February 20, 2020

Lessons Learned from a Sodinokibi Ransomware Attack

Gain insights into a targeted Sodinokibi ransomware attack and learn how to better prepare your organization for potential cyber threats.

Written by

Max Heinemeyer

Global Field CISO

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

Max Heinemeyer

Global Field CISO

Feb 2020

Introduction

Last week, Darktrace detected a targeted Sodinokibi ransomware attack during a 4-week trial with a mid-sized company.

This blog post will go through every stage of the attack lifecycle and detail the attacker’s techniques, tools and procedures used, and how Darktrace detected the attack.

The Sodinokibi group is an innovative threat-actor that is sometimes referred to as a ‘double-threat’, due to their ability to run targeted attacks using ransomware while simultaneously exfiltrating their victim’s data. This enables them to threaten to make the victim’s data publicly available if the ransom is not paid.

While Darktrace’s AI was able to identify the attack in real time as it was emerging, unfortunately the security team didn’t have eyes on the technology and was unable to action the alerts — nor was Antigena set in active mode, which would have slowed down and contained the threat instantaneously.

Timeline

The timeline below provides a rough overview of the major attack phases. Most of the attack took place over the course of a week, with the majority of activity distributed over the last three days.

Technical analysis

Darktrace detected two main devices being hit by the attack: an internet-facing RDP server (‘RDP server’) and a Domain Controller (‘DC’), that also acts as a SMB file server.

In previous attacks, Sodinokibi has used host-level encryption for ransomware activity where the encryption takes place on the compromised host itself — in contrast to network-level encryption where the bulk of the ransomware activity takes place over network protocols such as SMB.

Initial compromise

Over several days, the victim’s external-facing RDP server was receiving successful RDP connections from a rare external IP address located in Ukraine.

Shortly before the initial reconnaissance started, Darktrace saw another RDP connection coming into the RDP server with the same RDP account as seen before. This connection lasted for almost an hour.

It is highly likely that the RDP credential used in this attack had been compromised prior to the attack, either via common brute-force methods, credential stuffing attacks, or phishing.

Thanks to Darktrace’s Deep-Packet Inspection, we can clearly see the connection and all related information.

Suspicious RDP connection information:

Time: 2020-02-10 16:57:06 UTC
Source: 46.150.70[.]86 (Ukraine)
Destination: 192.168.X.X
Destination Port: 64347
Protocol: RDP
Cookie: [REDACTED]
Duration: 00h41m40s
Data out: 8.44 MB
Data in: 1.86 MB

Darktrace detects incoming RDP connections from IP addresses that usually do not connect to the organization.

Attack tools download

Approximately 45 minutes after the suspicious RDP connection from Ukraine, the RDP server connected to the popular file sharing platform, Megaupload, and downloaded close to 300MB from there.

Darktrace’s AI recognized that neither this server, nor its automatically detected peer group, nor, in fact, anyone else on the network commonly utilized Megaupload — and therefore instantly detected this as anomalous behavior, and flagged it as unusual.

As well as the full hostname and actual IP used for the download, Megaupload is 100% rare for this organization.

Later on, we will see over 40GB being uploaded to Megaupload. This initial download of 300MB however is likely additional tooling and C2 implants downloaded by the threat-actor into the victim’s environment.

Internal reconnaissance

Only 3 minutes after the download from Megaupload onto the RDP server, Darktrace alerted on the RDP server doing an anomalous network scan:

The RDP server scanned 9 other internal devices on the same subnet on 7 unique ports: 21, 80, 139, 445, 3389, 4899, 8080  . Anybody with some offensive security know-how will recognize most of these ports as default ports one would scan for in a Windows environment for lateral movement. Since this RDP server does not usually conduct network scans, Darktrace again identified this activity as highly anomalous.

Later on, we see the threat-actor do more network scanning. They become bolder and use more generic scans — one of them showing that they are using Nmap with a default user agent:

Additional Command and Control traffic

While the initial Command and Control traffic was most likely using predominantly RDP, the threat-actor now wanted to establish more persistence and create more resilient channels for C2.

