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
Max Heinemeyer
Global Field CISO
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24
Oct 2018
Since July 2018, Darktrace has identified an increasing number of cyber-attacks targeting law firms. Concerningly, the attacks are emerging not from opportunistic malware, like banking trojans, but threat actors who actively conduct cyber-intrusions, seeking to exfiltrate data from these organizations.
Perfect targets
Law firms are actively pursued because their systems contain the sensitive data of many other organizations. The essence of a lawyer’s work involves managing confidential client information. Firms are privy to a huge variety of valuable data, from tax affairs, to intellectual property. Consequently, law firms’ ability to protect highly-sensitive information is critical; a successful cyber-attack might cause reputational damage resulting in the diminishing of their most valuable asset – clients’ trust.
Further challenges
As an industry, law is structured around sharing revenues among a minimal number of highly qualified professionals. As such, they can rarely employ large IT teams – and even smaller IT security departments. With the increased number of attacks seen in recent years, as well as the added risks of the cloud, and the Internet of Things, security teams lack the capacity to defend their networks against the sophisticated, machine-speed attacks which characterize today’s threat landscape.
In addition, lawyers often have to research obscure or potentially illegal activities, while communicating and receiving files from third parties. This complicates any attempt to impose and regulate highly restrictive security policies, placing a significant burden on small, overstretched security teams.
Living off the land
Interestingly, the recent surge of targeted attacks against law firms is unified by the methods used. The attacks were all performed using publicly available tools, including: Mimikatz (for credentials dumping), Powershell Empire (for Command & Control communication), Dameware (additional C2/backdoor), and PsExec variants such as the Impacket Python variant of PsExec (for lateral movement).
Perhaps surprisingly, using generic methods against such high-level targets is actually beneficial to the attacker. Adopting mainly publicly available tools, rather than individually crafted malware, makes attribution much harder.
Although some of these tools, such as Mimikatz, have to be downloaded into the environment; the stealthiest, like Dameware or PsExec, are able to use the infrastructure within their environment. Known as ‘living off the land’, these tools are almost undetectable by traditional security approaches, as their malicious activity is designed to blend in with legitimate system administration work.
Case study
In July 2018, Darktrace discovered the illegitimate use of Powershell Empire – a code capable of ‘living off the land’. When monitored by human surveillance alone, this extremely stealthy tool would normally go undetected, camouflaged by system behavior.
Unlike traditional security approaches, Darktrace does not use rules and signatures. Instead, it learns about the activity of the network, itself. This meant Darktrace was able to observe the initial download of the malware, subsequent reconnaissance and ensuing C2 traffic.
Consequently, we were able to report that an incident had occurred involving a probable Trickbot banking trojan infection and new use of a Remote Access Tool.
This was accompanied by the following visuals:
Graph showing all breaching connections from the source device over time, with breaches shown as colored dots. This begins with the download of the masqueraded executable file, and goes up to the present time. The vast majority of these model breaches are likely related to the suspected malicious activity.
Darktrace’s AI capability meant that the Enterprise Immune System detected this sophisticated and subtle threat immediately – before it had time to do any damage.
An excerpt from the Event Log at the time of the first Dameware activity from this device, shortly after this incident began.
AI securing the law sector
As seen above, cyber-attackers are constantly discovering novel ways of evading rule-based security systems. Attackers ‘living off the land’ are generally too subtly anomalous for humans to identify. Darktrace’s machine learning has the unique ability to learn the ‘pattern of life’ of any network which means it is able to distinguish this behavior, as it is still unusual compared to legitimate administrative functions.
Darktrace AI secures law firms all over the world. For small security teams, AI is a game changer. Through the use of machine learning, Darktrace does the heavy lifting of separating interesting anomalies from ordinary noise. Many firms also use Darktrace Antigena as a ‘virtual analyst’ to supplement the work of their staff.
Antigena acts at machine speed, autonomously responding to threats as they emerge in real time, even after hours and on the weekends. Antigena slows down, or even stops, traffic to the affected parts of the network before any data can be compromised. This buys security teams crucial time to fix the issue – before it’s too late.
