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Inside the SOC
PREVENT
Exploring the Cyber AI Loop as an Analyst: PREVENT/ASM & DETECT
On countless occasions, Darktrace has observed cyber-attacks disrupting business operations by using a vulnerable internet-facing asset as a starting point for infection. Finding that one entry point could be all a threat actor needs to compromise an entire organization. With the objective to prevent such vulnerabilities from being exploited, Darktrace’s latest product family includes Attack Surface Management (ASM) to continuously monitor customer attack surfaces for risks, high-impact vulnerabilities and potential external threats.
An attack surface is the sum of exposed and internet-facing assets and the associated risks a hacker can exploit to carry out a cyber-attack. PREVENT/ASM uses AI to understand what external assets belong to an organization by searching beyond known servers, networks, and IPs across public data sources.
This blog discusses how Darktrace PREVENT/ASM could combine with DETECT to find potential vulnerabilities and subsequent exploitation within network traffic. In particular, this blog will investigate the assets of a large Australian company which operates in the environmental sciences industry.
Introducing ASM
In order to understand the link between PREVENT and DETECT, the core features of ASM should first be showcased.
When facing the landing page, the UI highlights the number of registered assets identified (with zero prior deployment). The tool then organizes the information gathered online in an easily assessable manner. Analysts can see vulnerable assets according to groupings like ‘Misconfiguration’, ‘Social Media Threat’ and ‘Information Leak’ which shows the type of risk posed to said assets.
The Network tab helps analysts to filter further to take more rapid action on the most vulnerable assets and interact with them to gather more information. The image below has been filtered by assets with the ‘highest scoring’ risk.
Interacting with the showcased asset selected above allows pivoting to the following page, this provides more granular information around risk metrics and the asset itself. This includes a more detailed description of what the vulnerabilities are, as well as general information about the endpoint including its location, URL, web status and technologies used.
Filtering does not end here. Within the Insights tab, analysts can use the search bar to craft personalized queries and narrow their focus to specific types of risk such as vulnerable software, open ports, or potential cybersquatting attempts from malicious actors impersonating company brands. Likewise, filters can be made for assets that may be running software at risk from a new CVE.
For each of the entries that can be read on the left-hand side, a query that could resemble the one on the top right exists. This allows users to locate specific findings beyond those risks that are categorized as critical. These broader searches can range from viewing the inventory as a whole, to seeing exposed APIs, expiring certificates, or potential shadow IT. Queries will return a list with all the assets matching the given criteria, and users can then explore them further by viewing the asset page as seen in Figure 4.
Compromise Scenario
Now that a basic explanation of PREVENT/ASM has been given, this scenario will continue to look at the Australian customer but show how Darktrace can follow a potential compromise of an at-risk ASM asset into the network.
Having certain ports open could make it particularly easy for an attacker to access an internet-facing asset, particularly those sensitive ones such as 3389 (RDP), 445 (SMB), 135 (RPC Epmapper). Alternatively, a vulnerable program with a well-known exploitation could also aid the task for threat actors.
In this specific case, PREVENT/ASM identified multiple external assets that belonged to the customer with port 3389 open. One of these assets can be labelled as ‘Server A'. Whilst RDP connections can be protected with a password for a given user, if those were weak to bruteforce, it could be an easy task for an attacker to establish an admin session remotely to the victim machine.
N or zero-day vulnerabilities associated with the protocol could also be exploited; for example, CVE-2019-0708 exploits an RCE vulnerability in Remote Desktop where an unauthenticated attacker connects to the target system using RDP and sends specially crafted requests. This vulnerability is pre-authentication and requires no user interaction.
Certain protocols are known to be sensitive according to the control they provide on a destination machine. These are developed for administrative purposes but have the potential to ease an attacker’s job if accessible. Thanks to PREVENT/ASM, security teams can anticipate such activity by having visibility over those assets that could be vulnerable. If this RDP were successfully exploited, DETECT/Network would then highlight the unusual activity performed by the compromised device as the attacker moved through the kill chain.
