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January 8, 2024

Uncovering CyberCartel Threats in Latin America

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08
Jan 2024
Discover how Darktrace investigates CyberCartel attacks targeting Latin America. Learn about the methods and findings of this crucial analysis.

Introduction

In September 2023, Darktrace published its first Half-Year Threat Report, highlighting Threat Research, Security Operation Center (SOC), model breach, and Cyber AI Analyst analysis and trends across the Darktrace customer fleet. According to Darktrace’s Threat Report, the most observed threat type to affect Darktrace customers during the first half of 2023 was Malware-as-a-Service (Maas). The report highlighted a growing trend where malware strains, specifically in the MaaS ecosystem, “use cross-functional components from other strains as part of their evolution and customization” [1].  

Darktrace’s Threat Research team assessed this ‘Frankenstein’ approach would very likely increase, as shown by the fact that indicators of compromise (IoCs) are becoming “less and less mutually exclusive between malware strains as compromised infrastructure is used by multiple threat actors through access brokers or the “as-a-Service” market” [1].

Darktrace investigated one such threat during the last months of summer 2023, eventually leading to the discovery of CyberCartel-related activity across a significant number of Darktrace customers, especially in Latin America.

CyberCartel Overview and Darktrace Coverage

During a threat hunt, Darktrace’s Threat Research team discovered the download of a binary with a unique Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) pattern. When examining Darktrace’s customer base, it was discovered that binaries with this same URI pattern had been downloaded by a significant number of customer accounts, especially by customers based in Latin America. Although not identical, the targets and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) resembled those mentioned in an article regarding a botnet called Fenix [2], particularly active in Latin America.

During the Threat Research team’s investigation, nearly 40 potentially affected customer accounts were identified. Darktrace’s global Threat Research team investigates pervasive threats across Darktrace’s customer base daily. This cross-fleet research is based on Darktrace’s anomaly-based detection capability, Darktrace DETECT™, and revolves around technical analysis and contextualization of detection information.

Amid the investigation, further open-source intelligence (OSINT) research revealed that most indicators observed during Darktrace’s investigations were associated to a Latin American threat group named CyberCartel, with a small number of IoCs being associated with the Fenix botnet. While CyberCartel seems to have been active since 2012 and relies on MaaS offerings from well-known malware families, Fenix botnet was allegedly created at the end of last year and “specifically targets users accessing government services, particularly tax-paying individuals in Mexico and Chile” [2].

Both groups share similar targets and TTPs, as well as objectives: installing malware with information-stealing capabilities. In the case of Fenix infections, the compromised device will be added to a botnet and execute tasks given by the attacker(s); while in the case of CyberCartel, it can lead to various types of second-stage info-stealing and Man-in-the-Browser capabilities, including retrieving system information from the compromised device, capturing screenshots of the active browsing tab, and redirecting the user to fraudulent websites such as fake banking sites. According to a report by Metabase Q [2], both groups possibly share command and control (C2) infrastructure, making accurate attribution and assessment of the confidence level for which group was affecting the customer base extremely difficult. Indeed, one of the C2 IPs (104.156.149[.]33) observed on nearly 20 customer accounts during the investigation had OSINT evidence linking it to both CyberCartel and Fenix, as well as another group known to target Mexico called Manipulated Caiman [3] [4] [5].

CyberCartel and Fenix both appear to target banking and governmental services’ users based in Latin America, especially individuals from Mexico and Chile. Target institutions purportedly include tax administration services and several banks operating in the region. Malvertising and phishing campaigns direct users to pages imitating the target institutions’ webpages and prompt the download of a compressed file advertised in a pop-up window. This file claims enhance the user’s security and privacy while navigating the webpage but instead redirects the user to a compromised website hosting a zip file, which itself contains a URL file containing instructions for retrieval of the first stage payload from a remote server.

pop-up window with malicious file
Figure 1: Example of a pop-up window asking the user to download a compressed file allegedly needed to continue navigating the portal. Connections to the domain srlxlpdfmxntetflx[.]com were observed in one account investigated by Darktrace

During their investigations, the Threat Research team observed connections to 100% rare domains (e.g., situacionfiscal[.]online, consultar-rfc[.]online, facturmx[.]info), many of them containing strings such as “mx”, “rcf” and “factur” in their domain names, prior to the downloads of files with the unique URI pattern identified during the aforementioned threat hunting session.

