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April 5, 2023

Understanding Qakbot Infections and Attack Paths

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05
Apr 2023
Explore the network-based analysis of Qakbot infections with Darktrace. Learn about the various attack paths used by cybercriminals and Darktrace's response.

In an ever-changing threat landscape, security vendors around the world are forced to quickly adapt, react, and respond to known attack vectors and threats. In the face of this, malicious actors are constantly looking for novel ways to gain access to networks. Whether that’s through new exploitations of network vulnerabilities or new delivery methods, attackers and their methods are continually evolving. Although it is valuable for organizations to leverage threat intelligence to keep abreast of known threats to their networks, intelligence alone is not enough to defend against increasingly versatile attackers. Having an autonomous decision maker able to detect and respond to emerging threats, even those employing novel or unknown techniques, is paramount to defend against network compromise.

At the end of January 2023, threat actors began to abuse OneNote attachments to deliver the malware strain, Qakbot, onto users' devices. Widespread adoption of this novel delivery method resulted in a surge in Qakbot infections across Darktrace's customer base between the end of January 2023 and the end of February 2023. Using its Self-Learning AI, Darktrace was able to uncover and respond to these so-called ‘QakNote’ infections as the new trend emerged. Darktrace detected and responded to the threat at multiple stages of the kill chain, preventing damaging and widespread compromise to customer networks.

Qakbot and The Recent Weaponization of OneNote

Qakbot first appeared in 2007 as a banking trojan designed to steal sensitive data such as banking credentials. Since then, Qakbot has evolved into a highly modular, multi-purpose tool, with backdoor, payload delivery, reconnaissance, lateral movement, and data exfiltration capabilities. Although Qakbot's primary delivery method has always been email-based, threat actors have been known to modify their email-based delivery methods of Qakbot in the face of changing circumstances. In the first half of 2022, Microsoft started rolling out versions of Office which block XL4 and VBA macros by default [1]/[2]/[3]. Prior to this change, Qakbot email campaigns typically consisted in the spreading of deceitful emails with Office attachments containing malicious macros. In the face of Microsoft's default blocking of macros, threat actors appeared to cease delivering Qakbot via Office attachments, and shifted to primarily using HTML attachments, through a method known as 'HTML smuggling' [4]/[5]. After the public disclosure [6] of the Follina vulnerability (CVE-2022-30190) in Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) in May 2022, Qakbot actors were seen capitalizing on the vulnerability to facilitate their email-based delivery of Qakbot payloads [7]/[8]/[9]. 

Given the inclination of Qakbot actors to adapt their email-based delivery methods, it is no surprise that they were quick to capitalize on the novel OneNote-based delivery method which emerged in December 2022. Since December 2022, threat actors have been seen using OneNote attachments to deliver a variety of malware strains, ranging from Formbook [10] to AsynRAT [11] to Emotet [12]. The abuse of OneNote documents to deliver malware is made possible by the fact that OneNote allows for the embedding of executable file types such as HTA files, CMD files, and BAT files. At the end of January 2023, actors started to leverage OneNote attachments to deliver Qakbot [13]/[14]. The adoption of this novel delivery method by Qakbot actors resulted in a surge in Qakbot infections in the wider threat landscape and across the Darktrace customer base.

Observed Activity Chains

Between January 31 and February 24, 2023, Darktrace observed variations of the following pattern of activity across its customer base:

1. User's device contacts OneNote-related endpoint 

2. User's device makes an external GET request with an empty Host header, a target URI whose final segment consists in 5 or 6 digits followed by '.dat', and a User-Agent header referencing either cURL or PowerShell. The GET request is responded to with a DLL file

3. User's device makes SSL connections over ports 443 and 2222 to unusual external endpoints, and makes TCP connections over port 65400 to 23.111.114[.]52

4. User's device makes SSL connections over port 443 to an external host named 'bonsars[.]com' (IP: 194.165.16[.]56) and TCP connections over port 443 to 78.31.67[.]7

5. User’s device makes call to Endpoint Mapper service on internal systems and then connects to the Service Control Manager (SCM) 

6. User's device uploads files with algorithmically generated names and ‘.dll’ or ‘.dll.cfg’ file extensions to SMB shares on internal systems

7. User's device makes Service Control requests to the systems to which it uploaded ‘.dll’ and ‘.dll.cfg’ files 

Further investigation of these chains of activity revealed that they were parts of Qakbot infections initiated via interactions with malicious OneNote attachments. 

Figure 1: Steps of observed QakNote infections.

Delivery Phase

Users' interactions with malicious OneNote attachments, which were evidenced by devices' HTTPS connections to OneNote-related endpoints, such as 'www.onenote[.]com', 'contentsync.onenote[.]com', and 'learningtools.onenote[.]com', resulted in the retrieval of Qakbot DLLs from unusual, external endpoints. In some cases, the user's interaction with the malicious OneNote attachment caused their device to fetch a Qakbot DLL using cURL, whereas, in other cases, it caused their device to download a Qakbot DLL using PowerShell. These different outcomes reflected variations in the contents of the executable files embedded within the weaponized OneNote attachments. In addition to having cURL and PowerShell User-Agent headers, the HTTP requests triggered by interaction with these OneNote attachments had other distinctive features, such as empty host headers and target URIs whose last segment consists in 5 or 6 digits followed by '.dat'. 