There are several models within DETECT/Network which monitor for risks against internet facing assets. For example, ‘Server A’ which had an open 3389 port on ASM registered the following model breach in the network:
A model like this could highlight a misconfiguration that has caused an internal device to become unexpectedly open to the internet. It could also suggest a compromised device that has now been opened to the internet to allow further exploitation. If the result of a sudden change, such an asset would also be detected by ASM and highlighted within the ‘New Assets’ part of the Insights page. Ultimately this connection was not malicious, however it shows the ability for security teams to track between PREVENT to DETECT and verify an initial compromise.
A mock scenario can take this further. Using the continued example of an open port 3389 intrusion, new RDP cookies may be registered (perhaps even administrative). This could enable further lateral movement and eventual privilege escalation. Various DETECT models would highlight actions of this nature, two examples are below:
Alongside efforts to move laterally, Darktrace may find attempts at reconnaissance or C2 communication from compromised internet facing devices by looking at Darktrace DETECT model breaches including ‘Network Scan’, ‘SMB Scanning’ and ‘Active Directory Reconnaissance’. In this case the network also saw repeated failed internal connections followed by the ‘LDAP Brute-Force Activity model’ around the same time as the RDP activity. Had this been malicious, DETECT would then continue to provide visibility into the C2 and eventual malware deployment stages.
With the combined visibility of both tools, Darktrace users have support for greater triage across the whole kill chain. For customers also using RESPOND, actions will be taken from the DETECT alerting to subsequently block malicious activity. In doing so, inputs will have fed across the whole Cyber AI Loop by having learnt from PREVENT, DETECT and RESPOND.
This feed from the Cyber AI Loop works both ways. In Figure 9, below, a DETECT model breach shows a customer alert from an internet facing device:
This breach took place because an established server suddenly started serving HTTP sessions on a port commonly used for HTTPS (secure) connections. This could be an indicator that a criminal may have gained control of the device and set it to listen on the given port and enable direct connection to the attacker’s machine or command and control server. This device can be viewed by an analyst in its Darktrace PREVENT version, where new metrics can be observed from a perspective outside of the network.
This page reports the associated risks that could be leveraged by malicious actors. In this case, the events are not correlated, but in the event of an attack, this backwards pivoting could help to pinpoint a weak link in the chain and show what allowed the attacker into the network. In doing so this supports the remediation and recovery process. More importantly though, it allows organizations to be proactive and take appropriate security measures required before it could ever be exploited.
Concluding Thoughts
The combination of PREVENT/ASM with DETECT/Network provides wide and in-depth visibility over a company’s infrastructure. Through the Cyber AI Loop, this coverage is continually learning and updating based on inputs from both. PREVENT/ASM can show companies the potential weaknesses that a cybercriminal could take advantage of. In turn this allows them to prioritize patching, updating, and management of their internet facing assets. At the same time, Darktrace DETECT will show the anomalous behavior of any of these internet facing devices, enabling security teams or RESPOND to stop an attack. Use of these tools by an analyst together is effective in gaining informed security data which can be fed back to IT management. Leveraging this allows normal company operations to be performed without the worry of cyber disruption.
Credit to: Emma Foulger, Senior Cyber Analyst at Darktrace
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Inside the SOC
How Abuse of ‘PerfectData Software’ May Create a Perfect Storm: An Emerging Trend in Account Takeovers
Amidst the ever-changing threat landscape, new tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) seem to emerge daily, creating extreme challenges for security teams. The broad range of attack methods utilized by attackers seems to present an insurmountable problem: how do you defend against a playbook that does not yet exist?
Faced with the growing number of novel and uncommon attack methods, it is essential for organizations to adopt a security solution able to detect threats based on their anomalies, rather than relying on threat intelligence alone.
In March 2023, Darktrace observed an emerging trend in the use of an application known as ‘PerfectData Software’ for probable malicious purposes in several Microsoft 365 account takeovers.
Using its anomaly-based detection, Darktrace DETECT™ was able to identify the activity chain surrounding the use of this application, potentially uncovering a novel piece of threat actor tradecraft in the process.
Microsoft 365 Intrusions
In recent years, Microsoft’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) suite, Microsoft 365, along with its built-in identity and access management (IAM) service, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), have been heavily targeted by threat actors due to their near-ubiquitous usage across industries. Four out of every five Fortune 500 companies, for example, use Microsoft 365 services [1].