The reference to “rfc” is likely a reference to the Registro Federal de Contribuyentes, a unique registration number issued by Mexico’s tax collection agency, Servicio de Administración Tributaria (SAT). These domains were observed as being 100% rare for the environment and were connected to a few minutes prior to connections to CyberCartel endpoints. Most of the endpoints were newly registered, with creation dates starting from only a few months earlier in the first half of 2023. Interestingly, some of these domains were very similar to legitimate government websites, likely a tactic employed by threat actors to convince users to trust the domains and to bypass security measures.

Figure 2: Screenshot from similarweb[.]com showing the degree of affinity between malicious domains situacionfiscal[.]online and facturmx[.]info and the legitimate Mexican government hostname sat[.]gob[.]mx
Figure 3: Screenshot of the likely source infection website facturmx[.]info taken when visited in a sandbox environment

In other customer networks, connections to mail clients were observed, as well as connections to win-rar[.]com, suggesting an interaction with a compressed file. Connections to legitimate government websites were also detected around the same time in some accounts. Shortly after, the infected devices were detected connecting to 100% rare IP addresses over the HTTP protocol using WebDAV user agents such as Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/10.0.X and DavCInt. Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning, in its full form, is a legitimate extension to the HTTP protocol that allows users to remotely share, copy, move and edit files hosted on a web server. Both CyberCartel and Fenix botnet reportedly abuse this protocol to retrieve the initial payload via a shortcut link. The use (or abuse) of this protocol allows attackers to evade blocklists and streamline payload distribution. In cases investigated by Darktrace, the use of this protocol was not always considered unusual for the breach device, indicating it also was commonly used for its legitimate purposes.

HTTP methods observed included PROPFIND, GET, and OPTIONS, where a higher proportion of PROPFIND requests were observed. PROPFIND is an HTTP method related to the use of WebDAV that retrieves properties in an exactly defined, machine-readable, XML document (GET responses do not have a define format). Properties are pieces of data that describe the state of a resource, i.e., data about data [7]. They are used in distributed authoring environments to provide for efficient discovery and management of resources.  

Figure 4: Device event log showing a connection to facturmx[.]info followed by a WebDAV connection to the 100% rare IP 172.86.68[.]104

In a number of cases, connections to compromised endpoints were followed by the download of one or more executable files with names following the regex pattern /(yes|4496|[A-Za-z]{8})/(((4496|4545)[A-Za-z]{24})|Herramienta_de_Seguridad_SII).(exe|jse), for example 4496UCJlcqwxvkpXKguWNqNWDivM.exe. PROPFIND and GET HTTP requests for dynamic-link library (DLL) files such as urlmon.dll and netutils.dll were also detected. These are legitimate Windows files that are essential to handle network and internet-related tasks in Windows. Irrespective of whether they had malicious or legitimate signatures, Darktrace DETECT was able to recognize that the download of these files was suspicious with rare external endpoints not previously observed on the respective customer networks.

Figure 5: Advanced Search results showing some of the HTTP requests made by the breach device to a CyberCartel endpoint via PROPFIND, GET, or OPTIONS methods for executable and DLL files

Following Darktrace DETECT’s model breaches, these HTTP connections were investigated by Cyber AI Analyst™. AI Analyst provided a summary and further technical details of these connections, as shown in figure 6.

Figure 6: Cyber AI Analyst incident showing a summary of the event, as well as technical details. The AI investigation process is also detailed

AI Analyst searched for all HTTP connections made by the breach device and found more than 2,500 requests to more than a hundred endpoints for one given device. It then looked for the user agents responsible for these connections and found 15 possible software agents responsible for the HTTP requests, and from these identified a single suspicious software agent, Microsoft-WebDAV-Min-Redir. As mentioned previously, this is a legitimate software, but its use by the breach device was considered unusual by Darktrace’s machine learning technology. By performing analysis on thousands of connections to hundreds of endpoints at machine speed, AI Analyst is able to perform the heavy lifting on behalf of human security teams and then collate its findings in a single summary pane, giving end-users the information needed to assess a given activity and quickly start remediation as needed. This allows security teams and administrators to save precious time and provides unparalleled visibility over any potentially malicious activity on their network.