Shortly after concluding the initial network scans (ca. 19:17 on 10th February 2020), the RDP server starts communicating with unusual external services that are unique and unusual for the victim’s environment.

Communications to Reddcoin

Again, nobody else is using Reddcoin on the network. The combination of application protocol and external port is extremely unusual for the network as well.

The communications also went to the Reddcoin API, indicating the installation of a software agent rather than manual communications. This was detected as Reddcoin was not only rare for the network, but also ‘young’ — i.e. this particular external destination had never been seen to be contacted before on the network until 25 minutes before.

Communications to the Reddcoin API

Communications to Exceptionless[.]io

As we can see, the communications to exceptionalness[.]io were done in a beaconing manner, using a Let’s Encrypt certificate, being rare for the network and using an unusual JA3 client hash. All of this indicates the presence of new software on the device, shortly after the threat-actor downloaded their 300MB of tooling.

While most of the above network activity started directly after the threat-actor dropped their tooling on the RDP server, the exact purpose of interfacing with Reddcoin and Exceptionless is unclear. The attacker seems to favor off-the-shelf tooling (Megaupload, Nmap, …) so they might use these services for C2 or telemetry-gathering purposes.

This concluded most of the activity on February 10.

More Command and Control traffic

Why would an attacker do this? Surely using all this C2 at the same time is much noisier than just using 1 or 2 channels?

Another significant burst of activity was observed on February 12 and 13.

The RDP server started making a lot of highly anomalous and rare connections to external destinations. It is inconclusive if all of the below services, IPs, and domains were used for C2 purposes only, but they are linked with high-confidence to the attacker’s activities:

HTTP beaconing to vkmuz[.]net
Significant amount of Tor usage
RDP connections to 198-0-244-153-static.hfc.comcastbusiness[.]net over non-standard RDP port 29348
RDP connections to 92.119.160[.]60 using an administrative account (geo-located in Russia)
Continued connections to Megaupload
Continued SSL beaconing to Exceptionless[.]io
Continued connections to api.reddcoin[.]com
SSL beaconing to freevpn[.]zone
HTTP beaconing to 31.41.116[.]201 to /index.php using a new User Agent
Unusual SSL connections to aj1713[.]online
Connections to Pastebin
SSL beaconing to www.itjx3no[.]com using an unusual JA3 client hash
SSL beaconing to safe-proxy[.]com
SSL connection to westchange[.]top without prior DNS hostname lookups (likely machine-driven)

What is significant here is the diversity in (potential) C2 channels: Tor, RDP going to dynamic ISP addresses, VPN solutions and possibly custom / customized off-the-shelf implants (the DGA-looking domains and HTTP to IP addresses to /index.php).

Why would an attacker do this? Surely using all this C2 at the same time is much noisier than just using 1 or 2 channels?

One answer might be that the attacker cared much more about short-term resilience than about stealth. As the overall attack in the network took less than 7 days, with a majority of the activity taking place over 2.5 days, this makes sense. Another possibility might be that various individuals were involved in parallel during this attack — maybe one attacker prefers the comfort of RDP sessions for hacking while another is more skilled and uses a particular post-exploitation framework.

The overall modus operandi in this financially-motivated attack is much more smash-and-grab than in the stealthy, espionage-related incidents observed in Advanced Persistent Threat campaigns (APT).

Data exfiltration

The DC uploaded around 40GB of data to Megaupload over the course of 24 hours.

While all of the above activity was seen on the RDP server (acting as the initial beach-head), the following data exfiltration activity was observed on a Domain Controller (DC) on the same subnet as the RDP server.

The DC uploaded around 40GB of data to Megaupload over the course of 24 hours.

Darktrace detected this data exfiltration while it was in progress — never did the DC (or any similar devices) upload similar amounts of data to the internet. Neither did any client nor server in the victim’s environment use Megaupload:

Ransom notes

Finally, Darktrace observed unusual files being accessed on internal SMB shares on February 13. These files appear to be ransom notes — they follow a similar, randomly-generated naming convention as other victims of the Sodinokibi group have reported:

413x0h8l-readme.txt
4omxa93-readme.txt

Conclusion and observations

The threat-actor seems to be using mostly off-the-shelf tooling which makes attribution harder — while also making detection more difficult.