Malicious actors typically gain entry to organizations’ Microsoft 365 environments by abusing either stolen account credentials or stolen session cookies [2]. Once inside, actors can access sensitive data within mailboxes or SharePoint repositories, and send out emails or Teams messages. This activity can often result in serious financial harm, especially in cases where the malicious actor’s end-goal is to elicit fraudulent transactions.
Darktrace regularly observes malicious actors behaving in predictable ways once they gain access to customer Microsoft 365 environment. One typical example is the creation of new inbox rules and sending deceitful emails intended to convince recipients to carry out subsequent actions, such as following a malicious link or providing sensitive information. It is also common for actors to register new applications in Azure AD so that they can be used to conduct follow-up activities, like mass-mailing or data theft. The registration of applications in Azure AD therefore seems to be a relatively predictable threat actor behavior [3][4]. Darktrace DETECT understands that unusual application registrations in Azure AD may constitute a deviation in expected behavior, and therefore a possible indicator of account compromise.
These registrations of applications in Azure AD are evidenced by creations of, as well as assignments of permissions to, Service Principals in Azure AD. Darktrace has detected a growing trend in actors creating and assigning permissions to a Service Principal named ‘PerfectData Software’. Further investigation of this Azure AD activity revealed it to be part of an ongoing account takeover.
‘PerfectData Software’ Activity
Darktrace observed variations of the following pattern of activity relating to an application named ‘PerfectData Software’ within its customer base:
- Actor signs in to a Microsoft 365 account from an endpoint associated with a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or Virtual Private Network (VPN) service
- Actor registers an application called 'PerfectData Software' with Azure AD, and then grants permissions to the application
- Actor accesses mailbox data and creates inbox rule
In two separate incidents, malicious actors were observed conducting their activities from endpoints associated with VPN services (HideMyAss (HMA) VPN and Surfshark VPN, respectively) and from endpoints within the Autonomous System AS396073 MAJESTIC-HOSTING-01.
In March 2023, Darktrace observed a malicious actor signing in to a Microsoft 365 account from a Kuwait-based IP address within the Autonomous System, AS198605 AVAST Software s.r.o. This IP address is associated with the VPN service, HMA VPN. Over the next couple of days, an actor (likely the same malicious actor) signed in to the account several more times from two different Nigeria-based endpoints, as well as a VPS-related endpoint and a HMA VPN endpoint.
During their login sessions, the actor performed a variety of actions. First, they created and assigned permissions to a Service Principal named ‘PerfectData Software’. This Service Principal creation represents the registration of an application called ‘PerfectData Software’ in Azure AD. Although the reason for registering this application is unclear, within a few days the actor registered and granted permission to another application, ‘Newsletter Software Supermailer’, and created a new inbox rule names ‘s’ on the mailbox of the hijacked account. This inbox rule moved emails meeting certain conditions to a folder named ‘RSS Subscription. The ‘Newsletter Software Supermailer’ application was likely registered by the actor to facilitate mass-mailing activity.
Immediately after these actions, Darktrace detected the actor sending out thousands of malicious emails from the account. The emails included an attachment named ‘Credit Transfer Copy.html’, which contained a suspicious link. Further investigation revealed that the customer’s network had received several fake invoice emails prior to this initial intrusion activity. Additionally, there was an unusually high volume of failed logins to the compromised account around the time of the initial access.
In a separate case also observed by Darktrace in March 2023, a malicious actor was observed signing in to a Microsoft 365 account from an endpoint within the Autonomous System, AS397086 LAYER-HOST-HOUSTON. The endpoint appears to be related to the VPN service, Surfshark VPN. This login was followed by several failed and successful logins from a VPS-related within the Autonomous System, AS396073 MAJESTIC-HOSTING-01. The actor was then seen registering and assigning permissions to an application called ‘PerfectData Software’. As with the previous example, the motives for this registration are unclear. The actor proceeded to log in several more times from a Surfshark VPN endpoint, however, they were not observed carrying out any further suspicious activity.
It was not clear in either of these examples, nor in fact any of cases observed by Darktrace, why actors had registered and assigned permissions to an application called ‘PerfectData Software’, and there do not appear to be any open-source intelligence (OSINT) resources or online literature related to the malicious usage of an application by that name. That said, there are several websites which appear to provide email migration and data recovery/backup tools under the moniker ‘PerfectData Software’.