Figure 2: Model breach highlighting a user’s device making a HTTP GET request to 198.44.140[.]78 with a PowerShell User-Agent header and the target URI ‘/210/184/187737.dat’.
Figure 3: Model breach highlighting a user’s device making a HTTP GET request to 103.214.71[.]45 with a cURL User-Agent header and the target URI ‘/70802.dat’.
Figure 4: Event Log showing a user’s device making a GET request with a cURL User-Agent header to 185.231.205[.]246 after making an SSL connection to contentsync.onenote[.]com.
Figure 5: Event Log showing a user’s device making a GET request with a cURL User-Agent header to 185.231.205[.]246 after making an SSL connection to www.onenote[.]com.

Command and Control Phase

After fetching Qakbot DLLs, users’ devices were observed making numerous SSL connections over ports 443 and 2222 to highly unusual, external endpoints, as well as large volumes of TCP connections over port 65400 to 23.111.114[.]52. These connections represented Qakbot-infected devices communicating with command and control (C2) infrastructure. Qakbot-infected devices were also seen making intermittent connections to legitimate endpoints, such as 'xfinity[.]com', 'yahoo[.]com', 'verisign[.]com', 'oracle[.]com', and 'broadcom[.]com', likely due to Qakbot making connectivity checks. 

Figure 6: Event Log showing a user’s device contacting Qakbot C2 infrastructure and making connectivity checks to legitimate domains.
Figure 7: Event Log showing a user’s device contacting Qakbot C2 infrastructure and making connectivity checks to legitimate domains.

Cobalt Strike and VNC Phase

After Qakbot-infected devices established communication with C2 servers, they were observed making SSL connections to the external endpoint, bonsars[.]com, and TCP connections to the external endpoint, 78.31.67[.]7. The SSL connections to bonsars[.]com were C2 connections from Cobalt Strike Beacon, and the TCP connections to 78.31.67[.]7 were C2 connections from Qakbot’s Virtual Network Computing (VNC) module [15]/[16]. The occurrence of these connections indicate that actors leveraged Qakbot infections to drop Cobalt Strike Beacon along with a VNC payload onto infected systems. The deployment of Cobalt Strike and VNC likely provided actors with ‘hands-on-keyboard’ access to the Qakbot-infected systems. 

Figure 8: Advanced Search logs showing a user’s device contacting OneNote endpoints, fetching a Qakbot DLL over HTTP, making SSL connections to Qakbot infrastructure and connectivity checks to legitimate domains, and then making SSL connections to the Cobalt Strike endpoint, bonsars[.]com.
Figure 9: Event Log showing a user’s device contacting the Cobalt Strike C2 endpoint, bonsars[.]com, and the VNC C2 endpoint, 78.31.67[.]7, whilst simultaneously contacting the Qakbot C2 endpoint, 47.32.78[.]150.

Lateral Movement Phase

After dropping Cobalt Strike Beacon and a VNC module onto Qakbot-infected systems, actors leveraged their strengthened foothold to connect to the Service Control Manager (SCM) on internal systems in preparation for lateral movement. Before connecting to the SCM, infected systems were seen making calls to the Endpoint Mapper service, likely to identify exposed Microsoft Remote Procedure Call (MSRPC) services on internal systems. The MSRPC service, Service Control Manager (SCM), is known to be abused by Cobalt Strike to create and start services on remote systems. Connections to this service were evidenced by OpenSCManager2  (Opnum: 0x40) and OpenSCManagerW (Opnum: 0xf) calls to the svcctl RPC interface. 

Figure 10: Advanced Search logs showing a user’s device contacting the Endpoint Mapper and Service Control Manager (SCM) services on internal systems. 

After connecting to the SCM on internal systems, infected devices were seen using SMB to distribute files with ‘.dll’ and ‘.dll.cfg’ extensions to SMB shares. These uploads were followed by CreateWowService (Opnum: 0x3c) calls to the svcctl interface, likely intended to execute the uploaded payloads. The naming conventions of the uploaded files indicate that they were Qakbot payloads. 

Figure 11: Advanced Search logs showing a user’s device making Service Control DCE-RPC requests to internal systems after uploading ‘.dll’ and ‘.dll.cfg’ files to them over SMB.

Fortunately, none of the observed QakNote infections escalated further than this. If these infections had escalated, it is likely that they would have resulted in the widespread detonation of additional malicious payloads, such as ransomware.  

