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July 26, 2022

Identifying PrivateLoader Network Threats

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26
Jul 2022
Learn how Darktrace identifies network-based indicators of compromise for the PrivateLoader malware. Gain insights into advanced threat detection.

Instead of delivering their malicious payloads themselves, threat actors can pay certain cybercriminals (known as pay-per-install (PPI) providers) to deliver their payloads for them. Since January 2022, Darktrace’s SOC has observed several cases of PPI providers delivering their clients’ payloads using a modular malware downloader known as ‘PrivateLoader’.

This blog will explore how these PPI providers installed PrivateLoader onto systems and outline the steps which the infected PrivateLoader bots took to install further malicious payloads. The details provided here are intended to provide insight into the operations of PrivateLoader and to assist security teams in identifying PrivateLoader bots within their own networks.  

Threat Summary 

Between January and June 2022, Darktrace identified the following sequence of network behaviours within the environments of several Darktrace clients. Patterns of activity involving these steps are paradigmatic examples of PrivateLoader activity:

1. A victim’s device is redirected to a page which instructs them to download a password-protected archive file from a file storage service — typically Discord Content Delivery Network (CDN)

2. The device contacts a file storage service (typically Discord CDN) via SSL connections

3. The device either contacts Pastebin via SSL connections, makes an HTTP GET request with the URI string ‘/server.txt’ or ‘server_p.txt’ to 45.144.225[.]57, or makes an HTTP GET request with the URI string ‘/proxies.txt’ to 212.193.30[.]45

4. The device makes an HTTP GET request with the URI string ‘/base/api/statistics.php’ to either 212.193.30[.]21, 85.202.169[.]116, 2.56.56[.]126 or 2.56.59[.]42

5. The device contacts a file storage service (typically Discord CDN) via SSL connections

6. The device makes a HTTP POST request with the URI string ‘/base/api/getData.php’ to either 212.193.30[.]21, 85.202.169[.]116, 2.56.56[.]126 or 2.56.59[.]42

7. The device finally downloads malicious payloads from a variety of endpoints

The PPI Business 

Before exploring PrivateLoader in more detail, the pay-per-install (PPI) business should be contextualized. This consists of two parties:  

1. PPI clients - actors who want their malicious payloads to be installed onto a large number of target systems. PPI clients are typically entry-level threat actors who seek to widely distribute commodity malware [1]

2. PPI providers - actors who PPI clients can pay to install their malicious payloads 

As the smugglers of the cybercriminal world, PPI providers typically advertise their malware delivery services on underground web forums. In some cases, PPI services can even be accessed via Clearnet websites such as InstallBest and InstallShop [2] (Figure 1).  

Figure 1: A snapshot of the InstallBest PPI login page [2]


To utilize a PPI provider’s service, a PPI client must typically specify: 

(A)  the URLs of the payloads which they want to be installed

(B)  the number of systems onto which they want their payloads to be installed

(C)  their geographical targeting preferences. 

Payment of course, is also required. To fulfil their clients’ requests, PPI providers typically make use of downloaders - malware which instructs the devices on which it is running to download and execute further payloads. PPI providers seek to install their downloaders onto as many systems as possible. Follow-on payloads are usually determined by system information garnered and relayed back to the PPI providers’ command and control (C2) infrastructure. PPI providers may disseminate their downloaders themselves, or they may outsource the dissemination to third parties called ‘affiliates’ [3].  

Back in May 2021, Intel 471 researchers became aware of PPI providers using a novel downloader (dubbed ‘PrivateLoader’) to conduct their operations. Since Intel 471’s public disclosure of the downloader back in Feb 2022 [4], several other threat research teams, such as the Walmart Cyber Intel Team [5], Zscaler ThreatLabz [6], and Trend Micro Research [7] have all provided valuable insights into the downloader’s behaviour. 

