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Inside the SOC

How CoinLoader Hijacks Networks

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08
Feb 2024
08
Feb 2024
Discover how Darktrace decrypted the CoinLoader malware hijacking networks for cryptomining. Learn about the tactics and protection strategies employed.

About Loader Malware

Loader malware was a frequent topic of conversation and investigation within the Darktrace Threat Research team throughout 2023, with a wide range of existing and novel variants affecting a significant number of Darktrace customers, as detailed in Darktrace’s inaugural End of Year Threat Report. The multi-phase nature of such compromises poses a significant threat to organizations due to the need to defend against multiple threats at the same time.

CoinLoader, a variant of loader malware first observed in the wild in 2018 [1], is an example of one of the more prominent variant of loaders observed by Darktrace in 2023, with over 65 customers affected by the malware. Darktrace’s Threat Research team conducted a deep dive investigation into the patterns of behavior exhibited by devices infected with CoinLoader in the latter part of 2023, with compromises observed in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Asia-Pacific (APAC) and the Americas.

The autonomous threat detection capabilities of Darktrace DETECT™ allowed for the effective identification of these CoinLoader infections whilst Darktrace RESPOND™, if active, was able to quickly curtail attacker’s efforts and prevent more disruptive, and potentially costly, secondary compromises from occurring.

What is CoinLoader?

Much like other strains of loader, CoinLoader typically serves as a first stage malware that allows threat actors to gain initial access to a network and establish a foothold in the environment before delivering subsequent malicious payloads, including adware, botnets, trojans or pay-per-install campaigns.

CoinLoader is generally propagated through trojanized popular software or game installation archive files, usually in the rar or zip formats. These files tend can be easily obtained via top results displayed in search engines when searching for such keywords as "crack" or "keygen" in conjunction with the name of the software the user wishes to pirate [1,2,3,4]. By disguising the payload as a legitimate programme, CoinLoader is more likely to be unknowingly downloaded by endpoint users, whilst also bypassing traditional security measures that trust the download.

It also has several additional counter-detection methods including using junk code, variable obfuscation, and encryption for shellcode and URL schemes. It relies on dynamic-link library (DLL) search order hijacking to load malicious DLLs to legitimate executable files. The malware is also capable of performing a variety of checks for anti-virus processes and disabling endpoint protection solutions.

In addition to these counter-detection tactics, CoinLoader is also able to prevent the execution of its malicious DLL files in sandboxed environments without the presence of specific DNS cache records, making it extremely difficult for security teams and researchers to analyze.

In 2020 it was reported that CoinLoader compromises were regularly seen alongside cryptomining activity and even used the alias “CoinMiner” in some cases [2]. Darktrace’s investigations into CoinLoader in 2023 largely confirmed this theory, with around 15% of observed CoinLoader connections being related to cryptomining activity.

Cryptomining malware consumes large amounts of a hijacked (or cryptojacked) device's resources to perform complex mathematical calculations and generate income for the attacker all while quietly working in the background. Cryptojacking can lead to high electricity costs, device slow down, loss of functionality, and in the worst case scenario can be a potential fire hazard.

Darktrace Coverage of CoinLoader

In September 2023, Darktrace observed several cases of CoinLoader that served to exemplify the command-and-control (C2) communication and subsequent cryptocurrency mining activities typically observed during CoinLoader compromises. While the initial infection method in these cases was outside of Darktrace’s purview, it likely occurred via socially engineered phishing emails or, as discussed earlier, trojanized software downloads.

Command-and-Control Activity

CoinLoader compromises observed across the Darktrace customer base were typically identified by encrypted C2 connections over port 433 to rare external endpoints using self-signed certificates containing "OU=IT,O=MyCompany LLC,L=San Francisco,ST=California,C=US" in their issue fields.

All observed CoinLoader C2 servers were associated with the ASN of MivoCloud, a Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting service (AS39798 MivoCloud SRL). It had been reported that Russian-state sponsored threat actors had previously abused MivoCloud’s infrastructure in order to bypass geo-blocking measures during phishing attacks against western nations [5].