Darktrace Coverage of QakNote Activity

Figure 1 shows the steps involved in the QakNote infections observed across Darktrace’s customer base. How far attackers got along this chain was in part determined by the following three factors:

The presence of Darktrace/Email typically stopped QakNote infections from moving past the initial infection stage. The presence of RESPOND/Network significantly slowed down observed activity chains, however, infections left unattended and not mitigated by the security teams were able to progress further along the attack chain. 

Darktrace observed varying properties in the QakNote emails detected across the customer base. OneNote attachments were typically detected as either ‘application/octet-stream’ files or as ‘application/x-tar’ files. In some cases, the weaponized OneNote attachment embedded a malicious file, whereas in other cases, the OneNote file embedded a malicious link (typically a ‘.png’ or ‘.gif’ link) instead. In all cases Darktrace observed, QakNote emails used subject lines starting with ‘RE’ or ‘FW’ to manipulating their recipients into thinking that such emails were part of an existing email chain/thread. In some cases, emails impersonated users known to their recipients by including the names of such users in their header-from personal names. In many cases, QakNote emails appear to have originated from likely hijacked email accounts. These are highly successful methods of social engineering often employed by threat actors to exploit a user’s trust in known contacts or services, convincing them to open malicious emails and making it harder for security tools to detect.

The fact that observed QakNote emails used the fake-reply method, were sent from unknown email accounts, and contained attachments with unusual MIME types, caused such emails to breach the following Darktrace/Email models:

  • Association / Unknown Sender
  • Attachment / Unknown File
  • Attachment / Unsolicited Attachment
  • Attachment / Highly Unusual Mime
  • Attachment / Unsolicited Anomalous Mime
  • Attachment / Unusual Mime for Organisation
  • Unusual / Fake Reply
  • Unusual / Unusual Header TLD
  • Unusual / Fake Reply + Unknown Sender
  • Unusual / Unusual Connection from Unknown
  • Unusual / Off Topic

QakNote emails impersonating known users also breached the following DETECT & RESPOND/Email models:

  • Unusual / Unrelated Personal Name Address
  • Spoof / Basic Known Entity Similarities
  • Spoof / Internal User Similarities
  • Spoof / External User Similarities
  • Spoof / Internal User Similarities + Unrelated Personal Name Address
  • Spoof / External User Similarities + Unrelated Personal Name Address
  • Spoof / Internal User Similarities + Unknown File
  • Spoof / External User Similarities + Fake Reply
  • Spoof / Possible User Spoof from New Address - Enhanced Internal Similarities
  • Spoof / Whale

The actions taken by Darktrace on the observed emails is ultimately determined by Darktrace/Email models are breached. Those emails which did not breach Spoofing models (due to lack of impersonation indicators) received the ‘Convert Attachment’ action. This action converts suspicious attachments into neutralized PDFs, in this case successfully unweaponizing the malicious OneNote attachments. QakNote emails which did breach Spoofing models (due to the presence of impersonation indicators) received the strongest possible action, ‘Hold Message’. This action prevents suspicious emails from reaching the recipients’ mailbox. 

Figure 12: Email log showing a malicious OneNote email (without impersonation indicators) which received a 87% anomaly score, a ‘Move to junk’ action, and a ‘Convert attachment’ actions from Darktrace/Email.
Figure 13: Email log showing a malicious OneNote email (with impersonation indicators) which received an anomaly score of 100% and a ‘Hold message’ action from Darktrace/Email.
Figure 14: Email log showing a malicious OneNote email (with impersonation indicators) which received an anomaly score of 100% and a ‘Hold message’ action from Darktrace/Email.

If threat actors managed to get past the first stage of the QakNote kill chain, likely due to the absence of appropriate email security tools, the execution of the subsequent steps resulted in strong intervention from Darktrace/Network. 

Interactions with malicious OneNote attachments caused their devices to fetch a Qakbot DLL from a remote server via HTTP GET requests with an empty Host header and either a cURL or PowerShell User-Agent header. These unusual HTTP behaviors caused the following Darktrace/Network models to breach:

  • Device / New User Agent
  • Device / New PowerShell User Agent
  • Device / New User Agent and New IP
  • Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname
  • Anomalous Connection / Powershell to Rare External
  • Anomalous File / Numeric File Download
  • Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location
  • Anomalous File / New User Agent Followed By Numeric File Download

For customers with RESPOND/Network active, these breaches resulted in the following autonomous actions:

  • Enforce group pattern of life for 30 minutes
  • Enforce group pattern of life for 2 hours
  • Block connections to relevant external endpoints over relevant ports for 2 hours   
  • Block all outgoing traffic for 10 minutes
Figure 15: Event Log showing a user’s device receiving Darktrace RESPOND/Network actions after downloading a Qakbot DLL. 
Figure 16: Event Log showing a user’s device receiving Darktrace RESPOND/Network actions after downloading a Qakbot DLL.

