrace / CLOUD’s support for Microsoft Azure, powered by Self-Learning AI and agentless deployment, sets a new standard in multi-cloud security. With real-time detection and autonomous response, organizations can confidently secure their Azure environments, leveraging innovation to stay ahead of the constantly evolving threat landscape. By combining Azure VNet flow logs with Darktrace’s AI-driven platform, we can provide customers with a unified, intelligent solution that transforms how security is managed across the cloud.

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References

1. Based on internal research and customer data

2. Based on internal research

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About the author
Adam Stevens
Director of Product, Cloud Security
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