Darktrace observed that the majority of CoinLoader infrastructure utilized IP addresses in the 185.225.0.0/19 range and were associated with servers hosted in Romania, with just one instance of an IP address based in Moldova. The domain names of these servers typically followed the naming pattern ‘*[a-d]{1}[.]info’, with 'ams-updatea[.]info’, ‘ams-updateb[.]info’, ‘ams-updatec[.]info’, and ‘ams-updated[.]info’ routinely identified on affected networks.

Researchers found that CoinLoader typically uses DNS tunnelling in order to covertly exchange information with attacker-controlled infrastructure, including the domains ‘candatamsnsdn[.]info’, ‘mapdatamsnsdn[.]info’, ‘rqmetrixsdn[.]info’ [4].

While Darktrace did not observe these particular domains, it did observer similar DNS lookups to a similar suspicous domain, namely ‘ucmetrixsdn[.]info’, in addition to the aforementioned HTTPS C2 connections.

Cryptomining Activity and Possible Additional Tooling

After establishing communication channels with CoinLoader servers, affected devices were observed carrying out a range of cryptocurrency mining activities. Darktrace detected devices connecting to multiple MivoCloud associated IP addresses using the MinerGate protocol alongside the credential “x”, a MinerGate credential observed by Darktrace in previous cryptojacking compromises, including the Sysrv-hello botnet.

Figure 1: Darktrace DETECT breach log showing an alerted mining activity model breach on an infected device.
Figure 2: Darktrace's Cyber AI Analyst providing details about unusual repeated connections to multiple endpoints related to CoinLoader cryptomining.

In a number of customer environments, Darktrace observed affected devices connected to endpoints associated with other malware such as the Andromeda botnet and the ViperSoftX information stealer. It was, however, not possible to confirm whether CoinLoader had dropped these additional malware variants onto infected devices.

On customer networks where Darktrace RESPOND was enabled in autonomous response mode, Darktrace was able to take swift targeted steps to shut down suspicious connections and contain CoinLoader compromises. In one example, following DETECT’s initial identification of an affected device connecting to multiple MivoCloud endpoints, RESPOND autonomously blocked the device from carrying out such connections, effectively shutting down C2 communication and preventing threat actors carrying out any cryptomining activity, or downloading subsequent malicious payloads. The autonomous response capability of RESPOND provides customer security teams with precious time to remove infected devices from their network and action their remediation strategies.

Figure 3: Darktrace RESPOND autonomously blocking CoinLoader connections on an affected device.

Additionally, customers subscribed to Darktrace’s Proactive Threat Notification (PTN) service would be alerted about potential CoinLoader activity observed on their network, prompting Darktrace’s Security Operations Center (SOC) to triage and investigate the activity, allowing customers to prioritize incidents that require immediate attention.

Conclusion

By masquerading as free or ‘cracked’ versions of legitimate popular software, loader malware like CoinLoader is able to indiscriminately target a large number of endpoint users without arousing suspicion. What’s more, once a network has been compromised by the loader, it is then left open to a secondary compromise in the form of potentially costly information stealers, ransomware or, in this case, cryptocurrency miners.

While urging employees to think twice before installing seemingly legitimate software unknown or untrusted locations is an essential first step in protecting an organization against threats like CoinLoader, its stealthy tactics mean this may not be enough.

In order to fully safeguard against such increasingly widespread yet evasive threats, organizations must adopt security solutions that are able to identify anomalies and subtle deviations in device behavior that could indicate an emerging compromise. The Darktrace suite of products, including DETECT and RESPOND, are well-placed to identify and contain these threats in the first instance and ensure they cannot escalate to more damaging network compromises.