Successful, uninterrupted downloads of Qakbot DLLs resulted in connections to Qakbot C2 servers, and subsequently to Cobalt Strike and VNC C2 connections. These C2 activities resulted in breaches of the following DETECT/Network models:

  • Compromise / Suspicious TLS Beaconing To Rare External
  • Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Successful Connections
  • Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Failed Connections
  • Compromise / Sustained SSL or HTTP Increase
  • Compromise / Sustained TCP Beaconing Activity To Rare Endpoint
  • Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare
  • Compromise / Slow Beaconing Activity To External Rare
  • Anomalous Connection / Multiple Connections to New External TCP Port
  • Anomalous Connection / Multiple Failed Connections to Rare Endpoint
  • Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise

For customers with RESPOND/Network active, these breaches caused RESPOND to autonomously perform the following actions:

  • Block connections to relevant external endpoints over relevant ports for 1 hour
Figure 17: Event Log showing a user’s device receiving RESPOND/Network actions after contacting the Qakbot C2 endpoint,  Cobalt Strike C2 endpoint, bonsars[.]com.

In cases where C2 connections were allowed to continue, actors attempted to move laterally through usage of SMB and Service Control Manager. This lateral movement activity caused the following DETECT/Network models to breach:

  • Device / Possible SMB/NTLM Reconnaissance
  • Anomalous Connection / New or Uncommon Service Control 

For customers with RESPOND/Network enabled, these breaches caused RESPOND to autonomously perform the following actions:

  • Block connections to relevant internal endpoints over port 445 for 1 hour
Figure 18: Event Log shows a user’s device receiving RESPOND/Network actions after contacting the Qakbot C2 endpoint, 5.75.205[.]43, and distributing ‘.dll’ and ‘.dll.cfg’ files internally.

The QakNote infections observed across Darktrace’s customer base involved several steps, each of which elicited alerts and autonomous preventative actions from Darktrace. By autonomously investigating the alerts from DETECT, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst was able to connect the distinct steps of observed QakNote infections into single incidents. It then produced incident logs to present in-depth details of the activity it uncovered, provide full visibility for customer security teams.

Figure 19: AI Analyst incident entry showing the steps of a QakNote infection which AI Analyst connected following its autonomous investigations.

Conclusion

Faced with the emerging threat of QakNote infections, Darktrace demonstrated its ability to autonomously detect and respond to arising threats in a constantly evolving threat landscape. The attack chains which Darktrace observed across its customer base involved the delivery of Qakbot via malicious OneNote attachments, the usage of ports 65400 and 2222 for Qakbot C2 communication, the usage of Cobalt Strike Beacon and VNC for ‘hands-on-keyboard’ activity, and the usage of SMB and Service Control Manager for lateral movement. 

Despite the novelty of the OneNote-based delivery method, Darktrace was able to identify QakNote infections across its customer base at various stages of the kill chain, using its autonomous anomaly-based detection to identify unusual activity or deviations from expected behavior. When active, Darktrace/Email neutralized malicious QakNote attachments sent to employees. In cases where Darktrace/Email was not active, Darktrace/Network detected and slowed down the unusual network activities which inevitably ensued from Qakbot infections. Ultimately, this intervention from Darktrace’s products prevented infections from leading to further harmful activity, such as data exfiltration and the detonation of ransomware.

Darktrace is able to offer customers an unparalleled level of network security by combining both Darktrace/Network and Darktrace/Email, safeguarding both their email and network environments. With its suite of products, including DETECT and RESPOND, Darktrace can autonomously uncover threats to customer networks and instantaneously intervene to prevent suspicious activity leading to damaging compromises. 

Appendices

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping 

Initial Access:

T1566.001 – Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment

Execution:

T1204.001 – User Execution: Malicious Link

T1204.002 – User Execution: Malicious File

T1569.002 – System Services: Service Execution

Lateral Movement:

T1021.002 – Remote Services: SMB/Windows Admin Shares

Command and Control:‍

T1573.002 – Encrypted Channel : Asymmetric Cryptography

T1571 – Non-Standard Port 

T1105 – Ingress Tool Transfer

T1095 –  Non-Application Layer Protocol

T1219 – Remote Access Software

List of IOCs

IP Addresses and/or Domain Names:

- 103.214.71[.]45 - Qakbot download infrastructure 

- 141.164.35[.]94 - Qakbot download infrastructure 

- 95.179.215[.]225 - Qakbot download infrastructure 

- 128.254.207[.]55 - Qakbot download infrastructure

- 141.164.35[.]94 - Qakbot download infrastructure

- 172.96.137[.]149 - Qakbot download infrastructure

- 185.231.205[.]246 - Qakbot download infrastructure

- 216.128.146[.]67 - Qakbot download infrastructure 

- 45.155.37[.]170 - Qakbot download infrastructure

- 85.239.41[.]55 - Qakbot download infrastructure

- 45.67.35[.]108 - Qakbot download infrastructure

- 77.83.199[.]12 - Qakbot download infrastructure 

- 45.77.63[.]210 - Qakbot download infrastructure 

- 198.44.140[.]78 - Qakbot download infrastructure

- 47.32.78[.]150 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 197.204.13[.]52 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 68.108.122[.]180 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 2.50.48[.]213 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 66.180.227[.]60 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 190.206.75[.]58 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 109.150.179[.]236 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 86.202.48[.]142 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 143.159.167[.]159 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 5.75.205[.]43 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 184.176.35[.]223 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure 