This attack is representative of many of the current ransomware attacks: financially motivated, fast-acting, and targeted.

The threat-actor seems to be using mostly off-the-shelf tooling (RDP, Nmap, Mega, VPN solutions) which makes attribution harder — while also making detection more difficult. Using this kind of tooling often allows to blend in with regular admin activity — only once anomaly detection is used can this kind of activity be detected.

How can you spot the one anomalous outbound RDP connection amongst the thousands of regular RDP connections leaving your environment? How do you know when the use of Megaupload is malicious — compared to your users’ normal use of it? This is where the power of Darktrace’s self-learning AI comes into play.

Darktrace detected every stage of the visible attack lifecycle without using any threat intelligence or any static signatures.

The graphics below show an overview of detections on both compromised devices. The compromised devices were the highest-scoring assets for the network — even a level 1 analyst with limited previous exposure to Darktrace could detect such an in-progress attack in real time.

RDP Server

Some of the detections on the RDP server include:

Compliance / File Storage / Mega — using Megaupload in an unusual way
Device / Network Scan — detecting unusual network scans
Anomalous Connection / Application Protocol on Uncommon Port — detecting the use of protocols on unusual ports
Device / New Failed External Connections — detecting unusual failing C2
Compromise / Unusual Connections to Let’s Encrypt — detecting potential C2 over SSL using Let’s Encrypt
Compromise / Beacon to Young Endpoint — detecting C2 to new external endpoints for the network
Device / Attack and Recon Tools — detecting known offensive security tools like Nmap
Compromise / Tor Usage — detecting unusual Tor usage
Compromise / SSL Beaconing to Rare Destination — detecting generic SSL C2
Compromise / HTTP Beaconing to Rare Destination — detecting generic HTTP C2
Device / Long Agent Connection to New Endpoint — detecting unusual services on a device
Anomalous Connection / Outbound RDP to Unusual Port — detecting unusual RDP C2

Some of the detections on the DC include:

Anomalous Activity / Anomalous External Activity from Critical Device — detecting unusual behaviour on dcs
Compliance / File storage / Mega — using Megaupload in an unusual way
Anomalous Connection / Data Sent to New External Device — data exfiltration to unusual locations
Anomalous Connection / Uncommon 1GB Outbound — large amounts of data leaving to unusual destinations
Anomalous Server Activity / Outgoing from Server — likely C2 to unusual endpoint on the internet

‍

Written by

Max Heinemeyer

Global Field CISO

Inside the SOC

Written by

Max Heinemeyer

Global Field CISO

VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO

•

June 18, 2025

Carlos Gray

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email

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Proactive Security

July 1, 2025

Pre-CVE Threat Detection: 8 Examples Identifying Malicious Activity Prior to Public Disclosure of a Vulnerability

Can you detect cyber threats before the world knows about them?

Every year, tens of thousands of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) are disclosed, over 40,000 in 2024 alone [1], and a predicted higher number for 2025 by the Forum for Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST).

However, cybercriminals don't wait for disclosure. They exploit zero-days while defenders remain in the dark.

Traditional, signature-based tools struggle to detect these early-stage threats. That’s why anomaly detection is becoming essential for organizations seeking pre-CVE detection.

Understanding the gap between zero-day attacks and public CVE disclosure

When a vulnerability is discovered, the standard practice is to report it to the vendor or the responsible organization, allowing them to develop and distribute a patch or fix before the details are made public. This is known as responsible disclosure.

The gap between exploitation of a zero-day and the disclosure of the vulnerability can sometimes be considerable, and retroactively attempting to identify successful exploitation on your network can be challenging, particularly if taking a signature-based approach.

However, abnormal behaviors in networks or systems, such as unusual login patterns or data transfers, can indicate attempted cyber-attacks, insider threats, or compromised systems.

