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.
Written by
Brianna Leddy
Director of Analyst Operations
Share
27
Sep 2022
Attackers have leveraged social engineering in several high-profile hacks in recent months, with organizations like Uber, Rockstar Games, Cloudflare, Cisco, and LastPass among the most well-known targets.
Social engineering is the manipulation of a user, often through fear or doubt, to coax them into actions like revealing credentials or other sensitive information. The threat landscape is teeming with social engineering attempts across all forms of digital messaging, including email, Slack, and SMS. Moreover, spear-phishing, watering hole attacks, and spoofing are growing increasingly sophisticated.
Organizations are taking numerous defensive measures in response. This includes ramping up security education efforts, as well as configuring multi-factor authentication (MFA). But while MFA strengthens security, it can still be thwarted by hackers, and security awareness training programs often yield mixed or disappointing results. Now, organizations are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to stop cyber-attacks carried out through social engineering.
Since application-based transportation companies face distinct risks with their complex digital infrastructure, they require dynamic security solutions that adapt to evolving phishing techniques to guarantee reliable service to their customers. To that end, the Bluebird Group, the largest taxi service in Indonesia, has been using Darktrace to protect its email and cloud-based messaging since 2021.
“While we’ve pivoted and shown flexibility in the face of change, so too have the attackers,” said Sigit Djokosoetono, CEO at PT Blue Bird Tbk, a subsidiary of The Bluebird Group. “We’ve seen an uptick in attacks targeting cloud and SaaS applications, for example. Phishing emails are becoming more realistic and more frequent.”
Traditional email defenses lag behind contemporary social engineering threats because they rely on threat intelligence and collecting “deny-lists” of email domains and IP addresses already recognized as bad. But attackers can set up new domains for pennies and update infrastructure too frequently for this method to have effect.
Darktrace’s unique approach to cyber security stops these attacks. Self-Learning AI learns the who, what, when, and where of every email user’s communication patterns. This evolving and multi-dimensional understanding allows the AI to spot subtle signs of a social engineering attack, regardless of whether it is known or novel and regardless of the tactics in place.
If an employee’s credentials are used as part of a social engineering hack, Darktrace can identify the hacker’s malicious behavior. It then makes micro-decisions to neutralize the attack within seconds, stopping the offending message without disruption to the business.
“Darktrace’s AI-powered email security solution has reduced our email threats – such as spear phishing and spoofing – by 95% because it takes autonomous action to contain malicious emails before they reach a user. We can’t expect humans to spot the difference between a real and a fake anymore – it’s not sustainable,” said Djokosoetono.
More recently, social engineering has gone beyond email, and to other platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams. This can be more difficult for security teams to manage. Darktrace takes a holistic approach to security and can be installed anywhere an organization has data. The various coverage areas are united through the Self-Learning AI, which looks at every area of the digital estate to reveal the full scope of an attack, even as the attacker traverses multiple digital environments.
“For our employees, a weight is lifted from their shoulders,” said Djokosoetono. “When it comes to something like phishing emails, training on how to spot these is important but we simply cannot put the onus on humans to spot these well-researched, targeted email attacks. With AI in place, we’re stopping these threats before humans have to deal with them."
Darktrace’s AI is always-on and works at machine-speed to protect companies, so employees can focus on producing their best work without the constant fear of malicious messaging.
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.
From VPS to Phishing: How Darktrace Uncovered SaaS Hijacks through Virtual Infrastructure Abuse
Darktrace identified coordinated SaaS account compromises across multiple customer environments. The incidents involved suspicious logins from VPS-linked infrastructure followed by unauthorized inbox rule creation and deletion of phishing-related emails. These consistent behaviors across devices point to a targeted phishing campaign leveraging virtual infrastructure for access and concealment. Discover how Darktrace uncovered this activity and what it means for the future of SaaS security.
Defending the Cloud: Stopping Cyber Threats in Azure and AWS with Darktrace
This blog examines three real-world cloud-based attacks in Azure and AWS environments, including credential compromise, data exfiltration, and ransomware detonation. Learn how Darktrace’s AI-driven threat detection and Autonomous Response capabilities help organizations defend against evolving threats in complex cloud environments.
Top Eight Threats to SaaS Security and How to Combat Them
SaaS security requires new methods to keep up with evolving threats and business infrastructure. In this blog, learn the top eight threats to identity security and how AI-based solutions can help.