- 208.187.122[.]74 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- 23.111.114[.]52 - Qakbot C2 infrastructure 

- 74.12.134[.]53 – Qakbot C2 infrastructure

- bonsars[.]com • 194.165.16[.]56 - Cobalt Strike C2 infrastructure 

- 78.31.67[.]7 - VNC C2 infrastructure

Target URIs of GET Requests for Qakbot DLLs:

- /70802.dat 

- /51881.dat

- /12427.dat

- /70136.dat

- /35768.dat

- /41981.dat

- /30622.dat

- /72286.dat

- /46557.dat

- /33006.dat

- /300332.dat

- /703558.dat

- /760433.dat

- /210/184/187737.dat

- /469/387/553748.dat

- /282/535806.dat

User-Agent Headers of GET Requests for Qakbot DLLs:

- curl/7.83.1

- curl/7.55.1

- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT; Windows NT 10.0; en-US) WindowsPowerShell/5.1.19041.2364

- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT; Windows NT 10.0; en-US) WindowsPowerShell/5.1.17763.3770

- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT; Windows NT 10.0; en-GB) WindowsPowerShell/5.1.19041.2364

SHA256 Hashes of Downloaded Qakbot DLLs:  

- 83e9bdce1276d2701ff23b1b3ac7d61afc97937d6392ed6b648b4929dd4b1452

- ca95a5dcd0194e9189b1451fa444f106cbabef3558424d9935262368dba5f2c6 

- fa067ff1116b4c8611eae9ed4d59a19d904a8d3c530b866c680a7efeca83eb3d

- e6853589e42e1ab74548b5445b90a5a21ff0d7f8f4a23730cffe285e2d074d9e

- d864d93b8fd4c5e7fb136224460c7b98f99369fc9418bae57de466d419abeaf6

- c103c24ccb1ff18cd5763a3bb757ea2779a175a045e96acbb8d4c19cc7d84bea

Names of Internally Distributed Qakbot DLLs: 

- rpwpmgycyzghm.dll

- rpwpmgycyzghm.dll.cfg

- guapnluunsub.dll

- guapnluunsub.dll.cfg

- rskgvwfaqxzz.dll

- rskgvwfaqxzz.dll.cfg

- hkfjhcwukhsy.dll

- hkfjhcwukhsy.dll.cfg

- uqailliqbplm.dll

- uqailliqbplm.dll.cfg

- ghmaorgvuzfos.dll

- ghmaorgvuzfos.dll.cfg

Links Found Within Neutralized QakNote Email Attachments:

- hxxps://khatriassociates[.]com/MBt/3.gif

- hxxps://spincotech[.]com/8CoBExd/3.gif

- hxxps://minaato[.]com/tWZVw/3.gif

- hxxps://famille2point0[.]com/oghHO/01.png

- hxxps://sahifatinews[.]com/jZbaw/01.png

- hxxp://87.236.146[.]112/62778.dat

- hxxp://87.236.146[.]112/59076.dat

- hxxp://185.231.205[.]246/73342.dat

References

[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/excel-4-0-xlm-macros-now-restricted-by-default-for-customer/ba-p/3057905

[2] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/helping-users-stay-safe-blocking-internet-macros-by-default-in/ba-p/3071805

[3] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/security/internet-macros-blocked

[4] https://www.cyfirma.com/outofband/html-smuggling-a-stealthier-approach-to-deliver-malware/

[5] https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/blogs/spiderlabs-blog/html-smuggling-the-hidden-threat-in-your-inbox/

[6] https://twitter.com/nao_sec/status/1530196847679401984

[7] https://www.fortiguard.com/threat-signal-report/4616/qakbot-delivered-through-cve-2022-30190-follina

[8] https://isc.sans.edu/diary/rss/28728

[9] https://darktrace.com/blog/qakbot-resurgence-evolving-along-with-the-emerging-threat-landscape

[10] https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/blogs/spiderlabs-blog/trojanized-onenote-document-leads-to-formbook-malware/

[11] https://www.proofpoint.com/uk/blog/threat-insight/onenote-documents-increasingly-used-to-deliver-malware

[12] https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/threat-intelligence/2023/03/emotet-onenote

[13] https://blog.cyble.com/2023/02/01/qakbots-evolution-continues-with-new-strategies/

[14] https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2023/02/06/qakbot-onenote-attacks/

[15] https://isc.sans.edu/diary/rss/29210

[16] https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/feb-wireshark-quiz-answers/

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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Company Shuts Down Cyber-attacks with “Flawless” Detection and Response from Darktrace

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Growing pains: Balancing efficiency with risk  

This organization has recently scaled its operations, and numerous acquisitions have significantly boosted the organization’s capabilities and growth. However, this also creates work and high expectations for the organization’s IT and security teams. Within 12 months of an acquisition, the teams must fully integrate each new business onto the company’s platform. “A huge piece of that integration plan is rolling out our security controls,” said the CISO. “While our goal is to connect those facilities up as quickly as possible to drive efficiency, we also need to implement the proper security controls to protect the enterprise.”