It is unclear whether the use of ‘PerfectData Software’ by malicious actors observed on the networks of Darktrace customers was one of these tools. However, given the nature of the tools, it is possible that the actors intended to use them to facilitate the exfiltration of email data from compromises mailboxes.
If the legitimate software ‘PerfectData’ is the application in question in these incidents, it is likely being purchased and misused by attackers for malicious purposes. It is also possible the application referenced in the incidents is a spoof of the legitimate ‘PerfectData’ software designed to masquerade a malicious application as legitimate.
Darktrace Coverage
Cases of ‘PerfectData Software’ activity chains detected by Darktrace typically began with an actor signing into an internal user’s Microsoft 365 account from a VPN or VPS-related endpoint. These login events, along with the suspicious email and/or brute-force activity which preceded them, caused the following DETECT models to breach:
- SaaS / Access / Unusual External Source for SaaS Credential Use
- SaaS / Access / Suspicious Login Attempt
- SaaS / Compromise / Login From Rare Following Suspicious Login Attempt(s)
- SaaS / Email Nexus / Unusual Location for SaaS and Email Activity
Subsequent activities, including inbox rule creations, registration of applications in Azure AD, and mass-mailing activity, resulted in breaches of the following DETECT models.
- SaaS / Admin / OAuth Permission Grant
- SaaS / Compromise / Unusual Logic Following OAuth Grant
- SaaS / Admin / New Application Service Principal
- IaaS / Admin / Azure Application Administration Activities
- SaaS / Compliance / New Email Rule
- SaaS / Compromise / Unusual Login and New Email Rule
- SaaS / Email Nexus / Suspicious Internal Exchange Activity
- SaaS / Email Nexus / Possible Outbound Email Spam
- SaaS / Compromise / Unusual Login and Outbound Email Spam
- SaaS / Compromise / Suspicious Login and Suspicious Outbound Email(s)
In cases where Darktrace RESPOND™ was enabled in autonomous response mode, ‘PerfectData Software’ activity chains resulted in breaches of the following RESPOND models:
• Antigena / SaaS / Antigena Suspicious SaaS Activity Block
• Antigena / SaaS / Antigena Significant Compliance Activity Block
In response to these model breaches, Darktrace RESPOND took immediate action, performing aggressive, inhibitive actions, such as forcing the actor to log out of the SaaS platform, and disabling the user entirely. When applied autonomously, these RESPOND actions would seriously impede an attacker’s progress and minimize network disruption.
In addition, Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst was able to autonomously investigate registrations of the ‘PerfectData Software’ application and summarized its findings into digestible reports.
Conclusion
Due to the widespread adoption of Microsoft 365 services in the workplace and continued emphasis on a remote workforce, account hijackings now pose a more serious threat to organizations around the world than ever before. The cases discussed here illustrate the tendency of malicious actors to conduct their activities from endpoints associated with VPN services, while also registering new applications, like PerfectData Software, with malicious intent.
While it was unclear exactly why the malicious actors were using ‘PerfectData Software’ as part of their account hijacking, it is clear that either the legitimate or spoofed version of the application is becoming an very likely emergent piece of threat actor tradecraft.
Darktrace DETECT’s anomaly-based approach to threat detection allowed it to recognize that the use of ‘PerfectData Software’ represented a deviation in the SaaS user’s expected behavior. While Darktrace RESPOND, when enabled in autonomous response mode, was able to quickly take preventative action against threat actors, blocking the potential use of the application for data exfiltration or other nefarious purposes.
Appendices
MITRE ATT&CK Mapping
Reconnaissance:
• T1598 – Phishing for Information
Credential Access:
• T1110 – Brute Force
Initial Access:
• T1078.004 – Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts
Command and Control:
• T1105 – Ingress Tool Transfer
Persistence:
• T1098.003 – Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Roles
Collection:
• T1114 – Email Collection
Defense Evasion:
• T1564.008 – Hide Artifacts: Email Hiding Rules
Lateral Movement:
• T1534 – Internal Spearphishing
Unusual Source IPs
• 5.62.60[.]202 (AS198605 AVAST Software s.r.o.)