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.
AI is a contributing member of nearly every modern cybersecurity team. As we discussed earlier in this blog series, rapid AI adoption is expanding the attack surface in ways that security professionals have never before experienced while also empowering attackers to operate at unprecedented speed and scale. It’s only logical that defenders are harnessing the power of AI to fight back.
After all, AI can help cybersecurity teams spot the subtle signs of novel threats before humans can, investigate events more quickly and thoroughly, and automate response. But although AI has been widely adopted, this technology is also frequently misunderstood, and occasionally viewed with suspicion.
For CISOs, the cybersecurity marketplace can be noisy. Making sense of competing vendors’ claims to distinguish the solutions that truly deliver on AI’s full potential from those that do not isn’t always easy. Without a nuanced understanding of the different types of AI used across the cybersecurity stack, it is difficult to make informed decisions about which vendors to work with or how to gain the most value from their solutions. Many security leaders are turning to Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) for guidance and support.
The right kinds of AI in the right places?
Back in 2024, when we first conducted this annual survey, more than a quarter of respondents were only vaguely familiar with generative AI or hadn’t heard of it at all. Today, GenAI plays a role in 77% of security stacks. This percentage marks a rapid increase in both awareness and adoption over a relatively short period of time.
According to security professionals, different types of AI are widely integrated into cybersecurity tooling:
67% report that their organization’s security stack uses supervised machine learning
67% report that theirs uses agentic AI
58% report that theirs uses natural language processing (NLP)
35% report that theirs uses unsupervised machine learning
But their responses suggest that organizations aren’t always using the most valuable types of AI for the most relevant use cases.
Despite all the recent attention AI has gotten, supervised machine learning isn’t new. Cybersecurity vendors have been experimenting with models trained on hand-labeled datasets for over a decade. These systems are fed large numbers of examples of malicious activity – for instance, strains of ransomware – and use these examples to generalize common indicators of maliciousness – such as the TTPs of multiple known ransomware strains – so that the models can identify similar attacks in the future. This approach is more effective than signature-based detection, since it isn’t tied to an individual byte sequence or file hash. However, supervised machine learning models can miss patterns or features outside the training data set. When adversarial behavior shifts, these systems can’t easily pivot.
Unsupervised machine learning, by contrast, can identify key patterns and trends in unlabeled data without human input. This enables it to classify information independently and detect anomalies without needing to be taught about past threats. Unsupervised learning can continuously learn about an environment and adapt in real time.
One key distinction between supervised and unsupervised machine learning is that supervised learning algorithms require periodic updating and re-training, whereas unsupervised machine learning trains itself while it works.
The question of trust
Even as AI moves into the mainstream, security professionals are eyeing it with a mix of enthusiasm and caution. Although 89% say they have good visibility into the reasoning behind AI-generated outputs, 74% are limiting AI’s ability to take autonomous action in their SOC until explainability improves. 86% do not allow AI to take even small remediation actions without human oversight.
This model, commonly known as “human in the loop,” is currently the norm across the industry. It seems like a best-of-both-worlds approach that allows teams to experience the benefits of AI-accelerated response without relinquishing control – or needing to trust an AI system.
Keeping humans somewhat in the loop is essential for getting the best out of AI. Analysts will always need to review alerts, make judgement calls, and set guardrails for AI's behavior. Their input helps AI models better understand what “normal” looks like, improving their accuracy over time.
However, relying on human confirmation has real costs – it delays response, increases the cognitive burden analysts must bear, and creates potential coverage gaps when security teams are overwhelmed or unavailable. The traditional model, in which humans monitor and act on every alert, is no longer workable at scale.
If organizations depend too heavily on in-the-loop humans, they risk recreating the very problem AI is meant to solve: backlogs of alerts waiting for analyst review. Removing the human from the loop can buy back valuable time, which analysts can then invest in building a proactive security posture. They can also focus more closely on the most critical incidents, where human attention is truly needed.