Announcing Unified Real-Time CDR and Automated Investigations to Transform Cloud Security Operations
Fragmented Tools are Failing SOC Teams in the Cloud Era
The cloud has transformed how businesses operate, reshaping everything from infrastructure to application delivery. But cloud security has not kept pace. Most tools still rely on traditional models of logging, policy enforcement, and posture management; approaches that provide surface-level visibility but lack the depth to detect or investigate active attacks.
Meanwhile, attackers are exploiting vulnerabilities, delivering cloud-native exploits, and moving laterally in ways that posture management alone cannot catch fast enough. Critical evidence is often missed, and alerts lack the forensic depth SOC analysts need to separate noise from true risk. As a result, organizations remain exposed: research shows that nearly nine in ten organizations have suffered a critical cloud breach despite investing in existing security tools [1].
SOC teams are left buried in alerts without actionable context, while ephemeral workloads like containers and serverless functions vanish before evidence can be preserved. Point tools for logging or forensics only add complexity, with 82% of organizations using multiple platforms to investigate cloud incidents [2].
The result is a broken security model: posture tools surface risks but don’t connect them to active attacker behaviors, while investigation tools are too slow and fragmented to provide timely clarity. Security teams are left reactive, juggling multiple point solutions and still missing critical signals. What’s needed is a unified approach that combines real-time detection and response for active threats with automated investigation and cloud posture management in a single workflow.
Just as security teams once had to evolve beyond basic firewalls and antivirus into network and endpoint detection, response, and forensics, cloud security now requires its own next era: one that unifies detection, response, and investigation at the speed and scale of the cloud.
A Powerful Combination: Real-Time CDR + Automated Cloud Forensics
Darktrace / CLOUD now uniquely unites detection, investigation, and response into one workflow, powered by Self-Learning AI. This means every alert, from any tool in your stack, can instantly become actionable evidence and a complete investigation in minutes.
With this release, Darktrace / CLOUD delivers a more holistic approach to cloud defense, uniting real-time detection, response, and investigation with proactive risk reduction. The result is a single solution that helps security teams stay ahead of attackers while reducing complexity and blind spots.
Automated Cloud Forensic Investigations: Instantly capture and analyze volatile evidence from cloud assets, reducing investigation times from days to minutes and eliminating blind spots
Enhanced Cloud-Native Threat Detection: Detect advanced attacker behaviors such as lateral movement, privilege escalation, and command-and-control in real time
Enhanced Live Cloud Topology Mapping: Gain continuous insight into cloud environments, including ephemeral workloads, with live topology views that simplify investigations and expose anomalous activity
Agentless Scanning for Proactive Risk Reduction: Continuously monitor for misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and risky exposures to reduce attack surface and stop threats before they escalate.
Automated Cloud Forensic Investigations
Darktrace / CLOUD now includes capabilities introduced with Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation, triggering automated forensic acquisition the moment a threat is detected. This ensures ephemeral evidence, from disks and memory to containers and serverless workloads can be preserved instantly and analyzed in minutes, not days. The integration unites detection, response, and forensic investigation in a way that eliminates blind spots and reduces manual effort.
Figure 1: Easily view Forensic Investigation of a cloud resource within the Darktrace / CLOUD architecture map
Enhanced Cloud-Native Threat Detection
Darktrace / CLOUD strengthens its real-time behavioral detection to expose early attacker behaviors that logs alone cannot reveal. Enhanced cloud-native detection capabilities include:
• Privilege Escalation via Role Assumption – Identifies suspicious attempts to gain elevated access.
• Malicious Compute Resource Usage – Flags threats such as crypto mining or spam operations.
These enhancements ensure active attacks are detected earlier, before adversaries can escalate or move laterally through cloud environments.
Figure 2: Cyber AI Analyst summary of anomalous behavior for privilege escalation and establishing persistence.
Enhanced Live Cloud Topology Mapping
New enhancements to live topology provide real-time mapping of cloud environments, attacker movement, and anomalous behavior. This dynamic visibility helps SOC teams quickly understand complex environments, trace attack paths, and prioritize response. By integrating with Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management (PEM), these insights extend beyond the cloud, offering a unified view of risks across networks, endpoints, SaaS, and identity — giving teams the context needed to act with confidence.
Figure 3: Enhanced live topology maps unify visibility across architectures, identities, network connections and more.
Agentless Scanning for Proactive Risk Reduction
Darktrace / CLOUD now introduces agentless scanning to uncover malware and vulnerabilities in cloud assets without impacting performance. This lightweight, non-disruptive approach provides deep visibility into cloud workloads and surfaces risks before attackers can exploit them. By continuously monitoring for misconfigurations and exposures, the solution strengthens posture management and reduces attack surface across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Figure 4: Agentless scanning of cloud assets reveals vulnerabilities, which are prioritized by severity.