Detecting threats without relying on CVE disclosure

Since Darktrace does not rely on rules or signatures, it can detect malicious activity that is anomalous even without full context of the specific device or asset in question.

For example, during the Fortinet exploitation late last year, the Darktrace Threat Research team were investigating a different Fortinet vulnerability, namely CVE 2024-23113, for exploitation when Mandiant released a security advisory around CVE 2024-47575, which aligned closely with Darktrace’s findings.

Retrospective analysis like this is used by Darktrace’s threat researchers to better understand detections across the threat landscape and to add additional context.

Below are eight examples from the past year where Darktrace detected malicious activity days or even weeks before a vulnerability was publicly disclosed.

ten examples from the past year where Darktrace detected malicious activity days or even weeks before a vulnerability was publicly disclosed.

Trends in pre-cve exploitation

The attack vs. patch race

In many cases, the disclosure of an exploited vulnerability can be off the back of an incident response investigation related to a compromise by an advanced threat actor using a zero-day. Once the vulnerability is registered and publicly disclosed as having been exploited, it can kick off a race between the attacker and defender.

Skilled nation-state actors

Nation-state actors, highly skilled with significant resources, are known to use a range of capabilities to achieve their target, including zero-day use. Often, pre-CVE activity is “low and slow”, last for months with high operational security.

After CVE disclosure, the barriers to entry lower, allowing less skilled and less resourced attackers, like some ransomware gangs, to exploit the vulnerability and cause harm. This is why two distinct types of activity are often seen: pre and post disclosure of an exploited vulnerability.

Examples of exploitation

Darktrace saw this consistent story line play out during several of the Fortinet and PAN OS threat actor campaigns highlighted above last year, where nation-state actors were seen exploiting vulnerabilities first, followed by ransomware gangs impacting organizations [2].

The same applies with the recent SAP Netweaver exploitations being tied to a China based threat actor earlier this spring with subsequent ransomware incidents being observed [3].

You spotted the anomaly but did you stop the breach?

Anomaly-based detection offers the benefit of identifying malicious activity even before a CVE is disclosed; however, security teams still need to quickly contain and isolate the activity.

For example, during the Ivanti chaining exploitation in the early part of 2025, a customer had Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability enabled on their network. As a result, Darktrace was able to contain the compromise and shut down any ongoing suspicious connectivity by blocking internal connections and enforcing a “pattern of life” on the affected device.

This pre-CVE detection and response by Darktrace occurred 11 days before any public disclosure, demonstrating the value of an anomaly-based approach.

In some cases, customers have even reported that Darktrace stopped malicious exploitation of devices several days before a public disclosure of a vulnerability.

For example, During the ConnectWise exploitation, a customer informed the team that Darktrace had detected malicious software being installed via remote access. Upon further investigation, four servers were found to be impacted, while Autonomous Response had blocked outbound connections and enforced patterns of life on impacted devices.

Conclusion

By continuously analyzing behavioral patterns, systems can spot unusual activities and patterns from users, systems, and networks to detect anomalies that could signify a security breach.

Through ongoing monitoring and learning from these behaviors, anomaly-based security systems can detect threats that traditional signature-based solutions might miss, while also providing detailed insights into threat tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This type of behavioral intelligence supports pre-CVE detection, allows for a more adaptive security posture, and enables systems to evolve with the ever-changing threat landscape.

Credit to Nathaniel Jones (VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO), Emma Fougler (Global Threat Research Operations Lead), Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)

References and further reading:

Realted Darktrace blogs:

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*Self-reported by customer, confirmed afterwards.

**Updated January 2024 blog now reflects current findings

About the author

Nathaniel Jones

VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO

Blog

Network

June 27, 2025

Patch and Persist: Darktrace’s Detection of Blind Eagle (APT-C-36)

login on laptop dual factor authentication

What is Blind Eagle?

Since 2018, APT-C-36, also known as Blind Eagle, has been observed performing cyber-attacks targeting various sectors across multiple countries in Latin America, with a particular focus on Colombian organizations.