Credit to: Signe Zaharka, Senior Cyber Security Analyst, Paul Jennings, Principal Analyst Consultant

Appendix

Darktrace DETECT Model Detections

  • Anomalous Connection/Multiple Connections to New External TCP Port
  • Anomalous Connection/Multiple Failed Connections to Rare Endpoint
  • Anomalous Connection/Rare External SSL Self-Signed
  • Anomalous Connection/Repeated Rare External SSL Self-Signed
  • Anomalous Connection/Suspicious Self-Signed SSL
  • Anomalous Connection/Young or Invalid Certificate SSL Connections to Rare
  • Anomalous Server Activity/Rare External from Server
  • Compromise/Agent Beacon (Long Period)
  • Compromise/Beacon for 4 Days
  • Compromise/Beacon to Young Endpoint
  • Compromise/Beaconing Activity To External Rare
  • Compromise/High Priority Crypto Currency Mining
  • Compromise/High Volume of Connections with Beacon Score
  • Compromise/Large Number of Suspicious Failed Connections
  • Compromise/New or Repeated to Unusual SSL Port
  • Compromise/Rare Domain Pointing to Internal IP
  • Compromise/Repeating Connections Over 4 Days
  • Compromise/Slow Beaconing Activity To External Rare
  • Compromise/SSL Beaconing to Rare Destination
  • Compromise/Suspicious File and C2
  • Compromise/Suspicious TLS Beaconing To Rare External
  • Device/ Anomalous Github Download
  • Device/ Suspicious Domain
  • Device/Internet Facing Device with High Priority Alert
  • Device/New Failed External Connections

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

IoC - Hostname C2 Server

ams-updatea[.]info

ams-updateb[.]info

ams-updatec[.]info

ams-updated[.]info

candatamsna[.]info

candatamsnb[.]info

candatamsnc[.]info

candatamsnd[.]info

mapdatamsna[.]info

mapdatamsnb[.]info

mapdatamsnc[.]info

mapdatamsnd[.]info

res-smarta[.]info

res-smartb[.]info

res-smartc[.]info

res-smartd[.]info

rqmetrixa[.]info

rqmetrixb[.]info

rqmetrixc[.]info

rqmetrixd[.]info

ucmetrixa[.]info

ucmetrixb[.]info

ucmetrixc[.]info

ucmetrixd[.]info

any-updatea[.]icu

IoC - IP Address - C2 Server

185.225[.]16.192

185.225[.]16.61

185.225[.]16.62

185.225[.]16.63

185.225[.]16.88

185.225[.]17.108

185.225[.]17.109

185.225[.]17.12

185.225[.]17.13

185.225[.]17.135

185.225[.]17.14

185.225[.]17.145

185.225[.]17.157

185.225[.]17.159

185.225[.]18.141

185.225[.]18.142

185.225[.]18.143

185.225[.]19.218

185.225[.]19.51

194.180[.]157.179

194.180[.]157.185

194.180[.]158.55

194.180[.]158.56

194.180[.]158.62

194.180[.]158.63

5.252.178[.]74

94.158.246[.]124

IoC - IP Address - Cryptocurrency mining related endpoint

185.225.17[.]114

185.225.17[.]118

185.225.17[.]130

185.225.17[.]131

185.225.17[.]132

185.225.17[.]142

IoC - SSL/TLS certificate issuer information - C2 server certificate example

emailAddress=admin@example[.]ltd,CN=example[.]ltd,OU=IT,O=MyCompany LLC,L=San Francisco,ST=California,C=US

emailAddress=admin@'res-smartd[.]info,CN=res-smartd[.]info,OU=IT,O=MyCompany LLC,L=San Francisco,ST=California,C=US

CN=ucmetrixd[.]info,OU=IT,O=MyCompany LLC,L=San Francisco,ST=California,C=US

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

INITIAL ACCESS

Exploit Public-Facing Application - T1190

Spearphishing Link - T1566.002

Drive-by Compromise - T1189

COMMAND AND CONTROL

Non-Application Layer Protocol - T1095

Non-Standard Port - T1571

External Proxy - T1090.002

Encrypted Channel - T1573

Web Protocols - T1071.001

Application Layer Protocol - T1071

DNS - T1071.004

Fallback Channels - T1008

Multi-Stage Channels - T1104

PERSISTENCE

Browser Extensions

T1176

RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

Web Services - T1583.006

Malware - T1588.001

COLLECTION

Man in the Browser - T1185

IMPACT

Resource Hijacking - T1496

References

1. https://www.avira.com/en/blog/coinloader-a-sophisticated-malware-loader-campaign