Together, these capabilities move cloud security operations from reactive to proactive, empowering security teams to detect novel threats in real time, reduce exposures before they are exploited, and accelerate investigations with forensic depth. The result is faster triage, shorter MTTR, and reduced business risk — all delivered in a single, AI-native solution built for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Accelerating the Evolution of Cloud Security
Cloud security has long been fragmented, forcing teams to stitch together posture tools, log-based monitoring, and external forensics to get even partial coverage. With this release, Darktrace / CLOUD delivers a holistic, unified approach that covers every stage of the cloud lifecycle, from proactive posture management and risk identification to real-time detection, to automated investigation and response.
By bringing these capabilities together in a single AI-native solution, Darktrace is advancing cloud security beyond incremental change and setting a new standard for how organizations protect their hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
With Darktrace / CLOUD, security teams finally gain end-to-end visibility, response, and investigation at the speed of the cloud, transforming cloud defense from fragmented and reactive to unified and proactive.
Introducing the Industry’s First Truly Automated Cloud Forensics Solution
Why Cloud Investigations Fail Today
Cloud investigations have become one of the hardest problems in modern cybersecurity. Traditional DFIR tools were built for static, on-prem environments, rather than dynamic and highly scalable cloud environments, containing ephemeral workloads that disappear in minutes. SOC analysts are flooded with cloud security alerts with one-third lacking actionable data to confirm or dismiss a threat[1], while DFIR teams waste 3-5 days requesting access and performing manual collection, or relying on external responders.
These delays leave organizations vulnerable. Research shows that nearly 90% of organizations suffer some level of damage before they can fully investigate and contain a cloud incident [2]. The result is a broken model: alerts are closed without a complete understanding of the threat due to a lack of visibility and control, investigations drag on, and attackers retain the upper hand.
For SOC teams, the challenge is scale and clarity. Analysts are inundated with alerts but lack the forensic depth to quickly distinguish real threats from noise. Manual triage wastes valuable time, creates alert fatigue, and often forces teams to escalate or dismiss incidents without confidence — leaving adversaries with room to maneuver.
For DFIR teams, the challenge is depth and speed. Traditional forensics tools were built for static, on-premises environments and cannot keep pace with ephemeral workloads that vanish in minutes. Investigators are left chasing snapshots, requesting access from cloud teams, or depending on external responders, leading to blind spots and delayed response.
That’s why we built Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation, the first automated forensic solution designed specifically for the speed, scale, and complexities of the cloud. It addresses both sets of challenges by combining automated forensic evidence capture, attacker timeline reconstruction, and cross-cloud scale. The solution empowers SOC analysts with instant clarity and DFIR teams with forensic depth, all in minutes, not days. By leveraging the very nature of the cloud, Darktrace makes these advanced capabilities accessible to security teams of all sizes, regardless of expertise or resources.
Introducing Automated Forensics at the Speed and Scale of Cloud
Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation transforms cloud investigations by capturing, processing, and analyzing forensic evidence of cloud workloads, instantly, even from time-restricted ephemeral resources. Triggered by a detection from any cloud security tool, the entire process is automated, providing accurate root cause analysis and deep insights into attacker behavior in minutes rather than days or weeks. SOC and DFIR teams no longer have to rely on manual processes, snapshots, or external responders, they can now leverage the scale and elasticity of the cloud to accelerate triage and investigations.
Seamless Integration with Existing Detection Tools
Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation does not require customers to replace their detection stack. Instead, it integrates with cloud-native providers, XDR platforms, and SIEM/SOAR tools, automatically initiating forensic capture whenever an alert is raised. This means teams can continue leveraging their existing investments while gaining the forensic depth required to validate alerts, confirm root cause, and accelerate response.
Most importantly, the solution is natively integrated with Darktrace / CLOUD, turning real-time detections of novel attacker behaviors into full forensic investigations instantly. When Darktrace / CLOUD identifies suspicious activity such as lateral movement, privilege escalation, or abnormal usage of compute resources, Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation automatically preserves the underlying forensic evidence before it disappears. This seamless workflow unites detection, response, and investigation in a way that eliminates gaps, accelerates triage, and gives teams confidence that every critical cloud alert can be investigated to completion.