Allowing AI to operate autonomously requires trust in its decision-making. This trust can be built gradually over time, with autonomous operations expanding as trust grows. But it also requires knowledge and understanding of AI — what it is, how it works, and how best to deploy it at enterprise scale.
Looking for help in all the right places
To gain access to these capabilities in a way that’s efficient and scalable, growing numbers of security leaders are looking for outsourced support. In fact, 85% of security professionals prefer to obtain new SOC capabilities in the form of a managed service.
This makes sense: Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) can deliver deep, continuously available expertise without the cost and complexity of building an in-house team. Outsourcing also allows organizations to scale security coverage up or down as needs change, stay current with evolving threats and regulatory requirements, and leverage AI-native detection and response without needing to manage the AI tools themselves.
Preferences for MSSP-delivered security operations are particularly strong in the education, energy (87%), and healthcare sectors. This makes sense: all are high-value targets for threat actors, and all tend to have limited cybersecurity budgets, so the need for a partner who can deliver affordable access to expertise at scale is strong. Retailers also voiced a strong preference for MSSP-delivered services. These companies are tasked with managing large volumes of consumer personal and financial data, and with transforming an industry traditionally thought of as a late adopter to a vanguard of cyber defense. Technology companies, too, have a marked preference for SOC capabilities delivered by MSSPs. This may simply be because they understand the complexity of the threat landscape – and the advantages of specialized expertise — so well.
In order to help as many organizations as possible – from major enterprises to small and midmarket companies – benefit from enterprise-grade, AI-native security, Darktrace is making it easier for MSSPs to deliver its technology. The ActiveAI Security Portal introduces an alert dashboard designed to increase the speed and efficiency of alert triage, while a new AI-powered managed email security solution is giving MSSPs an edge in the never-ending fight against advanced phishing attacks – helping partners as well as organizations succeed on the frontlines of cyber defense.
Explore the full State of AI Cybersecurity 2026 report for deeper insights into how security leaders are responding to AI-driven risks.
When Open Source Is Weaponized: Analysis of a Trojanized 7 Zip Installer
Background of the malicious 7-Zip installer, and assessing its Impact
Early in 2026, external researchers disclosed a malicious distribution campaign leveraging a trojanized installer masquerading itself as a legitimate 7‑Zip utility. Evidence suggests the campaign was active as of January 2026, during which victims were served a fake installer from 7zip[.]com, a highly convincing typo-squatted domain impersonating the official 7‑Zip distribution site (7-zip[.]org).
Initial access is typically achieved through social engineering and search‑engine abuse, including YouTube tutorial content that explicitly referenced the impersonated domain as the download source. Notably, several reports observed the installer delivered a modified but functional build of 7‑Zip (7zfm.exe) to reduce suspicion and preserve expected user behavior.
However, the installer also dropped additional payloads, such as Uphero.exe, hero.exe, and hero.dll, which are not part of the legitimate 7‑Zip software package. Once installed and executed, these payloads allow the attacker to establish persistence and configure the infected host as a proxy node under their control. This facilitates malicious activities such as traffic relaying, anonymizing infrastructure, and the delivery of secondary payloads [1] [2].
Overall, this attack illustrates a proxyware-style attack that abuses implicit trust in widely deployed third‑party tools while exploiting unconventional delivery vectors such as instructional media. By closely imitating legitimate software behavior and branding, the threat actors significantly reduced user suspicion and increased the likelihood of widespread, undetected compromise.
Threat overview
Darktrace observed multiple customers affected by the malicious 7‑Zip installer between January 12 and January 22, impacting organizations across the Americas (AMS), Asia‑Pacific & Japan (APJ), and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) regions. The activity targeted customers across various sectors, including Human health and social work activities, Manufacturing, Education, and Information and communication.
The following use case highlights a device on one customer network making external connections associated with malicious 7-Zip update activity observed between January 7 and January 18, 2026. This behavior included connectivity to the malicious domain 7zip[.]com, followed by command-and control (C2) activity involving "smshero"-themed domains, as well as outbound proxy connections over ports 1000 and 1002.