Gap beyond the perimeter  

The organization had established strong security measures to safeguard its perimeter; however, the CISO identified a critical gap in real-time network monitoring. If the perimeter were breached, threats were only discovered after an endpoint was compromised and the issue was manually reported.

As digital transformation progresses, the need to adopt advanced technologies is becoming essential, particularly as organizations begin to open up operational environments to greater connectivity. Many processes still rely on traditional methods, and integrating innovative solutions could drive significant improvements in efficiency and productivity. “We’re committed to adopting cutting-edge technologies,” the CISO explained. “But we understood that without more robust network security controls, opening up our operational environments would expose us to heightened risks, including advanced threats like ransomware.”

Building a layered, proactive security strategy with Darktrace  

To close the gap beyond the perimeter, the company embarked on a free trial with Darktrace. The CISO recalls: “The trials were fantastic. It was obvious that Darktrace was exactly what we needed. The Darktrace team was also very knowledgeable and helpful throughout the process, which was impressive.”  

Today, the organization is using a combination of Darktrace solutions for its layered security approach, including:

Detecting unusual behavior with AI  

Darktrace’s use of machine learning and Self-Learning AI is one of the reasons the company chose Darktrace. Instead of teaching an AI system what an ‘attack’ looks like, training it on large data lakes of thousands of organizations’ data, Darktrace AI learns from the company’s own unique data and user activity to learn and create baseline models of what ‘normal’ looks like for their business.

Darktrace can then detect subtle deviations and unusual activity that signals a possible threat. “That fascinated us because what it really means is this technology doesn’t need to know about every single threat because the threat itself isn’t important, it’s the behavior of the activity that’s important. That capability is unique when it when it comes to threat detection,” said the CISO.

Identifying and mitigating high-impact attack paths

The security team appreciated that with Darktrace they could take a more proactive approach to security by exposing high-risk attack paths through modeling and AI risk assessments. Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management gives them visibility into vulnerable entry points and assets, identifies active risks, and prioritizes the most important security issues to be addressed.

“Specific users and assets within our business have a higher risk of being targeted by a cyber-attack, for example our executives,” said the CISO. “With Darktrace, we get an adversarial view of our risk. We can see the attack path around those potential targets and proactively take measures to mitigate that vulnerability and prevent an attack.”

Driving up productivity while putting the brakes on cyber-attacks  

The security team collaborated with Darktrace to fine tune the models that really fit their business. With Darktrace now automating most of their threat detection and response efforts, productivity has soared, the security team is now focused on delivering greater value to the business and, most importantly, Darktrace proved it could quickly detect and shut down a major cyber-attack–and do so without impacting business operations.

Fueling team productivity with automation and AI

Prior to using Darktrace, the security team had little visibility into potential risks beyond the perimeter. Today, the team has full control and visibility over the network. “My team is now spending 80-90% of their time doing proactive work because Darktrace is managing the vast majority of our detect and response needs. The team really has faith in the Darktrace system,” said the CISO.  

With less time spent on low-level manual tasks, the security team can now focus on higher priority initiatives. For example, they have expanded their internal vulnerability assessments across the entire group. The team couldn’t focus on this additional audit and vulnerability management work if Darktrace wasn’t taking care of most of their security monitoring. “Darktrace has allowed us to move on to these additional kinds of governance projects that we otherwise would have to hire an army of staff to get through”.

Stopping email threats in their tracks

Using Darktrace / EMAIL, the company has identified and blocked a significant percentage of emails that were making it past their native email filters. “Darktrace is especially good at detecting impersonation emails, and we really appreciate its ability to automatically remove suspicious emails directly from a user’s inbox. It adds an extra level of confidence,” said the CISO.

Self-Learning AI understands anomalies within unique communication patterns to stop known and unknown threats. For example, when an employee sent an email to a brand new domain, Darktrace identified the behavior as unusual and inconsistent with baseline models and blocked the email.

Darktrace passes the biggest test of all

In 2024, the company experienced the value of the security system firsthand when attackers exploited a vulnerability in a third-party remote support solution that they was using. This solution provided remote access and tech support capabilities. If successful, the attackers could have infiltrated high-value end points and created their own administrative user, giving them full control over the server.

“We first became aware of the attack when Darktrace notified us of unusual behavior coming from the remote support server,” said the CISO. The attackers were attempting to put backdoors onto the service with the intent of selling access to the highest bidder who would then install ransomware on their servers. It all happened very quickly, as the attackers tried to connect to the internal network and other servers, while also firing off a host of other actions, like PowerShell commands, to escalate their privileges.  