Anatomy of a PrivateLoader Infection

The PrivateLoader downloader, which is written in C++, was originally monolithic (i.e, consisted of only one module). At some point, however, the downloader became modular (i.e, consisting of multiple modules). The modules communicate via HTTP and employ various anti-analysis methods. PrivateLoader currently consists of the following three modules [8]: 

  • The loader module: Instructs the system on which it is running to retrieve the IP address of the main C2 server and to download and execute the PrivateLoader core module
  • The core module: Instructs the system on which it is running to send system information to the main C2 server, to download and execute further malicious payloads, and to relay information regarding installed payloads back to the main C2 server
  • The service module: Instructs the system on which it is running to keep the PrivateLoader modules running

Kill Chain Deep-Dive 

The chain of activity starts with the user’s browser being redirected to a webpage which instructs them to download a password-protected archive file from a file storage service such as Discord CDN. Discord is a popular VoIP and instant messaging service, and Discord CDN is the service’s CDN infrastructure. In several cases, the webpages to which users’ browsers were redirected were hosted on ‘hero-files[.]com’ (Figure 2), ‘qd-files[.]com’, and ‘pu-file[.]com’ (Figure 3). 

Figure 2: An image of a page hosted on hero-files[.]com - an endpoint which Darktrace observed systems contacting before downloading PrivateLoader from Discord CDN
Figure 3: An image of a page hosted on pu-file[.]com- an endpoint which Darktrace observed systems contacting before downloading PrivateLoader from Discord CDN

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On attempting to download cracked/pirated software, users’ browsers were typically redirected to download instruction pages. In one case however, a user’s device showed signs of being infected with the malicious Chrome extension, ChromeBack [9], immediately before it contacted a webpage providing download instructions (Figure 4). This may suggest that cracked software downloads are not the only cause of users’ browsers being redirected to these download instruction pages (Figure 5). 

Figure 4: The event log for this device (taken from the Darktrace Threat Visualiser interface) shows that the device contacted endpoints associated with ChromeBack ('freychang[.]fun') prior to visiting a page ('qd-file[.]com') which instructed the device’s user to download an archive file from Discord CDN
 Figure 5: An image of the website 'crackright[.]com'- a provider of cracked software. Systems which attempted to download software from this website were subsequently led to pages providing instructions to download a password-protected archive from Discord CDN

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After users’ devices were redirected to pages instructing them to download a password-protected archive, they subsequently contacted cdn.discordapp[.]com over SSL. The archive files which users downloaded over these SSL connections likely contained the PrivateLoader loader module. Immediately after contacting the file storage endpoint, users’ devices were observed either contacting Pastebin over SSL, making an HTTP GET request with the URI string ‘/server.txt’ or ‘server_p.txt’ to 45.144.225[.]57, or making an HTTP GET request with the URI string ‘/proxies.txt’ to 212.193.30[.]45 (Figure 6).

Distinctive user-agent strings such as those containing question marks (e.g. ‘????ll’) and strings referencing outdated Chrome browser versions were consistently seen in these HTTP requests. The following chrome agent was repeatedly observed: ‘Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/74.0.3729.169 Safari/537.36’.

In some cases, devices also displayed signs of infection with other strains of malware such as the RedLine infostealer and the BeamWinHTTP malware downloader. This may suggest that the password-protected archives embedded several payloads.

Figure 6: This figure, obtained from Darktrace's Advanced Search interface, represents the post-infection behaviour displayed by a PrivateLoader bot. After visiting hero-files[.]com and downloading the PrivateLoader loader module from Discord CDN, the device can be seen making HTTP GET requests for ‘/proxies.txt’ and ‘/server.txt’ and contacting pastebin[.]com

It seems that PrivateLoader bots contact Pastebin, 45.144.225[.]57, and 212.193.30[.]45 in order to retrieve the IP address of PrivateLoader’s main C2 server - the server which provides PrivateLoader bots with payload URLs. This technique used by the operators of PrivateLoader closely mirrors the well-known espionage tactic known as ‘dead drop’.

The dead drop is a method of espionage tradecraft in which an individual leaves a physical object such as papers, cash, or weapons in an agreed hiding spot so that the intended recipient can retrieve the object later on without having to come in to contact with the source. When threat actors host information about core C2 infrastructure on intermediary endpoints, the hosted information is analogously called a ‘Dead Drop Resolver’ or ‘DDR’. Example URLs of DDRs used by PrivateLoader:

  • https://pastebin[.]com/...
  • http://212.193.30[.]45/proxies.txt
  • http://45.144.225[.]57/server.txt
  • http://45.144.255[.]57/server_p.txt