Initial Connectivity to 'update[.]7zip[.]com':
Figure 1: Initial Beaconing to Young Endpoint alert behavior, involving the known tunnel/proxy endpoint ‘79.127.221[.]47’.
Starting on January 7, Darktrace / NETWORK detected the device making repeated beaconing connections to the endpoint 79.127.221[.]47 over the destination port 1000. The use of this port aligns with open-source intelligence (OSINT) reporting that hero[.]exe establishes outbound proxy connections via non-standard ports such as 1000 and 1002 [1].
Figure 2: Darktrace observed TLS beaconing alerts to the known trojanized installer, update[.]7zip[.]com · 98.96.229[.]19, over port 443 on January 7th.
Later the same day, the device initiated TLS beaconing to the endpoint update.7zip[.]com. This is more than likely a common source of compromise, where victims unknowingly installed a modified build of the tool alongside additional malicious components. The campaign then progressed into the next attack phase, marked by established connectivity to various C2 domains.
Beaconing Activity to "smshero"-themed domains
Darktrace subsequently observed the same infected device connecting to various C2 domains used to retrieve configuration data. As such, these external hostnames were themed around the string “smshero”, for example ‘smshero[.]co’.
Figure 3: On January 8th, Darktrace observed SSL beaconing to a rare destination which was attributed to a known ‘config/control domain’, nova[.]smshero[.]ai.
The following day, on January 8, the device exhibited its first connectivity to a "smshero"-themed endpoint, which has since been identified as being associated with rotating C2 servers [1] [3]. Similar beaconing activity continued over the following days, with Darktrace identifying C2 connectivity to update[.]7zip[.]com over port 443, alongside additional connections to “smshero”‑themed endpoints such as zest.hero-sms[.]ai, flux.smshero[.]cc, and glide.smshero[.]cc between January 9 and January 15.
Figure 4: Darktrace later observed continued beaconing alerts over a 4-day interval to additional rare destinations attributed to a known ‘config/control domain’, zest[.]hero-sms[.]ai & glide[.]smshero[.]cc.
Proxied connectivity over destination ports
The primary objective of this campaign is believed to be proxyware, whereby third-party traffic is routed through victim devices to potentially obfuscate malicious activity. Devices were also observed communicating with rare external IPs hosted on Cloudflare and DataCamp Limited ASNs, establishing outbound proxy connections over the non-standard ports 1000 and 1002 [1].
OSINT sources also indicate that connections over these ports leveraged an XOR-encoded protocol (key 0x70) designed to obscure control messages. While the end goal of the campaign remains unclear, residential proxy networks can be abused to evade security rules and facilitate further unauthorized activities, including phishing and malware distribution [1][3].
Specifically, on January 8, Darktrace observed the device engaging in low-and-slow data exfiltration to the IP 79.127.221[.]47, which had first been observed the previous day, over port 1000. Proxyware typically installs an agent that routes third‑party traffic through an end-user’s device, effectively turning it into a residential proxy exit node. This activity likely represents the system actively communicating outbound data to an entity that controls its behavior.
Figure 5: Darktrace later observed a ‘Low and Slow Exfiltration to IP’ alert, involving the known tunnel/proxy endpoint ‘79.127.221[.]47’.
Similar activity continued between January 10 and January 18, with Darktrace detecting threat actors attempting to exfiltrate significant volumes of data to 79.127.221[.]47 over destination port 1000.
Throughout the course of this incident, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst launched several autonomous investigations, analyzing each anomalous event and ultimately painting a detailed picture of the attack timeline. These investigations correlated multiple incidents based on Darktrace detections observed between January 7 and January 19. Cyber AI Analyst identified anomalous variables such as repeated connections to unusual endpoints involving data uploads and downloads, with particular emphasis on HTTP and SSL connectivity.
Figure 6: Darktrace AI Analyst Coverage, showcasing multiple incident events that occurred on January 7th & 8th, highlighting associated malicious 7-zip behaviors.