Blind Eagle characteristically targets government institutions, financial organizations, and critical infrastructure [1][2].

Attacks carried out by Blind Eagle actors typically start with a phishing email and the group have been observed utilizing various Remote Access Trojans (RAT) variants, which often have in-built methods for hiding command-and-control (C2) traffic from detection [3].

What we know about Blind Eagle from a recent campaign

Since November 2024, Blind Eagle actors have been conducting an ongoing campaign targeting Colombian organizations [1].

In this campaign, threat actors have been observed using phishing emails to deliver malicious URL links to targeted recipients, similar to the way threat actors have previously been observed exploiting CVE-2024-43451, a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that allows the disclosure of a user’s NTLMv2 password hash upon minimal interaction with a malicious file [4].

Despite Microsoft patching this vulnerability in November 2024 [1][4], Blind Eagle actors have continued to exploit the minimal interaction mechanism, though no longer with the intent of harvesting NTLMv2 password hashes. Instead, phishing emails are sent to targets containing a malicious URL which, when clicked, initiates the download of a malicious file. This file is then triggered by minimal user interaction.

Clicking on the file triggers a WebDAV request, with a connection being made over HTTP port 80 using the user agent ‘Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/10.0.19044’. WebDAV is a transmission protocol which allows files or complete directories to be made available through the internet, and to be transmitted to devices [5]. The next stage payload is then downloaded via another WebDAV request and malware is executed on the target device.

Attackers are notified when a recipient downloads the malicious files they send, providing an insight into potential targets [1].

Darktrace’s coverage of Blind Eagle

In late February 2025, Darktrace observed activity assessed with medium confidence to be associated with Blind Eagle on the network of a customer in Colombia.

Within a period of just five hours, Darktrace / NETWORK detected a device being redirected through a rare external location, downloading multiple executable files, and ultimately exfiltrating data from the customer’s environment.

Since the customer did not have Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability enabled on their network, no actions were taken to contain the compromise, allowing it to escalate until the customer’s security team responded to the alerts provided by Darktrace.

Darktrace observed a device on the customer’s network being directed over HTTP to a rare external IP, namely 62[.]60[.]226[.]112, which had never previously been seen in this customer’s environment and was geolocated in Germany. Multiple open-source intelligence (OSINT) providers have since linked this endpoint with phishing and malware campaigns [9].

The device then proceeded to download the executable file hxxp://62[.]60[.]226[.]112/file/3601_2042.exe.

Figure 1: Darktrace’s detection of the affected device connecting to an unusual location based in Germany.

Figure 2: Darktrace’s detection of the affected device downloading an executable file from the suspicious endpoint.

The device was then observed making unusual connections to the rare endpoint 21ene.ip-ddns[.]com and performing unusual external data activity.

This dynamic DNS endpoint allows a device to access an endpoint using a domain name in place of a changing IP address. Dynamic DNS services ensure the DNS record of a domain name is automatically updated when the IP address changes. As such, malicious actors can use these services and endpoints to dynamically establish connections to C2 infrastructure [6].

Further investigation into this dynamic endpoint using OSINT revealed multiple associations with previous likely Blind Eagle compromises, as well as Remcos malware, a RAT commonly deployed via phishing campaigns [7][8][10].

Figure 3: Darktrace’s detection of the affected device connecting to the suspicious dynamic DNS endpoint, 21ene.ip-ddns[.]com.

Shortly after this, Darktrace observed the user agent ‘Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/10.0.19045’, indicating usage of the aforementioned transmission protocol WebDAV. The device was subsequently observed connected to an endpoint associated with Github and downloading data, suggesting that the device was retrieving a malicious tool or payload. The device then began to communicate to the malicious endpoint diciembrenotasenclub[.]longmusic[.]com over the new TCP port 1512 [11].

Around this time, the device was also observed uploading data to the endpoints 21ene.ip-ddns[.]com and diciembrenotasenclub[.]longmusic[.]com, with transfers of 60 MiB and 5.6 MiB observed respectively.