The ‘proxies.txt’ DDR hosted on 212.193.40[.]45 contains a list of 132 IP address / port pairs. The 119th line of this list includes a scrambled version of the IP address of PrivateLoader’s main C2 server (Figures 7 & 8). Prior to June, it seems that the main C2 IP address was ‘212.193.30[.]21’, however, the IP address appears to have recently changed to ‘85.202.169[.]116’. In a limited set of cases, Darktrace also observed PrivateLoader bots retrieving payload URLs from 2.56.56[.]126 and 2.56.59[.]42 (rather than from 212.193.30[.]21 or 85.202.169[.]116). These IP addresses may be hardcoded secondary C2 address which PrivateLoader bots use in cases where they are unable to retrieve the primary C2 address from Pastebin, 212.193.30[.]45 or 45.144.255[.]57 [10]. 

Figure 7: Before June, the 119th entry of the ‘proxies.txt’ file lists '30.212.21.193' -  a scrambling of the ‘212.193.30[.]21’ main C2 IP address
Figure 8: Since June, the 119th entry of the ‘proxies.txt’ file lists '169.85.116.202' - a scrambling of the '85.202.169[.]116' main C2 IP address

Once PrivateLoader bots had retrieved C2 information from either Pastebin, 45.144.225[.]57, or 212.193.30[.]45, they went on to make HTTP GET requests for ‘/base/api/statistics.php’ to either 212.193.30[.]21, 85.202.169[.]116, 2.56.56[.]126, or 2.56.59[.]42 (Figure 9). The server responded to these requests with an XOR encrypted string. The strings were encrypted using a 1-byte key [11], such as 0001101 (Figure 10). Decrypting the string revealed a URL for a BMP file hosted on Discord CDN, such as ‘hxxps://cdn.discordapp[.]com/attachments/978284851323088960/986671030670078012/PL_Client.bmp’. These encrypted URLs appear to be file download paths for the PrivateLoader core module. 

Figure 9: HTTP response from server to an HTTP GET request for '/base/api/statistics.php'
Figure 10: XOR decrypting the string with the one-byte key, 00011101, outputs a URL in CyberChef

After PrivateLoader bots retrieved the 'cdn.discordapp[.]com’ URL from 212.193.30[.]21, 85.202.169[.]116, 2.56.56[.]126, or 2.56.59[.]42, they immediately contacted Discord CDN via SSL connections in order to obtain the PrivateLoader core module. Execution of this module resulted in the bots making HTTP POST requests (with the URI string ‘/base/api/getData.php’) to the main C2 address (Figures 11 & 12). Both the data which the PrivateLoader bots sent over these HTTP POST requests and the data returned via the C2 server’s HTTP responses were heavily encrypted using a combination of password-based key derivation, base64 encoding, AES encryption, and HMAC validation [12]. 

Figure 11: The above image, taken from Darktrace's Advanced Search interface, shows a PrivateLoader bot carrying out the following steps: contact ‘hero-files[.]com’ --> contact ‘cdn.discordapp[.]com’ --> retrieve ‘/proxies.txt’ from 212.193.30[.]45 --> retrieve ‘/base/api/statistics.php’ from 212.193.30[.]21 --> contact ‘cdn.discordapp[.]com --> make HTTP POST request with the URI ‘base/api/getData.php’ to 212.193.30[.]21
Figure 12: A PCAP of the data sent via the HTTP POST (in red), and the data returned by the C2 endpoint (in blue)

These ‘/base/api/getData.php’ POST requests contain a command, a campaign name and a JSON object. The response may either contain a simple status message (such as “success”) or a JSON object containing URLs of payloads. After making these HTTP connections, PrivateLoader bots were observed downloading and executing large volumes of payloads (Figure 13), ranging from crypto-miners to infostealers (such as Mars stealer), and even to other malware downloaders (such as SmokeLoader). In some cases, bots were also seen downloading files with ‘.bmp’ extensions, such as ‘Service.bmp’, ‘Cube_WW14.bmp’, and ‘NiceProcessX64.bmp’, from 45.144.225[.]57 - the same DDR endpoint from which PrivateLoader bots retrieved main C2 information. These ‘.bmp’ payloads are likely related to the PrivateLoader service module [13]. Certain bots made follow-up HTTP POST requests (with the URI string ‘/service/communication.php’) to either 212.193.30[.]21 or 85.202.169[.]116, indicating the presence of the PrivateLoader service module, which has the purpose of establishing persistence on the device (Figure 14). 