2. https://asec.ahnlab.com/en/17909/

3. https://www.cybereason.co.jp/blog/cyberattack/5687/

4. https://research.checkpoint.com/2023/tunnel-warfare-exposing-dns-tunneling-campaigns-using-generative-models-coinloader-case-study/

5. https://securityboulevard.com/2023/02/three-cases-of-cyber-attacks-on-the-security-service-of-ukraine-and-nato-allies-likely-by-russian-state-sponsored-gamaredon/

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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ABOUT ThE AUTHOR
Signe Zaharka
Senior Cyber Security Analyst
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Thought Leadership

The State of AI in Cybersecurity: Understanding AI Technologies

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24
Jul 2024

About the State of AI Cybersecurity Report

Darktrace surveyed 1,800 CISOs, security leaders, administrators, and practitioners from industries around the globe. Our research was conducted to understand how the adoption of new AI-powered offensive and defensive cybersecurity technologies are being managed by organizations.

This blog continues the conversation from “The State of AI in Cybersecurity: Unveiling Global Insights from 1,800 Security Practitioners”. This blog will focus on security professionals’ understanding of AI technologies in cybersecurity tools.

To access download the full report, click here.

How familiar are security professionals with supervised machine learning

Just 31% of security professionals report that they are “very familiar” with supervised machine learning.

Many participants admitted unfamiliarity with various AI types. Less than one-third felt "very familiar" with the technologies surveyed: only 31% with supervised machine learning and 28% with natural language processing (NLP).

Most participants were "somewhat" familiar, ranging from 46% for supervised machine learning to 36% for generative adversarial networks (GANs). Executives and those in larger organizations reported the highest familiarity.

Combining "very" and "somewhat" familiar responses, 77% had familiarity with supervised machine learning, 74% generative AI, and 73% NLP. With generative AI getting so much media attention, and NLP being the broader area of AI that encompasses generative AI, these results may indicate that stakeholders are understanding the topic on the basis of buzz, not hands-on work with the technologies.  

If defenders hope to get ahead of attackers, they will need to go beyond supervised learning algorithms trained on known attack patterns and generative AI. Instead, they’ll need to adopt a comprehensive toolkit comprised of multiple, varied AI approaches—including unsupervised algorithms that continuously learn from an organization’s specific data rather than relying on big data generalizations.  

Different types of AI

Different types of AI have different strengths and use cases in cyber security. It’s important to choose the right technique for what you’re trying to achieve.  

Supervised machine learning: Applied more often than any other type of AI in cyber security. Trained on human attack patterns and historical threat intelligence.  

Large language models (LLMs): Applies deep learning models trained on extremely large data sets to understand, summarize, and generate new content. Used in generative AI tools.  

Natural language processing (NLP): Applies computational techniques to process and understand human language.  

Unsupervised machine learning: Continuously learns from raw, unstructured data to identify deviations that represent true anomalies.  

What impact will generative AI have on the cybersecurity field?

More than half of security professionals (57%) believe that generative AI will have a bigger impact on their field over the next few years than other types of AI.

Chart showing the types of AI expected to impact security the most
Figure 1: Chart from Darktrace's State of AI in Cybersecurity Report

Security stakeholders are highly aware of generative AI and LLMs, viewing them as pivotal to the field's future. Generative AI excels at abstracting information, automating tasks, and facilitating human-computer interaction. However, LLMs can "hallucinate" due to training data errors and are vulnerable to prompt injection attacks. Despite improvements in securing LLMs, the best cyber defenses use a mix of AI types for enhanced accuracy and capability.

AI education is crucial as industry expectations for generative AI grow. Leaders and practitioners need to understand where and how to use AI while managing risks. As they learn more, there will be a shift from generative AI to broader AI applications.