Following the successful identification of CyberCartel activity by DETECT, Darktrace RESPOND™ is then able to contain suspicious behavior, such as by restricting outgoing traffic or enforcing normal patterns of life on affected devices. This would allow customer security teams extra time to analyze potentially malicious behavior, while leaving the rest of the network free to perform business critical operations. Unfortunately, in the cases of CyberCartel compromises detected by Darktrace, RESPOND was not enabled in autonomous response mode meaning preventative actions had to be applied manually by the customer’s security team after the fact.

Figure 7. Device event log showing connections to 100% rare CyberCartel endpoint 172.86.68[.]194 and subsequent suggested RESPOND actions.

Conclusion

Threat actors targeting high-value entities such as government offices and banks is unfortunately all too commonplace.  In the case of Cyber Cartel, governmental organizations and entities, as well as multiple newspapers in the Latin America, have cautioned users against these malicious campaigns, which have occurred over the past few years [8] [9]. However, attackers continuously update their toolsets and infrastructure, quickly rendering these warnings and known-bad security precautions obsolete. In the case of CyberCartel, the abuse of the legitimate WebDAV protocol to retrieve the initial payload is just one example of this. This method of distribution has also been leveraged by in Bumblebee malware loader’s latest campaign [10]. The abuse of the legitimate WebDAV protocol to retrieve the initial CyberCartel payload outlined in this case is one example among many of threat actors adopting new distribution methods used by others to further their ends.

As threat actors continue to search for new ways of remaining undetected, notably by incorporating legitimate processes into their attack flow and utilizing non-exclusive compromised infrastructure, it is more important than ever to have an understanding of normal network operation in order to detect anomalies that are indicative of an ongoing compromise. Darktrace’s suite of products, including DETECT+RESPOND, is well placed to do just that, with machine-speed analysis, detection, and response helping security teams and administrators keep their digital environments safe from malicious actors.

Credit to: Nahisha Nobregas, SOC Analyst

References

[1] https://darktrace.com/blog/darktrace-half-year-threat-report

[2] https://www.metabaseq.com/fenix-botnet/

[3] https://perception-point.io/blog/manipulated-caiman-the-sophisticated-snare-of-mexicos-banking-predators-technical-edition/

[4] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/104.156.149.33/community

[5] https://silent4business.com/tendencias/1

[6] https://www.metabaseq.com/cybercartel/

[7] http://www.webdav.org/specs/rfc2518.html#rfc.section.4.1

[8] https://www.csirt.gob.cl/alertas/8ffr23-01415-01/

[9] https://www.gob.mx/sat/acciones-y-programas/sitios-web-falsos

[10] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/bumblebee-malware-returns-in-new-attacks-abusing-webdav-folders/

Appendices  

Darktrace DETECT Model Detections

AI Analyst Incidents:

• Possible HTTP Command and Control

• Suspicious File Download

Model Detections:

• Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname

• Device / New User Agent and New IP

• Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location

• Multiple EXE from Rare External Locations

• Anomalous File / Script from Rare External Location

List of IoCs

IoC - Type - Description + Confidence

f84bb51de50f19ec803b484311053294fbb3b523 - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel Payload IoCs

4eb564b84aac7a5a898af59ee27b1cb00c99a53d - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

8806639a781d0f63549711d3af0f937ffc87585c - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

9d58441d9d31b5c4011b99482afa210b030ecac4 - SHA1 hash - Possible CyberCartel payload

37da048533548c0ad87881e120b8cf2a77528413 - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

2415fcefaf86a83f1174fa50444be7ea830bb4d1 - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

15a94c7e9b356d0ff3bcee0f0ad885b6cf9c1bb7 - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

cdc5da48fca92329927d9dccf3ed513dd28956af - SHA1 hash - Possible CyberCartel payload

693b869bc9ba78d4f8d415eb7016c566ead839f3 - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

04ce764723eaa75e4ee36b3d5cba77a105383dc5 - SHA1 hash - Possible CyberCartel payload

435834167fd5092905ee084038eee54797f4d23e - SHA1 hash - Possible CyberCartel payload

3341b4f46c2f45b87f95168893a7485e35f825fe - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

f6375a1f954f317e16f24c94507d4b04200c63b9 - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