Figure 13: The above image, taken from Darktrace's Advanced Search interface, outlines the plethora of malware payloads downloaded by a PrivateLoader bot after it made an HTTP POST request to the ‘/base/api/getData.php’ endpoint. The PrivateLoader service module is highlighted in red
Figure 14: The event log for a PrivateLoader bot, obtained from the Threat Visualiser interface, shows a device making HTTP POST requests to ‘/service/communication.php’ and connecting to the NanoPool mining pool, indicating successful execution of downloaded payloads

In several observed cases, PrivateLoader bots downloaded another malware downloader called ‘SmokeLoader’ (payloads named ‘toolspab2.exe’ and ‘toolspab3.exe’) from “Privacy Tools” endpoints [14], such as ‘privacy-tools-for-you-802[.]com’ and ‘privacy-tools-for-you-783[.]com’. These “Privacy Tools” domains are likely impersonation attempts of the legitimate ‘privacytools[.]io’ website - a website run by volunteers who advocate for data privacy [15]. 

After downloading and executing malicious payloads, PrivateLoader bots were typically seen contacting crypto-mining pools, such as NanoPool, and making HTTP POST requests to external hosts associated with SmokeLoader, such as hosts named ‘host-data-coin-11[.]com’ and ‘file-coin-host-12[.]com’ [16]. In one case, a PrivateLoader bot went on to exfiltrate data over HTTP to an external host named ‘cheapf[.]link’, which was registered on the 14th March 2022 [17]. The name of the file which the PrivateLoader bot used to exfiltrate data was ‘NOP8QIMGV3W47Y.zip’, indicating information stealing activities by Mars Stealer (Figure 15) [18]. By saving the HTTP stream as raw data and utilizing a hex editor to remove the HTTP header portions, the hex data of the ZIP file was obtained. Saving the hex data using a ‘.zip’ extension and extracting the contents, a file directory consisting of system information and Chrome and Edge browsers’ Autofill data in cleartext .txt file format could be seen (Figure 16).

Figure 15: A PCAP of a PrivateLoader bot’s HTTP POST request to cheapf[.]link, with data sent by the bot appearing to include Chrome and Edge autofill data, as well as system information
Figure 16: File directory structure and files of the ZIP archive 

When left unattended, PrivateLoader bots continued to contact C2 infrastructure in order to relay details of executed payloads and to retrieve URLs of further payloads. 

Figure 17: Timeline of the attack

Darktrace Coverage 

Most of the incidents surveyed for this article belonged to prospective customers who were trialling Darktrace with RESPOND in passive mode, and thus without the ability for autonomous intervention. However in all observed cases, Darktrace DETECT was able to provide visibility into the actions taken by PrivateLoader bots. In one case, despite the infected bot being disconnected from the client’s network, Darktrace was still able to provide visibility into the device’s network behaviour due to the client’s usage of Darktrace/Endpoint. 

If a system within an organization’s network becomes infected with PrivateLoader, it will display a range of anomalous network behaviours before it downloads and executes malicious payloads. For example, it will contact Pastebin or make HTTP requests with new and unusual user-agent strings to rare external endpoints. These network behaviours will generate some of the following alerts on the Darktrace UI:

  • Compliance / Pastebin 
  • Device / New User Agent and New IP
  • Device / New User Agent
  • Device / Three or More New User Agents
  • Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname
  • Anomalous Connection / POST to PHP on New External Host
  • Anomalous Connection / Posting HTTP to IP Without Hostname

Once the infected host obtains URLs for malware payloads from a C2 endpoint, it will likely start to download and execute large volumes of malicious files. These file downloads will usually cause Darktrace to generate some of the following alerts:

  • Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location
  • Anomalous File / Numeric Exe Download
  • Anomalous File / Masqueraded File Transfer
  • Anomalous File / Multiple EXE from Rare External Locations
  • Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise

If RESPOND is deployed in active mode, Darktrace will be able to autonomously block the download of additional malware payloads onto the target machine and the subsequent beaconing or crypto-mining activities through network inhibitors such as ‘Block matching connections’, ‘Enforce pattern of life’ and ‘Block all outgoing traffic’. The ‘Enforce pattern of life’ action results in a device only being able to make connections and data transfers which Darktrace considers normal for that device. The ‘Block all outgoing traffic’ action will cause all traffic originating from the device to be blocked. If the customer has Darktrace’s Proactive Threat Notification (PTN) service, then a breach of an Enhanced Monitoring model such as ‘Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise’ will result in a Darktrace SOC analyst proactively notifying the customer of the suspicious activity. Below is a list of Darktrace RESPOND (Antigena) models which would be expected to breach due to PrivateLoader activity. Such models can seriously hamper attempts made by PrivateLoader bots to download malicious payloads. 