Do security professionals fully understand the different types of AI in security products?

Only 26% of security professionals report a full understanding of the different types of AI in use within security products.

Confusion is prevalent in today’s marketplace. Our survey found that only 26% of respondents fully understand the AI types in their security stack, while 31% are unsure or confused by vendor claims. Nearly 65% believe generative AI is mainly used in cybersecurity, though it’s only useful for identifying phishing emails. This highlights a gap between user expectations and vendor delivery, with too much focus on generative AI.

Key findings include:

  • Executives and managers report higher understanding than practitioners.
  • Larger organizations have better understanding due to greater specialization.

As AI evolves, vendors are rapidly introducing new solutions faster than practitioners can learn to use them. There's a strong need for greater vendor transparency and more education for users to maximize the technology's value.

To help ease confusion around AI technologies in cybersecurity, Darktrace has released the CISO’s Guide to Cyber AI. A comprehensive white paper that categorizes the different applications of AI in cybersecurity. Download the White Paper here.  

Do security professionals believe generative AI alone is enough to stop zero-day threats?

No! 86% of survey participants believe generative AI alone is NOT enough to stop zero-day threats

This consensus spans all geographies, organization sizes, and roles, though executives are slightly less likely to agree. Asia-Pacific participants agree more, while U.S. participants agree less.

Despite expecting generative AI to have the most impact, respondents recognize its limited security use cases and its need to work alongside other AI types. This highlights the necessity for vendor transparency and varied AI approaches for effective security across threat prevention, detection, and response.

Stakeholders must understand how AI solutions work to ensure they offer advanced, rather than outdated, threat detection methods. The survey shows awareness that old methods are insufficient.

To access the full report, click here.

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Inside the SOC

Jupyter Ascending: Darktrace’s Investigation of the Adaptive Jupyter Information Stealer

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18
Jul 2024

What is Malware as a Service (MaaS)?

Malware as a Service (MaaS) is a model where cybercriminals develop and sell or lease malware to other attackers.

This approach allows individuals or groups with limited technical skills to launch sophisticated cyberattacks by purchasing or renting malware tools and services. MaaS is often provided through online marketplaces on the dark web, where sellers offer various types of malware, including ransomware, spyware, and trojans, along with support services such as updates and customer support.

The Growing MaaS Marketplace

The Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) marketplace is rapidly expanding, with new strains of malware being regularly introduced and attracting waves of new and previous attackers. The low barrier for entry, combined with the subscription-like accessibility and lucrative business model, has made MaaS a prevalent tool for cybercriminals. As a result, MaaS has become a significant concern for organizations and their security teams, necessitating heightened vigilance and advanced defense strategies.

Examples of Malware as a Service

  • Ransomware as a Service (RaaS): Providers offer ransomware kits that allow users to launch ransomware attacks and share the ransom payments with the service provider.
  • Phishing as a Service: Services that provide phishing kits, including templates and email lists, to facilitate phishing campaigns.
  • Botnet as a Service: Renting out botnets to perform distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks or other malicious activities.
  • Information Stealer: Information stealers are a type of malware specifically designed to collect sensitive data from infected systems, such as login credentials, credit card numbers, personal identification information, and other valuable data.

How does information stealer malware work?

Information stealers are an often-discussed type MaaS tool used to harvest personal and proprietary information such as administrative credentials, banking information, and cryptocurrency wallet details. This information is then exfiltrated from target networks via command-and-control (C2) communication, allowing threat actors to monetize the data. Information stealers have also increasingly been used as an initial access vector for high impact breaches including ransomware attacks, employing both double and triple extortion tactics.

After investigating several prominent information stealers in recent years, the Darktrace Threat Research team launched an investigation into indicators of compromise (IoCs) associated with another variant in late 2023, namely the Jupyter information stealer.

What is Jupyter information stealer and how does it work?