252efff7f54bd19a5c96bbce0bfaeeecadb3752f - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

8080c94e5add2f6ed20e9866a00f67996f0a61ae - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

c5117cedc275c9d403a533617117be7200a2ed77 - SHA1 hash - Possible CyberCartel payload

19dd866abdaf8bc3c518d1c1166fbf279787fc03 - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

548287c0350d6e3d0e5144e20d0f0ce28661f514 - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

f0478e88c8eefc3fd0a8e01eaeb2704a580f88e6 - SHA1 hash - Possible CyberCartel payload

a9809acef61ca173331e41b28d6abddb64c5f192 - SHA1 hash - Likely CyberCartel payload

be96ec94f8f143127962d7bf4131c228474cd6ac - SHA1 hash -Likely CyberCartel payload

44ef336395c41bf0cecae8b43be59170bed6759d - SHA1 hash - Possible CyberCartel payload

facturmx[.]info - Hostname - Likely CyberCartel infection source

consultar-rfc[.]online - Hostname - Possible CyberCartel infection source

srlxlpdfmxntetflx[.]com - Hostname - Likely CyberCartel infection source

facturmx[.]online - Hostname - Possible CyberCartel infection source

rfcconhomoclave[.]mx - Hostname - Possible CyberCartel infection source

situacionfiscal[.]online - Hostname - Likely CyberCartel infection source

descargafactura[.]club - Hostname - Likely CyberCartel infection source

104.156.149[.]33 - IP - Likely CyberCartel C2 endpoint

172.86.68[.]194 - IP - Likely CyberCartel C2 endpoint

139.162.73[.]58 - IP - Likely CyberCartel C2 endpoint

172.105.24[.]190 - IP - Possible CyberCartel C2 endpoint

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Tactic - Technique

Command and Control - Ingress Tool Transfer (T1105)

Command and Control - Web Protocols (T1071.001)

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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Alexandra Sentenac
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Company Shuts Down Cyber-attacks with “Flawless” Detection and Response from Darktrace

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Growing pains: Balancing efficiency with risk  

This organization has recently scaled its operations, and numerous acquisitions have significantly boosted the organization’s capabilities and growth. However, this also creates work and high expectations for the organization’s IT and security teams. Within 12 months of an acquisition, the teams must fully integrate each new business onto the company’s platform. “A huge piece of that integration plan is rolling out our security controls,” said the CISO. “While our goal is to connect those facilities up as quickly as possible to drive efficiency, we also need to implement the proper security controls to protect the enterprise.”

Gap beyond the perimeter  

The organization had established strong security measures to safeguard its perimeter; however, the CISO identified a critical gap in real-time network monitoring. If the perimeter were breached, threats were only discovered after an endpoint was compromised and the issue was manually reported.

As digital transformation progresses, the need to adopt advanced technologies is becoming essential, particularly as organizations begin to open up operational environments to greater connectivity. Many processes still rely on traditional methods, and integrating innovative solutions could drive significant improvements in efficiency and productivity. “We’re committed to adopting cutting-edge technologies,” the CISO explained. “But we understood that without more robust network security controls, opening up our operational environments would expose us to heightened risks, including advanced threats like ransomware.”

Building a layered, proactive security strategy with Darktrace  

To close the gap beyond the perimeter, the company embarked on a free trial with Darktrace. The CISO recalls: “The trials were fantastic. It was obvious that Darktrace was exactly what we needed. The Darktrace team was also very knowledgeable and helpful throughout the process, which was impressive.”  

Today, the organization is using a combination of Darktrace solutions for its layered security approach, including:

Detecting unusual behavior with AI  

Darktrace’s use of machine learning and Self-Learning AI is one of the reasons the company chose Darktrace. Instead of teaching an AI system what an ‘attack’ looks like, training it on large data lakes of thousands of organizations’ data, Darktrace AI learns from the company’s own unique data and user activity to learn and create baseline models of what ‘normal’ looks like for their business.

Darktrace can then detect subtle deviations and unusual activity that signals a possible threat. “That fascinated us because what it really means is this technology doesn’t need to know about every single threat because the threat itself isn’t important, it’s the behavior of the activity that’s important. That capability is unique when it when it comes to threat detection,” said the CISO.

