Blog
/

Inside the SOC

/
August 29, 2023

Analyzing Post-Exploitation on Papercut Servers

Default blog imageDefault blog imageDefault blog imageDefault blog imageDefault blog imageDefault blog image
29
Aug 2023
Dive into our analysis covering post-exploitation activity on PaperCut servers. Learn the details and impact of this attack and how to keep yourself safe!

Introduction

Malicious cyber actors are known to exploit vulnerabilities in Internet-facing systems and services to gain entry to organizations’ digital environments. Keeping track of the vulnerabilities which malicious actors are exploiting is seemingly futile, with malicious actors continually finding new avenues of exploitation.  

In mid-April 2023, Darktrace, along with the wider security community, observed malicious cyber actors gaining entry to networks through exploitation of a critical vulnerability in the print management system, PaperCut. Darktrace observed two types of attack chain within its customer base, one involving the deployment of payloads to facilitate crypto-mining, and the other involving the deployment of a payload to facilitate Tor-based command-and-control (C2) communication.

Walking Through the Front Door

One of the most widely abused Initial Access methods attackers use to gain entry to an organization’s digital environment is the exploitation of vulnerabilities in Internet-facing systems and services [1]. The public disclosure of a critical vulnerability in a widely used, Internet-facing service, along with a proof of concept (POC) exploit for such vulnerability, provides malicious cyber actors with a key to the front door of countless organizations. Once malicious actors are in possession of such a key, security teams are in a race against time to patch all their vulnerable systems and services. But until organizations accomplish this, the doors are left open.

This year, the security community has seen malicious actors gaining entry to networks through the exploitation of vulnerabilities in a range of services. These services include familiar suspects, such as Microsoft Exchange and ManageEngine, along with less familiar suspects, such as PaperCut. PaperCut is a system for managing and tracking printing, copying, and scanning activity within organizations. In 2021, PaperCut was used in more than 50,000 sites across over 100 countries [2], making PaperCut a widely used print management system.

In January 2023, Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) notified PaperCut of a critical RCE vulnerability, namely CVE-2023–27350, in certain versions of PaperCut NG (PaperCut’s ‘print only’ variant) and PaperCut MF (PaperCut’s ‘extended feature’ variant) [3,4]. In March 2023, PaperCut released versions of PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF containing a fix for CVE-2023–27350 [4]. Despite this, security teams observed a surge in cases of malicious actors exploiting CVE-2023–27350 to compromise PaperCut servers in April 2023 [4-10]. This trend was mirrored in Darktrace’s customer base, where a surge in compromises of PaperCut servers was observed in April 2023.

Observed Attack Chains

In mid-April 2023, Darktrace identified two related clusters of attack chains. The attack chains within the first of these clusters involved Internet-facing PaperCut servers downloading payloads with crypto-mining capabilities from the external location, 50.19.48[.]59. While the attack chains within the second of the clusters involved Internet-facing PaperCut servers downloading payloads with Tor-based C2 capabilities from 192.184.35[.]216. The attack chains within the first cluster, which were observed on April 22, 2023, will be referred to as ‘50.19.48[.]59 chains’ and the attack chains in the second cluster, observed on April 24, 2023, will be called ‘192.184.35[.]216 chains’.

Both attack chains started with highly unusual external endpoints contacting the '/SetupCompleted' endpoint of an Internet-facing PaperCut server. These requests to the ‘/SetupCompleted’ endpoint likely represented attempts to exploit CVE-2023–27350 [10].  50.19.48[.]59 chains started with exploit connections from the external endpoint, 85.106.112[.]60, whereas 192.184.35[.]216 chains started with exploit connections from Tor nodes, such as 185.34.33[.]2.

Figure 1: Darktrace’s Advanced Search data showing likely CVE-2023-27350 exploitation activity from the suspicious, external endpoint, 85.106.112[.]60.

After the exploitation step, the two attack chains took different paths. In the 50.19.48[.]59 chains, the exploitation step was followed by the affected PaperCut server making HTTP GET requests over port 82 to the rare external endpoint, 50.19.48[.]59. In the 192.184.35[.]216 chains, the exploitation step was followed by the affected PaperCut server making an HTTP GET request over port 443 to 192.184.35[.]216.

The HTTP GET requests to 50.19.48[.]59 had Target URIs such as ‘/me1.bat’, ‘/me2.bat’, ‘/dom.zip’, ‘/mazar.bat’, and ‘/mazar.zip’, whilst the HTTP GET requests to 192.184.35[.]216 had the Target URI ‘/4591187629.exe’. The User-Agent header of the GET requests to 192.184.35[.]216 indicated that that the malicious file transfers were initiated through Microsoft’s pre-installed Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS).