  • Antigena / Network / External Threat / Antigena Suspicious File Block
  • Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Controlled and Model Breach
  • Antigena / Network / External Threat / Antigena File then New Outbound Block
  • Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Significant Anomaly from Client Block 
  • Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Breaches Over Time Block

In one observed case, the infected bot began to download malicious payloads within one minute of becoming infected with PrivateLoader. Since RESPOND was correctly configured, it was able to immediately intervene by autonomously enforcing the device’s pattern of life for 2 hours and blocking all of the device’s outgoing traffic for 10 minutes (Figure 17). When malware moves at such a fast pace, the availability of autonomous response technology, which can respond immediately to detected threats, is key for the prevention of further damage.  

Figure 18: The event log for a Darktrace RESPOND (Antigena) model breach shows Darktrace RESPOND performing inhibitive actions once the PrivateLoader bot begins to download payloads

Conclusion

By investigating PrivateLoader infections over the past couple of months, Darktrace has observed PrivateLoader operators making changes to the downloader’s main C2 IP address and to the user-agent strings which the downloader uses in its C2 communications. It is relatively easy for the operators of PrivateLoader to change these superficial network-based features of the malware in order to evade detection [19]. However, once a system becomes infected with PrivateLoader, it will inevitably start to display anomalous patterns of network behaviour characteristic of the Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) discussed in this blog.

Throughout 2022, Darktrace observed overlapping patterns of network activity within the environments of several customers, which reveal the archetypal steps of a PrivateLoader infection. Despite the changes made to PrivateLoader’s network-based features, Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI was able to continually identify infected bots, detecting every stage of an infection without relying on known indicators of compromise. When configured, RESPOND was able to immediately respond to such infections, preventing further advancement in the cyber kill chain and ultimately preventing the delivery of floods of payloads onto infected devices.

IoCs

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MITRE ATT&CK Techniques Observed

References

[1], [8],[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldp7eESQotM  

[2] https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2021/09/01/fake-pirated-software-sites-serve-up-malware-droppers-as-a-service/

[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228873118_Measuring_Pay-per Install_The_Commoditization_of_Malware_Distribution 

[4], [15] https://intel471.com/blog/privateloader-malware

[5] https://medium.com/walmartglobaltech/privateloader-to-anubis-loader-55d066a2653e 

[6], [10],[11], [12] https://www.zscaler.com/blogs/security-research/peeking-privateloader 

[7] https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/22/e/netdooka-framework-distributed-via-privateloader-ppi.html

[9] https://www.gosecure.net/blog/2022/02/10/malicious-chrome-browser-extension-exposed-chromeback-leverages-silent-extension-loading/

[14] https://www.proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-insight/malware-masquerades-privacy-tool 

[16] https://asec.ahnlab.com/en/30513/ 

[17]https://twitter.com/0xrb/status/1515956690642161669

[18] https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/Arkei+Variants+From+Vidar+to+Mars+Stealer/28468

[19] http://detect-respond.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-pyramid-of-pain.html

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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.
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February 19, 2025

Darktrace Releases Annual 2024 Threat Insights

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Introduction: Darktrace’s threat research

Defenders must understand the threat landscape in order to protect against it. They can do that with threat intelligence.

Darktrace approaches threat intelligence with a unique perspective. Unlike traditional security vendors that rely on established patterns from past incidents, it uses a strategy that is rooted in the belief that identifying behavioral anomalies is crucial for identifying both known and novel threats.

For Darktrace analysts and researchers, the incidents detected by the AI solution mark the beginning of a deeper investigation, aiming to connect mitigated threats to wider trends from across the threat landscape. Through hindsight analysis, the Darktrace Threat Research team has highlighted numerous threats, including zero-day, n-day, and other novel attacks, showcasing their evolving nature and Darktrace’s ability to identify them.