The Jupyter information stealer (also known as Yellow Cockatoo, SolarMarker, and Polazert) was first observed in the wild in late 2020. Multiple variants have since become part of the wider threat landscape, however, towards the end of 2023 a new variant was observed. This latest variant achieved greater stealth and updated its delivery method, targeting browser extensions such as Edge, Firefox, and Chrome via search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning and malvertising. This then redirects users to download malicious files that typically impersonate legitimate software, and finally initiates the infection and the attack chain for Jupyter [3][4]. In recently noted cases, users download malicious executables for Jupyter via installer packages created using InnoSetup – an open-source compiler used to create installation packages in the Windows OS.

The latest release of Jupyter reportedly takes advantage of signed digital certificates to add credibility to downloaded executables, further supplementing its already existing tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) for detection evasion and sophistication [4]. Jupyter does this while still maintaining features observed in other iterations, such as dropping files into the %TEMP% folder of a system and using PowerShell to decrypt and load content into memory [4]. Another reported feature includes backdoor functionality such as:

  • C2 infrastructure
  • Ability to download and execute malware
  • Execution of PowerShell scripts and commands
  • Injecting shellcode into legitimate windows applications

Darktrace Coverage of Jupyter information stealer

In September 2023, Darktrace’s Threat Research team first investigated Jupyter and discovered multiple IoCs and TTPs associated with the info-stealer across the customer base. Across most investigated networks during this time, Darktrace observed the following activity:

  • HTTP POST requests over destination port 80 to rare external IP addresses (some of these connections were also made via port 8089 and 8090 with no prior hostname lookup).
  • HTTP POST requests specifically to the root directory of a rare external endpoint.
  • Data streams being sent to unusual external endpoints
  • Anomalous PowerShell execution was observed on numerous affected networks.

Taking a further look at the activity patterns detected, Darktrace identified a series of HTTP POST requests within one customer’s environment on December 7, 2023. The HTTP POST requests were made to the root directory of an external IP address, namely 146.70.71[.]135, which had never previously been observed on the network. This IP address was later reported to be malicious and associated with Jupyter (SolarMarker) by open-source intelligence (OSINT) [5].

Device Event Log indicating several connections from the source device to the rare external IP address 146.70.71[.]135 over port 80.
Figure 1: Device Event Log indicating several connections from the source device to the rare external IP address 146.70.71[.]135 over port 80.

This activity triggered the Darktrace / NETWORK model, ‘Anomalous Connection / Posting HTTP to IP Without Hostname’. This model alerts for devices that have been seen posting data out of the network to rare external endpoints without a hostname. Further investigation into the offending device revealed a significant increase in external data transfers around the time Darktrace alerted the activity.

This External Data Transfer graph demonstrates a spike in external data transfer from the internal device indicated at the top of the graph on December 7, 2023, with a time lapse shown of one week prior.
Figure 2: This External Data Transfer graph demonstrates a spike in external data transfer from the internal device indicated at the top of the graph on December 7, 2023, with a time lapse shown of one week prior.

Packet capture (PCAP) analysis of this activity also demonstrates possible external data transfer, with the device observed making a POST request to the root directory of the malicious endpoint, 146.70.71[.]135.

PCAP of a HTTP POST request showing streams of data being sent to the endpoint, 146.70.71[.]135.
Figure 3: PCAP of a HTTP POST request showing streams of data being sent to the endpoint, 146.70.71[.]135.

In other cases investigated by the Darktrace Threat Research team, connections to the rare external endpoint 67.43.235[.]218 were detected on port 8089 and 8090. This endpoint was also linked to Jupyter information stealer by OSINT sources [6].

Darktrace recognized that such suspicious connections represented unusual activity and raised several model alerts on multiple customer environments, including ‘Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Successful Connections’ and ‘Anomalous Connection / Multiple Connections to New External TCP Port’.

In one instance, a device that was observed performing many suspicious connections to 67.43.235[.]218 was later observed making suspicious HTTP POST connections to other malicious IP addresses. This included 2.58.14[.]246, 91.206.178[.]109, and 78.135.73[.]176, all of which had been linked to Jupyter information stealer by OSINT sources [7] [8] [9].