Figure 2: Darktrace’s Advanced Search data showing a PaperCut server downloading Batch and ZIP files from 50.19.48[.]59 straight after receiving likely exploit connections from 85.106.112[.]60.
Figure 3: Darktrace’s Event Log data showing a PaperCut server downloading an executable file from 192.184.35[.]216 immediately after receiving a likely exploit connection from the Tor node, 185.34.33[.]2.

Downloads from 50.19.48[.]59 were followed by cURL GET requests to 138.68.61[.]82 and then connections to external endpoints associated with the cryptocurrency miner, Mimu (as seen in Fig 4). Downloads from 192.184.35[.]216 were followed by Python-urllib GET requests to api.ipify[.]org and long connections to Tor nodes (as seen in Fig 5).  

These facts suggest that the actor behind the 50.19.48[.]59 chains were seeking to drop cryptocurrency miners on PaperCut servers, with the intention of abusing the customer’s network to carry out resource intensive and costly cryptocurrency mining activity. Meanwhile, the actors behind the 192.184.35[.]216 chains were likely attempting to establish a Tor-based C2 channel with PaperCut servers to allow actors to further communicate with compromised devices.

Figure 4: Darktrace's Event Log data showing a PaperCut contacting 50.19.48[.]59 to download payloads, and then making a cURL request to 138.68.61[.]82 before contacting a Mimu crypto-mining endpoint.
Figure 5: Darktrace’s Event Log data showing a PaperCut server contacting 192.184.35[.]216 to download a payload, and then making connections to api.ipify[.]org and several Tor nodes.

The activities ensuing from both attack chains were varied, making it difficult to ascertain whether the activities were steps of separate attack chains, or steps of the existing 50.19.48[.]59 and 192.184.35[.]216 chains. A wide variety of activities ensued from observed 50.19.48[.]59 and 192.184.35[.]216 chains, including the abuse of pre-installed tools, such as cURL, CertUtil, and PowerShell to transfer further payloads to PaperCut servers, Cobalt Strike C2 communication, Ngrok usage, Mimikatz usage, AnyDesk usage, and in one case, detonation of the LockBit ransomware strain.

Figure 6: Diagram representing the steps of observed 50.19.48[.]59 chains.
Figure 7: Diagram representing the steps of observed 192.184.35[.]215 chains.

As the PaperCut servers that were targeted by malicious actors are Internet-facing, they regularly receive connections from unusual external endpoints. The exploit connections in the 50.19.48[.]59 and 192.184.35[.]216 chains, which originated from unusual external endpoints, were therefore not detected by Darktrace DETECT™, which relies on anomaly-based methods to detect network-based steps of an intrusion.

On the other hand, the post-exploitation steps of the 50.19.48[.]59 and 192.184.35[.]216 chains yielded ample anomaly-based detections, given that they consisted of PaperCut servers displaying highly unusual behaviors. As such Darktrace DETECT was able to successfully identify multiple chains of suspicious activity, including unusual file downloads from external endpoints and beaconing activity to rare external locations.

The file downloads from 50.19.48[.]59 observed in the 50.19.48[.]59 chains caused the following Darktrace DETECT models to breach:

- Anomalous Connection / Application Protocol on Uncommon Port

- Anomalous File / Internet Facing System File Download

- Anomalous File / Script from Rare External Location

- Anomalous File / Zip or Gzip from Rare External Location

- Device / Internet Facing Device with High Priority Alert

Figure 8: Darktrace’s Event Log data showing a PaperCut server breaching several models immediately after contacting 50.19.48[.]59.

The file downloads from 192.184.35[.]216 observed in the 192.184.35[.]216 chains caused the following Darktrace DETECT models to breach:

- Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location

- Anomalous File / Numeric File Download

- Device / Internet Facing Device with High Priority Alert

Figure 9: Darktrace’s Event Log data showing a PaperCut server breaching several models immediately after contacting 192.184.35[.]216.