Identifying and mitigating high-impact attack paths

The security team appreciated that with Darktrace they could take a more proactive approach to security by exposing high-risk attack paths through modeling and AI risk assessments. Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management gives them visibility into vulnerable entry points and assets, identifies active risks, and prioritizes the most important security issues to be addressed.

“Specific users and assets within our business have a higher risk of being targeted by a cyber-attack, for example our executives,” said the CISO. “With Darktrace, we get an adversarial view of our risk. We can see the attack path around those potential targets and proactively take measures to mitigate that vulnerability and prevent an attack.”

Driving up productivity while putting the brakes on cyber-attacks  

The security team collaborated with Darktrace to fine tune the models that really fit their business. With Darktrace now automating most of their threat detection and response efforts, productivity has soared, the security team is now focused on delivering greater value to the business and, most importantly, Darktrace proved it could quickly detect and shut down a major cyber-attack–and do so without impacting business operations.

Fueling team productivity with automation and AI

Prior to using Darktrace, the security team had little visibility into potential risks beyond the perimeter. Today, the team has full control and visibility over the network. “My team is now spending 80-90% of their time doing proactive work because Darktrace is managing the vast majority of our detect and response needs. The team really has faith in the Darktrace system,” said the CISO.  

With less time spent on low-level manual tasks, the security team can now focus on higher priority initiatives. For example, they have expanded their internal vulnerability assessments across the entire group. The team couldn’t focus on this additional audit and vulnerability management work if Darktrace wasn’t taking care of most of their security monitoring. “Darktrace has allowed us to move on to these additional kinds of governance projects that we otherwise would have to hire an army of staff to get through”.

Stopping email threats in their tracks

Using Darktrace / EMAIL, the company has identified and blocked a significant percentage of emails that were making it past their native email filters. “Darktrace is especially good at detecting impersonation emails, and we really appreciate its ability to automatically remove suspicious emails directly from a user’s inbox. It adds an extra level of confidence,” said the CISO.

Self-Learning AI understands anomalies within unique communication patterns to stop known and unknown threats. For example, when an employee sent an email to a brand new domain, Darktrace identified the behavior as unusual and inconsistent with baseline models and blocked the email.

Darktrace passes the biggest test of all

In 2024, the company experienced the value of the security system firsthand when attackers exploited a vulnerability in a third-party remote support solution that they was using. This solution provided remote access and tech support capabilities. If successful, the attackers could have infiltrated high-value end points and created their own administrative user, giving them full control over the server.

“We first became aware of the attack when Darktrace notified us of unusual behavior coming from the remote support server,” said the CISO. The attackers were attempting to put backdoors onto the service with the intent of selling access to the highest bidder who would then install ransomware on their servers. It all happened very quickly, as the attackers tried to connect to the internal network and other servers, while also firing off a host of other actions, like PowerShell commands, to escalate their privileges.  

“Darktrace worked flawlessly. There was no chance that ransomware was ever going to come in,” the CISO said. “Even though there was no signature to really look at, Darktrace realized this was not normal behavior for this server, shutting down connections and doing everything it could do to stop the attack.” Within eight hours, the security team identified and stopped the attack, severed its connection to the third-party solution, and completed additional analysis and clean-up. “In addition to our own investigation, third parties like our external SOC and legal department also confirmed that Darktrace performed as expected. We were able to report back to the executive team that there was zero risk that any data or systems were compromised.”

Post-attack, there was no need to make any changes to Darktrace. The team consistently reviews its models and baselines, often collaborating with Darktrace to make adjustments when needed to continuously improve performance. “Because of this relationship and constant engagement with Darktrace’s technical teams, we didn't have to go back and ask: ‘why wasn’t this updated’ or ‘why didn’t this model work.’ The models worked.”

His advice to other organizations facing similar challenges? First, focus on updating, patching, and vulnerability management, and act quickly when vulnerabilities are identified. His second piece of advice: “have an automated detection system like Darktrace in place so you can respond at the speed that these attacks evolve. Humans can no longer keep up with a scripted attack as it moves around and tries to compromise items on your network. You need the right technology to fight these types of attacks.”