“Darktrace worked flawlessly. There was no chance that ransomware was ever going to come in,” the CISO said. “Even though there was no signature to really look at, Darktrace realized this was not normal behavior for this server, shutting down connections and doing everything it could do to stop the attack.” Within eight hours, the security team identified and stopped the attack, severed its connection to the third-party solution, and completed additional analysis and clean-up. “In addition to our own investigation, third parties like our external SOC and legal department also confirmed that Darktrace performed as expected. We were able to report back to the executive team that there was zero risk that any data or systems were compromised.”

Post-attack, there was no need to make any changes to Darktrace. The team consistently reviews its models and baselines, often collaborating with Darktrace to make adjustments when needed to continuously improve performance. “Because of this relationship and constant engagement with Darktrace’s technical teams, we didn't have to go back and ask: ‘why wasn’t this updated’ or ‘why didn’t this model work.’ The models worked.”

His advice to other organizations facing similar challenges? First, focus on updating, patching, and vulnerability management, and act quickly when vulnerabilities are identified. His second piece of advice: “have an automated detection system like Darktrace in place so you can respond at the speed that these attacks evolve. Humans can no longer keep up with a scripted attack as it moves around and tries to compromise items on your network. You need the right technology to fight these types of attacks.”

Dynamic capabilities for a dynamic future

Real-time playbooks

With a proactive, enterprise-wide security strategy in place, the CISO now has the time to think about future projects and innovations. He’s particularly interested in the idea of generating playbooks on the fly in response to real-time events. He believes cyber-attacks are far too varied for a static playbook to be useful; when an attack strikes, teams need to quickly understand exactly what’s in front of them and how to shut it down. “This fits into our future cybersecurity strategy, and Darktrace is the only company I’ve seen talking about building playbooks dynamically. This kind of technology would really help bring our cybersecurity strategy full circle.”

“Darktrace ’s technology, experience and expertise is helping us staying ahead of cyber-attacks, minimizing our risk and driving greater productivity for our team,” said the CISO. In collaboration with Darktrace, the team have created a security foundation that is both powerful and agile. “While Darktrace is detecting and responding to attacks targeting our business today, we know that it’s always learning, adapting and scaling to ensure we’re protected tomorrow. That gives me peace of mind and the freedom to focus on our future.”

Download the Darktrace / NETWORK Solution Brief

Darktrace / NETWORK solution brief screenshot

Protect in real time: Defend against known and emerging threats without relying on historical data or external intelligence.

Full visibility: Gain comprehensive insights across all network environments, including on-premises, cloud, and remote devices.

AI-powered efficiency: Streamline incident response with AI automation, saving time and resources while ensuring minimal disruption to operations.

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December 11, 2024

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Darktrace is Positioned as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Network Detection and Response 2024 Vendor Assessment

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Darktrace is pleased to announce that we have been positioned as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Network Detection and Response 2024 Vendor Assessment. We believe this further highlights Darktrace’s position as a pioneer in the NDR market and follows similar recognition from KuppingerCole, who recently named Darktrace as an Overall Leader, Product Leader, Market Leader and Innovation Leader in the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Network Detection and Response (2024).

Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions are uniquely positioned to provide visibility over the core hub of a business and employee activity, analyzing North-South and East-West traffic to identify threats across the modern network. NDR provides a rich and true source of anomalies and goes beyond process level data that is relied on by Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents that do not provide network level visibility and can be misconfigured at any time.1

Metadata from network traffic can be used to detect a variety of different threats based on events such as anomalous port usage, unusual upload/download activity, impossible travel and many other activities. This has been accelerated by the increased usage of user behavioral analytics (UBA) in network security, which establishes statistical baselines about network entities and highlights deviations from expected activity.1

Darktrace is recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape due to our leadership in the market and our pioneering leadership in AI over the past decade, alongside a variety of other unique differentiators and innovations in the NDR industry.

Darktrace / NETWORK™ delivers full visibility, real time threat detection and Autonomous Response capabilities across an organization’s on-premises, cloud, hybrid and virtual environments, including remote worker endpoints.

Unique Approach to AI

Most NDR vendors and network security tools such as IDS/IPS rely on detecting known attacks with historical data and supervised machine learning, leaving organizations blind and vulnerable to novel threats such as zero-days, variants of known attacks, supply chain attacks and insider threats.

These vendors also tend to apply AI models that are trained globally, and are not unique to each organization’s environment, which creates a high number of false positives and alerts that ultimately lack business context.

The IDC MarketScape recognizes that Darktrace takes a differentiated approach in the market with regards to delivering network detection and response capabilities, noting; “Darktrace is unique in that it does not rely on rules and signatures but rather learns what constitutes as normal for an organization and generates alerts when there is a deviation.”1

Darktrace / NETWORK achieves this through the use of Self-Learning AI and unsupervised machine learning to understand what is normal network behavior, continuously analyzing, mapping and modeling every connection to create a full picture of devices, identities, connections and potential attack paths. Darktrace Self-Learning AI autonomously optimizes itself to cut through the noise and quickly surface genuine, prioritized network security incidents – significantly reducing false positives and removing the hassle of needing to continually tuning alerts manually.