In 2024, the Threat Research team observed major trends around vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems, new and re-emerging ransomware strains, and sophisticated email attacks. Read on to discover some of our key insights into the current cybersecurity threat landscape.

Multiple campaigns target vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems

It is increasingly common for threat actors to identify and exploit newly discovered vulnerabilities in widely used services and applications, and in some cases, these vulnerability exploitations occur within hours of disclosure.

In 2024, the most significant campaigns observed involved the ongoing exploitation of zero-day and n-day vulnerabilities in edge and perimeter network technologies. In fact, in the first half of the year, 40% of all identified campaign activity came from the exploitation of internet-facing devices. Some of the most common exploitations involved Ivanti Connect Secure (CS) and Ivanti Policy Secure (PS) appliances, Palo Alto Network (PAN-OS) firewall devices, and Fortinet appliances.

Darktrace helps security teams identify suspicious behavior quickly, as demonstrated with the critical vulnerability in PAN-OS firewall devices. The vulnerability was publicly disclosed on April 11, 2024, yet with anomaly-based detection, Darktrace’s Threat Research team was able to identify a range of suspicious behavior related to exploitation of this vulnerability, including command-and-control (C2) connectivity, data exfiltration, and brute-forcing activity, as early as March 26.

That means that Darktrace and our Threat Research team detected this Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) exploitation 16 days before the vulnerability was disclosed. Addressing critical vulnerabilities quickly massively benefits security, as teams can reduce their effectiveness by slowing malicious operations and forcing attackers to pursue more costly and time-consuming methods.

Persistent ransomware threats continue to evolve

The continued adoption of the Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model provides even less experienced threat actors with the tools needed to carry out disruptive attacks, significantly lowering the barrier to entry.

The Threat Research team tracked both novel and re-emerging strains of ransomware across the customer fleet, including Akira, LockBit, and Lynx. Within these ransomware attempts and incidents, there were notable trends in attackers’ techniques: using phishing emails as an attack vector, exploiting legitimate tools to mask C2 communication, and exfiltrating data to cloud storage services.

Read the Annual 2024 Threat Report for the complete list of prominent ransomware actors and their commonly used techniques.

Onslaught of email threats continues

With a majority of attacks originating from email, it is crucial that organizations secure the inboxes and beyond.

Between December 21, 2023, and December 18, 2024, Darktrace / EMAIL detected over 30.4 million phishing emails across the fleet. Of these, 70% successfully bypassed Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) verification checks and 55% passed through all other existing layers of customer email security.

The abuse of legitimate services and senders continued to be a significant method for threat actors throughout 2024. By leveraging trusted platforms and domains, malicious actors can bypass traditional security measures and increase the likelihood of their phishing attempts being successful.

This past year, there was a substantial use of legitimately authenticated senders and previously established domains, with 96% of phishing emails detected by Darktrace / EMAIL utilizing existing domains rather than registering new ones.

These are not the only types of email attacks we observed. Darktrace detected over 2.7 million emails with multistage payloads.

While most traditional cybersecurity solutions struggle to cover multiple vectors and recognize each stage of complex attacks as part of wider malicious activity, Darktrace can detect and respond across email, identities, network, and cloud.

Conclusion

The Darktrace Threat Research team continues to monitor the ever-evolving threat landscape. Major patterns over the last year have revealed the importance of fast-acting, anomaly-based detection like Darktrace provides.

For example, response speed is essential when campaigns target vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems, and these vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers within hours of their disclosure if not even before that.

Similarly, anomaly-based detection can identify hard to find threats like ransomware attacks that increasingly use living-off-the-land techniques and legitimate tools to hide malicious activity. A similar pattern can be found in the realm of email security, where attacks are also getting harder to spot, especially as they frequently exploit trusted senders, use redirects via legitimate services, and craft attacks that bypass DMARC and other layers of email security.

As attacks appear with greater complexity, speed, and camouflage, defenders must have timely detection and containment capabilities to handle all emerging threats. These hard-to-spot attacks can be identified and stopped by Darktrace.

Download the full report

Discover the latest threat landscape trends and recommendations from the Darktrace Threat Research team.

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February 18, 2025

Unifying IT & OT With AI-Led Investigations for Industrial Security

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As industrial environments modernize, IT and OT networks are converging to improve efficiency, but this connectivity also creates new attack paths. Previously isolated OT systems are now linked to IT and cloud assets, making them more accessible to attackers.