Subsequent C2, beaconing, and crypto-mining connections in the 50.19.48[.]59 chains caused the following Darktrace DETECT models to breach:

- Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname

- Anomalous Server Activity / New User Agent from Internet Facing System

- Anomalous Server Activity / Rare External from Server

- Compromise / Crypto Currency Mining Activity

- Compromise / High Priority Crypto Currency Mining

- Compromise / High Volume of Connections with Beacon Score

- Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Failed Connections

- Compromise / SSL Beaconing to Rare Destination

- Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise

- Device / Large Number of Model Breaches

Figure 10: Darktrace’s Event Log data showing a PaperCut server breaching models as a result of its connections to a Mimu crypto-mining endpoint.

Subsequent C2, beaconing, and Tor connections in the 192.184.35[.]216 chains caused the following Darktrace DETECT models to breach:

- Anomalous Connection / Application Protocol on Uncommon Port

- Compromise / Anomalous File then Tor

- Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare

- Compromise / Possible Tor Usage

- Compromise / Slow Beaconing Activity To External Rare

- Compromise / Uncommon Tor Usage

- Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise

Figure 11: Darktrace’s Event Log data showing a PaperCut server breaching several models as a result of its connections to Tor nodes.

Darktrace RESPOND

Darktrace RESPOND™ was not active in any of the networks affected by 192.184.35[.]216 activity, however, RESPOND was active in some of the networks affected by 50.19.48[.]59 activity.  In those environments where RESPOND was enabled in autonomous mode, observed malicious activities resulted in intervention from RESPOND, including autonomous actions like blocking connections to specific external endpoints, blocking all outgoing traffic, and restricting affected devices to a pre-established pattern of behavior.

Figure 12: Darktrace’s Event Log data showing Darktrace RESPOND automatically performing inhibitive actions on a device in response to the device’s connection to 50.19.48[.]59.
Figure 13: Darktrace’s Event Log data showing Darktrace RESPOND automatically performing inhibitive actions on a device in response to the device’s connections to a Mimu crypto-mining endpoint.

Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst

Cyber AI Analyst autonomously investigated model breaches caused by events within these 50.19.48[.]59 and 192.184.35[.]216 chains. Cyber AI Analyst created user-friendly and detailed descriptions of these events, and then linked together these descriptions into threads representing the attack chains. Darktrace DETECT thus uncovered the individual steps of the attack chains, while Cyber AI Analyst was able to piece together the individual steps and uncover the attack chains themselves.  

Figure 14: An AI Analyst Incident entry showing the first event in a 50.19.48[.]59 chain uncovered by Cyber AI Analyst.
Figure 15: An AI Analyst Incident entry showing the second event in a 50.19.48[.]59 chain uncovered by Cyber AI Analyst.
Figure 16: An AI Analyst Incident entry showing the third event in a 50.19.48[.]59 chain uncovered by Cyber AI Analyst.
Figure 17: An AI Analyst Incident entry showing the first event in a 192.184.35[.]216 chain uncovered by Cyber AI Analyst.
Figure 18: An AI Analyst Incident entry showing the second event in a 192.184.35[.]216 chain uncovered by Cyber AI Analyst.

Conclusion

The existence of critical vulnerabilities in third-party software leaves organizations at constant risk of malicious actors breaching the perimeters of their networks. This risk can be mitigated through attack surface management and regular patching. However, this does not eliminate cyber risk entirely, meaning that organizations must be prepared for the eventuality of malicious actors getting inside their digital estate.

In April 2023, Darktrace observed malicious actors breaching the perimeters of several customer networks through exploitation of a critical vulnerability in PaperCut. Darktrace DETECT observed actors exploiting PaperCut servers to conduct a wide variety of post-exploitation activities, including downloading malicious payloads associated with cryptocurrency mining or payloads with Tor-based C2 capabilities. Darktrace DETECT created numerous model breaches based on this activity which alerted then customer’s security teams early in their development, providing them with ample time to take mitigative steps.

The successful detection of this payload delivery activity, along with the crypto-mining, beaconing, and Tor C2 activities which followed, elicited Darktrace RESPOND to take autonomous inhibitive action against the ongoing activity in those environments where it was operating in autonomous response mode.

If left to unfold, these intrusions developed in a variety of ways, in some cases leading to Cobalt Strike and ransomware activity. The detection of these intrusions in their early stages thus played a vital role in preventing malicious cyber actors from causing significant disruption.

Credit to: Sam Lister, Senior SOC Analyst, Zoe Tilsiter, Senior Cyber Analyst.