Darktrace further observed activity likely indicative of data streams being exfiltrated to Jupyter information stealer C2 endpoints.

Graph displaying the significant increase in the number of HTTP POST requests with No Get made by an affected device, likely indicative of Jupyter information stealer C2 activity.
Figure 4: Graph displaying the significant increase in the number of HTTP POST requests with No Get made by an affected device, likely indicative of Jupyter information stealer C2 activity.

In several cases, Darktrace was able to leverage customer integrations with other security vendors to add additional context to its own model alerts. For example, numerous customers who had integrated Darktrace with Microsoft Defender received security integration alerts that enriched Darktrace’s model alerts with additional intelligence, linking suspicious activity to Jupyter information stealer actors.

The security integration model alerts ‘Security Integration / Low Severity Integration Detection’ and (right image) ‘Security Integration / High Severity Integration Detection’, linking suspicious activity observed by Darktrace with Jupyter information stealer (SolarMarker).
Figure 5: The security integration model alerts ‘Security Integration / Low Severity Integration Detection’ and (right image) ‘Security Integration / High Severity Integration Detection’, linking suspicious activity observed by Darktrace with Jupyter information stealer (SolarMarker).

Conclusion

The MaaS ecosystems continue to dominate the current threat landscape and the increasing sophistication of MaaS variants, featuring advanced defense evasion techniques, poses significant risks once deployed on target networks.

Leveraging anomaly-based detections is crucial for staying ahead of evolving MaaS threats like Jupyter information stealer. By adopting AI-driven security tools like Darktrace / NETWORK, organizations can more quickly identify and effectively detect and respond to potential threats as soon as they emerge. This is especially crucial given the rise of stealthy information stealing malware strains like Jupyter which cannot only harvest and steal sensitive data, but also serve as a gateway to potentially disruptive ransomware attacks.

Credit to Nahisha Nobregas (Senior Cyber Analyst), Vivek Rajan (Cyber Analyst)

References

1.     https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/what-is-multi-extortion-ransomware

2.     https://flashpoint.io/blog/evolution-stealer-malware/

3.     https://blogs.vmware.com/security/2023/11/jupyter-rising-an-update-on-jupyter-infostealer.html

4.     https://www.morphisec.com/hubfs/eBooks_and_Whitepapers/Jupyter%20Infostealer%20WEB.pdf

5.     https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/146.70.71.135

6.     https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/67.43.235.218/community

7.     https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/2.58.14.246/community

8.     https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/91.206.178.109/community

9.     https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/78.135.73.176/community

Appendices

Darktrace Model Detections

  • Anomalous Connection / Posting HTTP to IP Without Hostname
  • Compromise / HTTP Beaconing to Rare Destination
  • Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data to New Endpoints
  • Compromise / Slow Beaconing Activity To External Rare
  • Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Successful Connections
  • Anomalous Connection / Multiple Failed Connections to Rare Endpoint
  • Compromise / Excessive Posts to Root
  • Compromise / Sustained SSL or HTTP Increase
  • Security Integration / High Severity Integration Detection
  • Security Integration / Low Severity Integration Detection
  • Anomalous Connection / Multiple Connections to New External TCP Port
  • Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data Transfer

AI Analyst Incidents:

  • Unusual Repeated Connections
  • Possible HTTP Command and Control to Multiple Endpoints
  • Possible HTTP Command and Control

List of IoCs

Indicators – Type – Description

146.70.71[.]135

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

91.206.178[.]109

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

146.70.92[.]153

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

2.58.14[.]246

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

78.135.73[.]176

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

217.138.215[.]105

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

185.243.115[.]88

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

146.70.80[.]66

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

23.29.115[.]186

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

67.43.235[.]218

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

217.138.215[.]85

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

193.29.104[.]25

IP Address

Jupyter info-stealer C2 Endpoint

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About the author
Nahisha Nobregas
SOC Analyst
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