While organizations have traditionally relied on air gaps, firewalls, data diodes, and access controls to separate IT and OT, these measures alone aren’t enough. Threat actors often infiltrate IT/Enterprise networks first then exploit segmentation, compromising credentials, or shared IT/OT systems to move laterally, escalate privileges, and ultimately enter the OT network.

To defend against these threats, organizations must first ensure they have complete visibility across IT and OT environments.

Visibility: The first piece of the puzzle

Visibility is the foundation of effective industrial cybersecurity, but it’s only the first step. Without visibility across both IT and OT, security teams risk missing key alerts that indicate a threat targeting OT at their earliest stages.

For Attacks targeting OT, early stage exploits often originate in IT environments, adversaries perform internal reconnaissance among other tactics and procedures but then laterally move into OT first affecting IT devices, servers and workstations within the OT network. If visibility is limited, these threats go undetected. To stay ahead of attackers, organizations need full-spectrum visibility that connects IT and OT security, ensuring no early warning signs are missed.

However, visibility alone isn’t enough. More visibility also means more alerts, this doesn’t just make it harder to separate real threats from routine activity, but bogs down analysts who have to investigate all these alerts to determine their criticality.

Investigations: The real bottleneck

While visibility is essential, it also introduces a new challenge: Alert fatigue. Without the right tools, analysts are often occupied investigating alerts with little to no context, forcing them to manually piece together information and determine if an attack is unfolding. This slows response times and increases the risk of missing critical threats.

Figure 1: Example ICS attack scenario

With siloed visibility across IT and OT each of these events shown above would be individually alerted by a detection engine with little to no context nor correlation. Thus, an analyst would have to try to piece together these events manually. Traditional security tools struggle to keep pace with the sophistication of these threats, resulting in an alarming statistic: less than 10% of alerts are thoroughly vetted, leaving organizations vulnerable to undetected breaches. As a result, incidents inevitably follow.

Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst uses AI-led investigations to improve workflows for analysts by automatically correlating alerts wherever they occur across both IT and OT. The multi-layered AI engine identifies high-priority incidents, and provides analysts with clear, actionable insights, reducing noise and highlighting meaningful threats. The AI significantly alleviates workloads, enabling teams to respond faster and more effectively before an attack escalates.

Overcoming organizational challenges across IT and OT

Beyond technical challenges like visibility and alert management, organizational dynamics further complicate IT-OT security efforts. Fundamental differences in priorities, workflows, and risk perspectives create challenges that can lead to misalignment between teams:

Non-transferable practices: IT professionals might assume that cybersecurity practices from IT environments can be directly applied to OT environments. This can lead to issues, as OT systems and workflows may not handle IT security processes as expected. It's crucial to recognize and respect the unique requirements and constraints of OT environments.

Segmented responsibilities: IT and OT teams often operate under separate organizational structures, each with distinct priorities, goals, and workflows. While IT focuses on data security, network integrity, and enterprise applications, OT prioritizes uptime, reliability, and physical processes.

Different risk perspectives: While IT teams focus on preventing cyber threats and regulatory violations, OT teams prioritize uptime and operational reliability making them drawn towards asset inventory tools that provide no threat detection capability.

Result: A combination of disparate and ineffective tools and misaligned teams can make any progress toward risk reduction at an organization seem impossible. The right tools should be able to both free up time for collaboration and prompt better communication between IT and OT teams where it is needed. However, different size operations structure their IT and OT teams differently which impacts the priorities for each team.

In real-world scenarios, small IT teams struggle to manage security across both IT and OT, while larger organizations with OT security teams face alert fatigue and numerous false positives slowing down investigations and hindering effective communication with the IT security teams.

By unifying visibility and investigations, Darktrace / OT helps organizations of all sizes detect threats earlier, streamline workflows, and enhance security across both IT and OT environments. The following examples illustrate how AI-driven investigations can transform security operations, improving detection, investigation, and response.

Before and after AI-led investigation

Before: Small manufacturing company

At a small manufacturing company, a 1-3 person IT team juggles everything from email security to network troubleshooting. An analyst might see unusual traffic through the firewall:

  • Unusual repeated outbound traffic from an IP within their OT network destined to an unidentifiable external IP.