Figure 7: Darktrace AI Analyst Endpoint Details from the given ‘Unusual Repeated Connections’ Incident Event, including the known tunnel/proxy endpoint.
Figure 8: Darktrace AI Analyst Coverage, showcasing additional incident events that occurred on January 12th through 18th, highlighting malicious 7-zip behaviors and SSL connectivity.
Darktrace’s Autonomous Response
At several stages throughout the attack, Darktrace implemented Autonomous Response actions to help contain the suspicious activity as soon as it was identified, providing the customer’s security team with additional time to investigate and remediate. Between January 7 and January 18, Darktrace blocked a wide range of malicious activity, including beaconing connections to unusual endpoints, small data exfiltration attempts, and larger egress efforts, ultimately preventing the attacker from progressing through multiple stages of the attack or achieving their objectives.
Figure 9: Darktrace Autonomous Response Action Coverage showcasing connection block connection events including various endpoints that occurred on January 7th.
Figure 10: Darktrace Antigena (Autonomous Response) Model Alert Coverage, showcasing a Antigena Suspicious Activity Block alert occurred on January 10th as a result of the Low and Slow Exfiltration to IP model alert.
Figure 11: Additional Darktrace Antigena (Autonomous Response) Model Alert Coverage, showcasing a Antigena Large Data Volume Outbound Block alert occurred on January 18th as a result of the Uncommon 1 GiB Outbound model alert.
Conclusion
The malicious 7‑Zip installer underscores how attackers continue to weaponize trust in widely used, legitimate software to gain initial access while evading user suspicion. By exploiting familiar and commonly installed services, this type of attack demonstrates that even routine actions, such as installing compression software, can become high‑risk events when defenses or user awareness are insufficient.
This campaign further emphasizes the urgent need for strict software validation and continuous network monitoring. Modern threats no longer rely solely on obscure tools or overtly malicious behavior. Instead, they increasingly blend seamlessly into everyday operations, making detection more challenging.
In this case, Darktrace / NETWORK was able to identify the anomalous activity and Autonomous Response actions in a timely manner, enabling the customer to be quickly notified and providing crucial additional time to investigate further.
In summary, the abuse of a trojanized 7‑Zip installer highlights a concerning shift in modern threat tactics, where trusted and widely deployed tools can serve as primary delivery mechanisms for system compromise. This reality reinforces that proactive detection, continuous monitoring, and strong security awareness are not optional but essential.
Credit to Justin Torres, Senior Cyber Analyst, David Moreira da Silva, Cyber Analyst, Emma Foulger, Global Threat Research Operations Lead.
![Initial Beaconing to Young Endpoint alert behavior, involving the known tunnel/proxy endpoint ‘79.127.221[.]47’.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626ff4d25aca2edf4325ff97/6a0b527a7ecc78423d4fdbc6_Screenshot%202026-05-18%20at%2010.55.03%E2%80%AFAM.png)
![Darktrace observed TLS beaconing alerts to the known trojanized installer, update[.]7zip[.]com · 98.96.229[.]19, over port 443 on January 7th.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626ff4d25aca2edf4325ff97/6a0b529557224d073e49becd_Screenshot%202026-05-18%20at%2010.55.29%E2%80%AFAM.png)
![On January 8th, Darktrace observed SSL beaconing to a rare destination which was attributed to a known ‘config/control domain’, nova[.]smshero[.]ai.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626ff4d25aca2edf4325ff97/6a0b52ca6bdc2e2e6451446a_Screenshot%202026-05-18%20at%2010.56.22%E2%80%AFAM.png)
![Darktrace later observed continued beaconing alerts over a 4-day interval to additional rare destinations attributed to a known ‘config/control domain’, zest[.]hero-sms[.]ai & glide[.]smshero[.]cc.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626ff4d25aca2edf4325ff97/6a0b52eed2e7185a03c382e7_Screenshot%202026-05-18%20at%2010.56.59%E2%80%AFAM.png)