Dynamic capabilities for a dynamic future

Real-time playbooks

With a proactive, enterprise-wide security strategy in place, the CISO now has the time to think about future projects and innovations. He’s particularly interested in the idea of generating playbooks on the fly in response to real-time events. He believes cyber-attacks are far too varied for a static playbook to be useful; when an attack strikes, teams need to quickly understand exactly what’s in front of them and how to shut it down. “This fits into our future cybersecurity strategy, and Darktrace is the only company I’ve seen talking about building playbooks dynamically. This kind of technology would really help bring our cybersecurity strategy full circle.”

“Darktrace ’s technology, experience and expertise is helping us staying ahead of cyber-attacks, minimizing our risk and driving greater productivity for our team,” said the CISO. In collaboration with Darktrace, the team have created a security foundation that is both powerful and agile. “While Darktrace is detecting and responding to attacks targeting our business today, we know that it’s always learning, adapting and scaling to ensure we’re protected tomorrow. That gives me peace of mind and the freedom to focus on our future.”

Download the Darktrace / NETWORK Solution Brief

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Protect in real time: Defend against known and emerging threats without relying on historical data or external intelligence.

Full visibility: Gain comprehensive insights across all network environments, including on-premises, cloud, and remote devices.

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Darktrace is Positioned as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Network Detection and Response 2024 Vendor Assessment

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Darktrace is pleased to announce that we have been positioned as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Network Detection and Response 2024 Vendor Assessment. We believe this further highlights Darktrace’s position as a pioneer in the NDR market and follows similar recognition from KuppingerCole, who recently named Darktrace as an Overall Leader, Product Leader, Market Leader and Innovation Leader in the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Network Detection and Response (2024).

Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions are uniquely positioned to provide visibility over the core hub of a business and employee activity, analyzing North-South and East-West traffic to identify threats across the modern network. NDR provides a rich and true source of anomalies and goes beyond process level data that is relied on by Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents that do not provide network level visibility and can be misconfigured at any time.1

Metadata from network traffic can be used to detect a variety of different threats based on events such as anomalous port usage, unusual upload/download activity, impossible travel and many other activities. This has been accelerated by the increased usage of user behavioral analytics (UBA) in network security, which establishes statistical baselines about network entities and highlights deviations from expected activity.1

Darktrace is recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape due to our leadership in the market and our pioneering leadership in AI over the past decade, alongside a variety of other unique differentiators and innovations in the NDR industry.

Darktrace / NETWORK™ delivers full visibility, real time threat detection and Autonomous Response capabilities across an organization’s on-premises, cloud, hybrid and virtual environments, including remote worker endpoints.

Unique Approach to AI

Most NDR vendors and network security tools such as IDS/IPS rely on detecting known attacks with historical data and supervised machine learning, leaving organizations blind and vulnerable to novel threats such as zero-days, variants of known attacks, supply chain attacks and insider threats.

These vendors also tend to apply AI models that are trained globally, and are not unique to each organization’s environment, which creates a high number of false positives and alerts that ultimately lack business context.

The IDC MarketScape recognizes that Darktrace takes a differentiated approach in the market with regards to delivering network detection and response capabilities, noting; “Darktrace is unique in that it does not rely on rules and signatures but rather learns what constitutes as normal for an organization and generates alerts when there is a deviation.”1

Darktrace / NETWORK achieves this through the use of Self-Learning AI and unsupervised machine learning to understand what is normal network behavior, continuously analyzing, mapping and modeling every connection to create a full picture of devices, identities, connections and potential attack paths. Darktrace Self-Learning AI autonomously optimizes itself to cut through the noise and quickly surface genuine, prioritized network security incidents – significantly reducing false positives and removing the hassle of needing to continually tuning alerts manually.

Darktrace’s unique approach to AI also extends to the investigation and triage of network alerts with Cyber AI Analyst. Unlike a chat or prompt based LLM, Cyber AI Analyst investigates all relevant alerts in an environment, including third party alerts, autonomously forming hypotheses and reaching conclusions just like a human analyst would, accelerating SOC Level 2 analyses of incidents by 10x. Cyber AI Analyst also typically providing SOC teams with up to 50,000 additional hours annually of Level 2 analysis producing high level alerts and written reporting, transforming security operations.2

Darktrace also uses its deep understanding of what is normal for a network to identify suspicious behavior, leveraging Autonomous Response capabilities to shut down both known and novel threats in real time, taking targeted actions without disrupting business operations. Darktrace / NETWORK is the only NDR solution that can autonomously enforce a pattern of life based on what is normal for a standalone device or group of peers, rapidly containing and disarming threats based on the overall context of the environment and a granular understanding of what is normal for a device or user – instead of relying on historical attack data.