With no dedicated OT security tools and limited visibility into the industrial network, they don’t know what the internal device in question is, if it is beaconing to a malicious external IP, and what it may be doing to other devices within the OT network. Without a centralized dashboard, they must manually check logs, ask operators about changes, and hunt for anomalies across different systems.

After a day of investigation, they concluded the traffic was not to be expected activity. They stop production within their smaller OT network, update their firewall rules and factory reset all OT devices and systems within the blast radius of the IP device in question.

After: Faster, automated response with Cyber AI Analyst

With Darktrace / OT and Cyber AI Analyst, the IT team moves from reactive, manual investigations to proactive, automated threat detection:

  • Cyber AI Analyst connects alerts across their IT and OT infrastructure temporally mapping them to attack frameworks and provides contextual analysis of how alerts are linked, revealing in real time attackers attempting lateral movement from IT to OT.
  • A human-readable incident report explains the full scope of the incident, eliminating hours of manual investigation.
  • The team is faster to triage as they are led directly to prioritized high criticality alerts, now capable of responding immediately instead of wasting valuable time hunting for answers.

By reducing noise, providing context, and automating investigations, Cyber AI Analyst transforms OT security, enabling small IT teams to detect, understand, and respond to threats—without deep OT cybersecurity expertise.

Before: Large critical infrastructure organization

In large critical infrastructure operations, OT and IT teams work in separate silos. The OT security team needs to quickly assess and prioritize alerts, but their system floods them with notifications:

  • Multiple new device connected to the ICS network alerts
  • Multiple failed logins to HMI detected
  • Multiple Unusual Modbus/TCP commands detected
  • Repeated outbound OT traffic to IT destinations

At first glance, these alerts seem important, but without context, it’s unclear whether they indicate a routine error, a misconfiguration, or an active cyber-attack. They might ask:

  • Are the failed logins just a mistake, or a brute-force attempt?
  • Is the outbound traffic part of a scheduled update, or data exfiltration?

Without correlation across events, the engineer must manually investigate each one—checking logs, cross-referencing network activity, and contacting operators—wasting valuable time. Meanwhile, if it’s a coordinated attack, the adversary may already be disrupting operations.

After: A new workflow with Cyber AI Analyst

With Cyber AI Analyst, the OT security team gets clear, automated correlation of security events, making investigations faster and more efficient:

  • Automated correlation of OT threats: Instead of isolated alerts, Cyber AI Analyst stitches together related events, providing a single, high-confidence incident report that highlights key details.
  • Faster time to meaning: The system connects anomalous behaviors (e.g., failed logins, unusual traffic from an HMI, and unauthorized PLC modifications) into a cohesive narrative, eliminating hours of manual log analysis.
  • Prioritized and actionable alerts: OT security receives clear, ranked incidents, immediately highlighting what matters most.
  • Rapid threat understanding: Security teams know within minutes whether an event is a misconfiguration or a cyber-attack, allowing for faster containment.

With Cyber AI Analyst, large organizations cut through alert noise, accelerate investigations, and detect threats faster—without disrupting OT operations.

An AI-led approach to industrial cybersecurity

Security vendors with a primary focus on IT may lack insight into OT threats. Even OT-focused vendors have limited visibility into IT device exploitation within OT networks, leading to failed ability to detect early indicators of compromise. A comprehensive solution must account for the unique characteristics of various OT environments.

In a world where industrial security is no longer just about protecting OT but securing the entire digital-physical ecosystem as it interacts with the OT network, Darktrace / OT is an AI-driven solution that unifies visibility across IT, IoT and OT, Cloud into one cohesive defense strategy.

Whether an attack originates from an external breach, an insider threat, a supply chain compromise, in the Cloud, OT, or IT domains Cyber AI Analyst ensures that security teams see the full picture - before disruption occurs.

Learn more about Darktrace / OT 

  • Unify IT and OT security under a single platform, ensuring seamless communication and protection for all interconnected devices.
  • Maintain uptime with AI-driven threat containment, stopping attacks without disrupting production.
  • Mitigate risks with or without patches, leveraging MITRE mitigations to reduce attack opportunities.

Download the solution brief to see how Darktrace secures critical infrastructure.

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About the author
Daniel Simonds
Director of Operational Technology
Your data. Our AI.
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