• 160.152.10[.]215 (AS37637 Smile-Nigeria-AS)
• 197.244.250[.]155 (AS37705 TOPNET)
• 169.159.92[.]36 (AS37122 SMILE)
• 45.62.170[.]237 (AS396073 MAJESTIC-HOSTING-01)
• 92.38.180[.]49 (AS202422 G-Core Labs S.A)
• 129.56.36[.]26 (AS327952 AS-NATCOM)
• 92.38.180[.]47 (AS202422 G-Core Labs S.A.)
• 107.179.20[.]214 (AS397086 LAYER-HOST-HOUSTON)
• 45.62.170[.]31 (AS396073 MAJESTIC-HOSTING-01)
References
[1] https://www.investing.com/academy/statistics/microsoft-facts/
[2] https://intel471.com/blog/countering-the-problem-of-credential-theft
[3] https://darktrace.com/blog/business-email-compromise-to-mass-phishing-campaign-attack-analysis
[4] https://darktrace.com/blog/breakdown-of-a-multi-account-compromise-within-office-365
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Cloud
Darktrace Integrates Self-Learning AI with Amazon Security Lake to Support Security Investigations
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Darktrace has deepened its relationship with AWS by integrating its detection and response capabilities with Amazon Security Lake.
This development will allow mutual customers to seamlessly combine Darktrace AI’s bespoke understanding of their organization with the Threat Intelligence offered by other security tools, and investigate all of their alerts in one central location.
This integration will improve the value security teams get from both products, streamlining analyst workflows and improving their ability to detect and respond to the full spectrum of known and unknown cyber-threats.
How Darktrace and Amazon Security Lake augment security teams
Amazon Security Lake is a newly-released service that automatically centralizes an organization’s security data from cloud, on-premises, and custom sources into a customer owned purpose-built data lake. Both Darktrace and Amazon Security Lake support the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF), an open standard to simplify, combine, and analyze security logs.
Customers can store security logs, events, alerts, and other relevant data generated by various AWS services and security tools. By consolidating security data in a central lake, organizations can gain a holistic view of their security posture, perform advanced analytics, detect anomalies and open investigations to improve their security practices.
With Darktrace DETECT and RESPOND AI engines covering all assets across IT, OT, network, endpoint, IoT, email and cloud, organizations can augment the value of their security data lakes by feeding Darktrace’s rich and context-aware datapoints to Amazon Security Lake.
Amazon Security Lake empowers security teams to improve the protection of your digital estate:
- Quick and painless data normalization
- Fast-tracks ability to investigate, triage and respond to security events
- Broader visibility aids more effective decision-making
- Surfaces and prioritizes anomalies for further investigation
- Single interface for seamless data management
How will Darktrace customers benefit?
Across the Cyber AI Loop, all Darktrace solutions have been architected with AWS best practices in mind. With this integration, Darktrace is bringing together its understanding of ‘self’ for every organization with the centralized data visibility of the Amazon Security Lake. Darktrace’s unique approach to cyber security, powered by groundbreaking AI research, delivers a superior dataset based on a deep and interconnected understanding of the enterprise.
Where other cyber security solutions are trained to identify threats based on historical attack data and techniques, Darktrace DETECT gains a bespoke understanding of every digital environment, continuously analyzing users, assets, devices and the complex relationships between them. Our AI analyzes thousands of metrics to reveal subtle deviations that may signal an evolving issue – even unknown techniques and novel malware. It distinguishes between malicious and benign behavior, identifying harmful activity that typically goes unnoticed. This rich dataset is fed into RESPOND, which takes precise action to neutralize threats against any and every asset, no matter where data resides.
Both DETECT and RESPOND are supported by Darktrace Self-Learning AI, which provides full, real-time visibility into an organization’s systems and data. This always-on threat analysis already makes humans better at cyber security, improving decisions and outcomes based on total visibility of the digital ecosystem, supporting human performance with AI coverage and empowering security teams to proactively protect critical assets.
Converting Darktrace alerts to the Amazon Security Lake Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) supplies the Security Operations Center (SOC) and incident response team with contextualized data, empowering them to accelerate their investigation, triage and response to potential cyber threats.
Darktrace is available for purchase on the AWS Marketplace.
Learn more about how Darktrace provides full-coverage, AI-powered cloud security for AWS, or see how our customers use Darktrace in their AWS cloud environments.