Figure 4: UI graph showing external data transfer activity.

This chain of activity triggered an Enhanced Monitoring model alert in Darktrace / NETWORK. These high-priority model alerts are designed to trigger in response to higher fidelity indicators of compromise (IoCs), suggesting that a device is performing activity consistent with a compromise.

Figure 5: Darktrace’s detection of initial attack chain activity.

A second Enhanced Monitoring model was also triggered by this device following the download of the aforementioned executable file (hxxp://62[.]60[.]226[.]112/file/3601_2042.exe) and the observed increase in C2 activity.

Following this activity, Darktrace continued to observe the device beaconing to the 21ene.ip-ddns[.]com endpoint.

Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst was able to correlate each of the individual detections involved in this compromise, identifying them as part of a broader incident that encompassed C2 connectivity, suspicious downloads, and external data transfers.

Figure 6: Cyber AI Analyst’s investigation into the activity observed on the affected device.

Figure 7: Cyber AI Analyst’s detection of the affected device’s broader connectivity throughout the course of the attack.

As the affected customer did not have Darktrace’s Autonomous Response configured at the time, the attack was able to progress unabated. Had Darktrace been properly enabled, it would have been able to take a number of actions to halt the escalation of the attack.

For example, the unusual beaconing connections and the download of an unexpected file from an uncommon location would have been shut down by blocking the device from making external connections to the relevant destinations.

Conclusion

The persistence of Blind Eagle and ability to adapt its tactics, even after patches were released, and the speed at which the group were able to continue using pre-established TTPs highlights that timely vulnerability management and patch application, while essential, is not a standalone defense.

Organizations must adopt security solutions that use anomaly-based detection to identify emerging and adapting threats by recognizing deviations in user or device behavior that may indicate malicious activity. Complementing this with an autonomous decision maker that can identify, connect, and contain compromise-like activity is crucial for safeguarding organizational networks against constantly evolving and sophisticated threat actors.

Credit to Charlotte Thompson (Senior Cyber Analyst), Eugene Chua (Principal Cyber Analyst) and Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)

Appendices

IoCs

IoC – Type - Confidence
Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/10.0.19045 – User Agent

62[.]60[.]226[.]112 – IP – Medium Confidence

hxxp://62[.]60[.]226[.]112/file/3601_2042.exe – Payload Download – Medium Confidence

21ene.ip-ddns[.]com – Dynamic DNS Endpoint – Medium Confidence

diciembrenotasenclub[.]longmusic[.]com - Hostname – Medium Confidence

Darktrace’s model alert coverage

Anomalous File / Suspicious HTTP Redirect
Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location
Anomalous File / Multiple EXE from Rare External Location
Anomalous Server Activity / Outgoing from Server
Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data to New Endpoint
Device / Anomalous Github Download
Anomalous Connection / Multiple Connections to New External TCP Port
Device / Initial Attack Chain Activity
Anomalous Server Activity / Rare External from Server
Compromise / Suspicious File and C2
Compromise / Fast Beaconing to DGA
Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Failed Connections
Device / Large Number of Model Alert

Mitre Attack Mapping:

Tactic – Technique – Technique Name

Initial Access - T1189 – Drive-by Compromise
Initial Access - T1190 – Exploit Public-Facing Application
Initial Access ICS - T0862 – Supply Chain Compromise
Initial Access ICS - T0865 – Spearphishing Attachment
Initial Access ICS - T0817 - Drive-by Compromise
Resource Development - T1588.001 – Malware
Lateral Movement ICS - T0843 – Program Download
Command and Control - T1105 - Ingress Tool Transfer
Command and Control - T1095 – Non-Application Layer Protocol
Command and Control - T1571 – Non-Standard Port
Command and Control - T1568.002 – Domain Generation Algorithms
Command and Control ICS - T0869 – Standard Application Layer Protocol
Evasion ICS - T0849 – Masquerading
Exfiltration - T1041 – Exfiltration Over C2 Channel
Exfiltration - T1567.002 – Exfiltration to Cloud Storage