Appendices

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Initial Access techniques:

- Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190)

Execution techniques:

- Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell (T1059.001)

Discovery techniques:

- System Network Configuration Discovery (T1016)

Command and Control techniques

- Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols (T1071.001)

- Encrypted Channel: Asymmetric Cryptography (T1573.002)

- Ingress Tool Transfer (T1105)

- Non-Standard Port (T1571)

- Protocol Tunneling (T1572)

- Proxy: Multi-hop Proxy (T1090.003)

- Remote Access Software (T1219)

Defense Evasion techniques:

- BITS Jobs (T1197)

Impact techniques:

- Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486)

List of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

IoCs from 50.19.48[.]59 attack chains:

- 85.106.112[.]60

- http://50.19.48[.]59:82/me1.bat

- http://50.19.48[.]59:82/me2.bat

- http://50.19.48[.]59:82/dom.zip

- 138.68.61[.]82

- update.mimu-me[.]cyou • 102.130.112[.]157

- 34.195.77[.]216

- http://50.19.48[.]59:82/mazar.bat

- http://50.19.48[.]59:82/mazar.zip

- http://50.19.48[.]59:82/prx.bat

- http://50.19.48[.]59:82/lol.exe  

- http://77.91.85[.]117/122.exe

- windows.n1tro[.]cyou • 176.28.51[.]151

- 77.91.85[.]117

- 91.149.237[.]76

- kernel-mlclosoft[.]site • 104.21.29[.]206

- tunnel.us.ngrok[.]com • 3.134.73[.]173

- 212.113.116[.]105

- c34a54599a1fbaf1786aa6d633545a60 (JA3 client fingerprint of crypto-mining client)

IoCs from 192.184.35[.]216 attack chains:

- 185.56.83[.]83

- 185.34.33[.]2

- http://192.184.35[.]216:443/4591187629.exe

- api.ipify[.]org • 104.237.62[.]211

- www.67m4ipctvrus4cv4qp[.]com • 192.99.43[.]171

- www.ynbznxjq2sckwq3i[.]com • 51.89.106[.]29

- www.kuo2izmlm2silhc[.]com • 51.89.106[.]29

- 148.251.136[.]16

- 51.158.231[.]208

- 51.75.153[.]22

- 82.66.61[.]19

- backmainstream-ltd[.]com • 77.91.72[.]149

- 159.65.42[.]223

- 185.254.37[.]236

- http://137.184.56[.]77:443/for.ps1

- http://137.184.56[.]77:443/c.bat

- 45.88.66[.]59

- http://5.8.18[.]237/download/Load64.exe

- http://5.8.18[.]237/download/sdb64.dll

- 140e0f0cad708278ade0984528fe8493 (JA3 client fingerprint of Tor-based client)

References

[1] https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa22-137a

[2] https://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/PaperCutMFSolutionBrief/

[3] https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-23-233/

[4] https://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/PO-1216-and-PO-1219

[5] https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/23/d/update-now-papercut-vulnerability-cve-2023-27350-under-active-ex.html

[6] https://www.huntress.com/blog/critical-vulnerabilities-in-papercut-print-management-software

[7] https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2023/04/27/increased-exploitation-of-papercut-drawing-blood-around-the-internet/

[8] https://twitter.com/MsftSecIntel/status/1651346653901725696

[9] https://twitter.com/MsftSecIntel/status/1654610012457648129

[10] https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa23-131a

‍

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.
Author
Sam Lister
SOC Analyst
Watch the NIS2 Webinar
Book a 1-1 meeting with one of our experts
Get in touch
Share this article
Trending blogs
1
Darktrace is Positioned as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Network Detection and Response 2024 Vendor Assessment
Dec 9, 2024
2
Cloud Security: Addressing Common CISO Challenges with Advanced Solutions
Nov 28, 2024
3
Preparing for 2025: Darktrace's Top 10 AI and Cybersecurity Predictions
Nov 3, 2024
4
Navigating Buying and Adoption Journeys for AI Cybersecurity Tools
Oct 15, 2024
5
How Darktrace won an email security trial by learning the business, not the breach
Oct 9, 2024

More in this series

No items found.

Blog

/

December 12, 2024

/
No items found.

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

Default blog imageDefault blog image

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

Darktrace / NETWORK solution brief screenshot

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.

AI-powered efficiency: Streamline incident response with AI automation, saving time and resources while ensuring minimal disruption to operations.

Continue reading
About the author
The Darktrace Community

Blog

/

December 11, 2024

/
No items found.

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

Default blog imageDefault blog image

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
Continue reading
About the author
Mikey Anderson
Product Manager, Network Detection & Response
Your data. Our AI.
Elevate your network security with Darktrace AI