Darktrace’s unique approach to AI also extends to the investigation and triage of network alerts with Cyber AI Analyst. Unlike a chat or prompt based LLM, Cyber AI Analyst investigates all relevant alerts in an environment, including third party alerts, autonomously forming hypotheses and reaching conclusions just like a human analyst would, accelerating SOC Level 2 analyses of incidents by 10x. Cyber AI Analyst also typically providing SOC teams with up to 50,000 additional hours annually of Level 2 analysis producing high level alerts and written reporting, transforming security operations.2

Darktrace also uses its deep understanding of what is normal for a network to identify suspicious behavior, leveraging Autonomous Response capabilities to shut down both known and novel threats in real time, taking targeted actions without disrupting business operations. Darktrace / NETWORK is the only NDR solution that can autonomously enforce a pattern of life based on what is normal for a standalone device or group of peers, rapidly containing and disarming threats based on the overall context of the environment and a granular understanding of what is normal for a device or user – instead of relying on historical attack data.

Continued NDR Market Leadership

Darktrace has been recognized as a Leader in the NDR market, and the IDC MarketScape listed a variety of strengths:

  • Darktrace achieves roughly one-fifth of all global NDR revenue. This is important because other IT and cybersecurity solutions providers necessarily want to have integration with Darktrace.
  • The AI algorithms that Darktrace uses for NDR have had 10 years of deployments, tuning, and learning to draw from.
  • Darktrace is available as a SaaS, as an enterprise license, and as physical, hybrid, or virtual appliances. Darktrace also offers an endpoint agent and visibility into VPN and ZTNA.
  • Darktrace integrates with 30+ different interfaces including SIEM, SOAR, XDR platforms, IT ticketing solutions, and their own dashboards. The Darktrace Threat Visualizer highlights events and incidents from the entire deployment including cloud, apps, email, endpoint, zero trust, network, and OT.
  • Darktrace / NETWORK charts the progress that the SOC is making over time with key metrics such as MTTD/MTTR, alerts generated and processed, and other criteria.
  • Darktrace reported coverage of 14 MITRE ATT&CK categories, 158 techniques, and 184 subtechniques

Proactive Network Resilience

The IDC MarketScape notes, “Ultimately, NDR shines as a standalone detection and response technology but is especially powerful when combined with other platforms. NDR in combination with other control points such as endpoint, data, identity, and application provides the proper context when winnowing alerts and trying to uncover a single source of truth.” . Darktrace comprehensively addresses this as part of the ActiveAI Security Platform, by combining network alerts with data from / EMAIL, / IDENTITY, / ENDPOINT, / CLOUD and / OT, providing deeper contextual analysis for each network alert and automatically enriching investigations.

Darktrace also goes beyond NDR solutions with capabilities that are closely linked to our NDR offering, helping clients to achieve and maintain a state of proactive network resilience:

  • ‍Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management – look beyond just CVE risks to discover, prioritize and validate risks by business impact and how to address them early, reducing the number of real threats that security teams need to handle.‍
  • Darktrace / Incident Readiness & Recovery – lets teams respond in the best way to each incident and proactively test their familiarity and effectiveness of IR workflows with sophisticated incident simulations based on their own analysts and assets.

Together, these solutions allow Darktrace / NETWORK to go beyond the traditional approach to NDR and shift teams to a more hardened and proactive stance.

Protecting Clients with Continued Innovation

Darktrace invests heavily in Research and Development to continue providing customers with market-leading NDR capabilities and innovations, which was reflected in our position in the Leader category of the MarketScape report for both capabilities and strategy. We are led by the needs and challenges of our customers, which serve as the driving force behind our continued innovation and leadership in the NDR market. The IDC MarketScape report underlines this approach with the following feedback presented by Darktrace customers:

“A customer intimated that 99% of their detections were OOTB with little need to tune or define parameters.”
“A customer reported that it had early warnings for adversarial tactics such as suspicious SMB scanning, suspicious remote execution, remote desktop protocol (RDP) scanning, data exfiltration, C2C, LDAP query, and suspicious Kerberos activity.”
“The client could use Regex to determine if suspicious behavior was found elsewhere on the network.”

Thousands of customers around the world across all industries and sectors rely on Darktrace / NETWORK to protect against known and novel threats. From the latest vulnerabilities in network hardware to sophisticated new strains of ransomware and everything in-between, Darktrace helps clients detect and respond to all types of threats affecting their networks and avoid business disruption, even from the latest attacks.

Find out more about the unique capabilities of Darktrace / NETWORK and our application of AI in network security in the IDC MarketScape excerpt.

References

  1. ‍ IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Network Detection and Response 2024 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US51752324, November 2024)
  2. Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst Customer Fleet Data
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About the author
Mikey Anderson
Product Manager, Network Detection & Response
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