Continued NDR Market Leadership

Darktrace has been recognized as a Leader in the NDR market, and the IDC MarketScape listed a variety of strengths:

  • Darktrace achieves roughly one-fifth of all global NDR revenue. This is important because other IT and cybersecurity solutions providers necessarily want to have integration with Darktrace.
  • The AI algorithms that Darktrace uses for NDR have had 10 years of deployments, tuning, and learning to draw from.
  • Darktrace is available as a SaaS, as an enterprise license, and as physical, hybrid, or virtual appliances. Darktrace also offers an endpoint agent and visibility into VPN and ZTNA.
  • Darktrace integrates with 30+ different interfaces including SIEM, SOAR, XDR platforms, IT ticketing solutions, and their own dashboards. The Darktrace Threat Visualizer highlights events and incidents from the entire deployment including cloud, apps, email, endpoint, zero trust, network, and OT.
  • Darktrace / NETWORK charts the progress that the SOC is making over time with key metrics such as MTTD/MTTR, alerts generated and processed, and other criteria.
  • Darktrace reported coverage of 14 MITRE ATT&CK categories, 158 techniques, and 184 subtechniques

Proactive Network Resilience

The IDC MarketScape notes, “Ultimately, NDR shines as a standalone detection and response technology but is especially powerful when combined with other platforms. NDR in combination with other control points such as endpoint, data, identity, and application provides the proper context when winnowing alerts and trying to uncover a single source of truth.” . Darktrace comprehensively addresses this as part of the ActiveAI Security Platform, by combining network alerts with data from / EMAIL, / IDENTITY, / ENDPOINT, / CLOUD and / OT, providing deeper contextual analysis for each network alert and automatically enriching investigations.

Darktrace also goes beyond NDR solutions with capabilities that are closely linked to our NDR offering, helping clients to achieve and maintain a state of proactive network resilience:

  • ‍Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management – look beyond just CVE risks to discover, prioritize and validate risks by business impact and how to address them early, reducing the number of real threats that security teams need to handle.‍
  • Darktrace / Incident Readiness & Recovery – lets teams respond in the best way to each incident and proactively test their familiarity and effectiveness of IR workflows with sophisticated incident simulations based on their own analysts and assets.

Together, these solutions allow Darktrace / NETWORK to go beyond the traditional approach to NDR and shift teams to a more hardened and proactive stance.

Protecting Clients with Continued Innovation

Darktrace invests heavily in Research and Development to continue providing customers with market-leading NDR capabilities and innovations, which was reflected in our position in the Leader category of the MarketScape report for both capabilities and strategy. We are led by the needs and challenges of our customers, which serve as the driving force behind our continued innovation and leadership in the NDR market. The IDC MarketScape report underlines this approach with the following feedback presented by Darktrace customers:

“A customer intimated that 99% of their detections were OOTB with little need to tune or define parameters.”
“A customer reported that it had early warnings for adversarial tactics such as suspicious SMB scanning, suspicious remote execution, remote desktop protocol (RDP) scanning, data exfiltration, C2C, LDAP query, and suspicious Kerberos activity.”
“The client could use Regex to determine if suspicious behavior was found elsewhere on the network.”

Thousands of customers around the world across all industries and sectors rely on Darktrace / NETWORK to protect against known and novel threats. From the latest vulnerabilities in network hardware to sophisticated new strains of ransomware and everything in-between, Darktrace helps clients detect and respond to all types of threats affecting their networks and avoid business disruption, even from the latest attacks.

Find out more about the unique capabilities of Darktrace / NETWORK and our application of AI in network security in the IDC MarketScape excerpt.

References

  1. ‍ IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Network Detection and Response 2024 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US51752324, November 2024)
  2. Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst Customer Fleet Data
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About the author
Mikey Anderson
Product Manager, Network Detection & Response
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