Figure 1: Integration with Darktrace / CLOUD – this example is showing the ability to pivot into the forensic investigation associated with a compromised cloud asset
Automated Evidence Collection Across Hybrid and Multi-Cloud
The solution provides automated forensic acquisition across AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP, and on-prem environments. It supports both full volume capture, creating a bit-by-bit copy of an entire storage device for the most comprehensive preservation of evidence, and triage collection, which prioritizes speed by gathering only the most essential forensic artifacts such as process data, logs, network connections, and open file contents. This flexibility allows teams to strike the right balance between speed and depth depending on the investigation at hand.
Figure 2: Ability to acquire forensic data from Cloud, SaaS and on-prem environments
Automated Investigations, Root Cause Analysis and Attacker Timelines
Once evidence is collected, Darktrace applies automation to reconstruct attacker activity into a unified timeline. This includes correlating commands, files, lateral movement, and network activity into a single investigative view enriched with custom threat intelligence such as IOCs. Detailed investigation reporting including an investigation summary, an overview of the attacker timeline, and key events. Analysts can pivot into detailed views such as the filesystem view, traversing directories or inspecting file content, or filter and search using faceted options to quickly narrow the scope of an investigation.
Figure 3: Automated Investigation view surfacing the most significant attacker activity, which is contextualized with Alarm information
Forensics for Containers and Ephemeral Assets
Investigating containers and serverless workloads has historically been one of the hardest challenges for DFIR teams, as these assets often disappear before evidence can be preserved. Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation captures forensic evidence across managed Kubernetes cloud services, even from distroless or no-shell containers, AWS ECS and other environments, ensuring that ephemeral activity is no longer a blind spot. For hybrid organizations, this extends to on-premises Kubernetes and OpenShift deployments, bringing consistency across environments.
Figure 4: Container investigations – this example is showing the ability to capture containers from managed Kubernetes cloud services
SaaS Log Collection for Modern Investigations
Beyond infrastructure-level data, the solution collects logs from SaaS providers such as Microsoft 365, Entra ID, and Google Workspace. This enables investigations into common attack types like business email compromise (BEC), account takeover (ATO), and insider threats — giving teams visibility into both infrastructure-level and SaaS-driven compromise from a single platform.
Figure 5: Ability to import logs from SaaS providers including Microsoft 365, Entra ID, and Google Workspace
Proactive Vulnerability and Malware Discovery
Finally, the solution surfaces risk proactively with vulnerability and malware discovery for Linux-based cloud resources. Vulnerabilities are presented in a searchable table and correlated with the attacker timeline, enabling teams to quickly understand not just which packages are exposed, but whether they have been targeted or exploited in the context of an incident.
Figure 6: Vulnerability data with pivot points into the attacker timeline
Cloud-Native Scale and Performance
Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation uses a cloud-native parallel processing architecture that spins up compute resources on demand, ensuring that investigations run at scale without bottlenecks. Detailed reporting and summaries are automatically generated, giving teams a clear record of the investigation process and supporting compliance, litigation readiness, and executive reporting needs.
Scalable and Flexible Deployment Options
Every organization has different requirements for speed, control, and integration. Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation is designed to meet those needs with two flexible deployment models.
Self-Hosted Virtual Appliance delivers deep integration and control across hybrid environments, preserving forensic data for compliance and litigation while scaling to the largest enterprise investigations.
SaaS-Delivered Deployment provides fast time-to-value out of the box, enabling automated forensic response without requiring deep cloud expertise or heavy setup.
Both models are built to scale across regions and accounts, ensuring organizations of any size can achieve rapid value and adapt the solution to their unique operational and compliance needs. This flexibility makes advanced cloud forensics accessible to every security team — whether they are optimizing for speed, integration depth, or regulatory alignment
Delivering Advanced Cloud Forensics for Every Team
Until now, forensic investigations were slow, manual, and reserved for only the largest organizations with specialized DFIR expertise. Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation changes that by leveraging the scale and elasticity of the cloud itself to automate the entire investigation process. From capturing full disk and memory at detection to reconstructing attacker timelines in minutes, the solution turns fragmented workflows into streamlined investigations available to every team.
Whether deployed as a SaaS-delivered service for fast time-to-value or as a self-hosted appliance for deep integration, Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation provides the features that matter most: automated evidence capture, cross-cloud investigations, forensic depth for ephemeral assets, and root cause clarity without manual effort.
With Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation, what once took days now takes minutes. Now, forensic investigations in the cloud are faster, more scalable, and finally accessible to every security team, no matter their size or expertise.
