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November 7, 2022

[Part 1] Analysis of a Raccoon Stealer v1 Infection

Darktrace’s SOC team observed a fast-paced compromise involving Raccoon Stealer v1. See which steps the Raccoon Stealer v1 took to extract company data!
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
Mark Turner
SOC Shift Supervisor
Written by
Sam Lister
SOC Analyst
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07
Nov 2022

Introduction

Towards the end of March 2022, the operators of Raccoon Stealer announced the closure of the Raccoon Stealer project [1]. In May 2022, Raccoon Stealer v2 was unleashed onto the world, with huge numbers of cases being detected across Darktrace’s client base. In this series of blog posts, we will follow the development of Raccoon Stealer between March and September 2022. We will first shed light on how Raccoon Stealer functioned before its demise, by providing details of a Raccoon Stealer v1 infection which Darktrace’s SOC saw within a client network on the 18th March 2022. In the follow-up post, we will provide details about the surge in Raccoon Stealer v2 cases that Darktrace’s SOC has observed since May 2022.  

What is Raccoon Stealer?

The misuse of stolen account credentials is a primary method used by threat actors to gain initial access to target environments [2]. Threat actors have several means available to them for obtaining account credentials. They may, for example, distribute phishing emails which trick their recipients into divulging account credentials. Alternatively, however, they may install information-stealing malware (i.e, info-stealers) onto users’ devices. The results of credential theft can be devastating. Threat actors may use the credentials to gain access to an organization’s SaaS environment, or they may use them to drain users’ online bank accounts or cryptocurrency wallets. 

Raccoon Stealer is a Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) info-stealer first publicized in April 2019 on Russian-speaking hacking forums. 

Figure 1: One of the first known mentions of Raccoon Stealer on a Russian-speaking hacking forum named ‘Hack Forums’ on the 13th April 2019

The team of individuals behind Raccoon Stealer provide a variety of services to their customers (known as ‘affiliates’), including access to the info-stealer, an easy-to-use automated backend panel, hosting infrastructure, and 24/7 customer support [3]. 

Once Raccoon Stealer affiliates gain access to the info-stealer, it is up to them to decide how to distribute it. Since 2019, affiliates have been observed distributing the info-stealer via a variety of methods, such as exploit kits, phishing emails, and fake cracked software websites [3]/[4]. Once affiliates succeed in installing Raccoon Stealer onto target systems, the info-stealer will typically seek to obtain sensitive information saved in browsers and cryptocurrency wallets. The info-stealer will then exfiltrate the stolen data to a Command and Control (C2) server. The affiliate can then use the stolen data to conduct harmful follow-up activities. 

Towards the end of March 2022, the team behind Raccoon Stealer publicly announced that they would be suspending their operations after one of their core developers was killed during the Russia-Ukraine conflict [5]. 

Figure 2: Raccoon Stealer resignation post on March 25th 2022

Recent details shared by the US Department of Justice [6]/[7] indicate that it was in fact the arrest, rather than the death, of a key Raccoon Stealer operator which led the Raccoon Stealer team to suspend their operations [8].  

The closure of the Raccoon Stealer project, which ultimately resulted from the FBI-backed dismantling of Raccoon Stealer’s infrastructure in March 2022, did not last long, with the completion of Raccoon Stealer v2 being announced on the Raccoon Stealer Telegram channel on the 17th May 2022 [9]. 

 

Figure 3: Telegram post about new version of Raccoon Stealer

In the second part of this blog series, we will provide details of the recent surge in Raccoon Stealer v2 activity. In this post, however, we will provide insight into how the old version of Raccoon Stealer functioned just before its demise, by providing details of a Raccoon Stealer v1 infection which occurred on the 18th March 2022. 

Attack Details

On the 18th March, at around 13:00 (UTC), a user’s device within a customer’s network was seen contacting several websites providing fake cracked software. 

Figure 4: The above figure — obtained from the Darktrace Event Log for the infected device — highlights its connections to cracked software websites such as ‘licensekeysfree[.]com’ and ‘hdlicense[.]com’ before contacting ‘lion-files[.]xyz’ and ‘www.mediafire[.]com’

The user’s attempt to download cracked software from one of these websites resulted in their device making an HTTP GET request with a URI string containing ‘autodesk-revit-crack-v2022-serial-number-2022’ to an external host named ‘lion-filez[.]xyz’

Figure 5: Screenshot from hdlicense[.]com around the time of the infection shows a “Download” button linking to the ‘lion-filez[.]xyz’ endpoint

The device’s HTTP GET request to lion-filez[.]xyz was immediately followed by an HTTPS connection to the file hosting service, www.mediafire[.]com. Given that threat actors are known to abuse platforms such as MediaFire and Discord CDN to host their malicious payloads, it is likely that the user’s device downloaded the Raccoon Stealer v1 sample over its HTTPS connection to www.mediafire[.]com.  

After installing the info-stealer sample, the user’s device was seen making an HTTP GET request with the URI string ‘/g_shock_casio_easy’ to 194.180.191[.]185. The endpoint responded to the request with data related to a Telegram channel named ‘G-Shock’.

Figure 6: Telegram channel ‘@g_shock_casio_easy’

The returned data included the Telegram channel’s description, which in this case, was a base64 encoded and RC4 encrypted string of characters [10]/[11]. The Raccoon Stealer sample decoded and decrypted this string of characters to obtain its C2 IP address, 188.166.49[.]196. This technique used by Raccoon Stealer v1 closely mirrors the espionage method known as ‘dead drop’ — a method 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. In this case, the operators of Raccoon Stealer ‘left’ the malware’s C2 IP address within the description of a Telegram channel. Usage of this method allowed the operators of Raccoon Stealer to easily change the malware’s C2 infrastructure.  

After obtaining the C2 IP address from the ‘G-Shock’ Telegram channel, the Raccoon Stealer sample made an HTTP POST request with the URI string ‘/’ to the C2 IP address, 188.166.49[.]196. This POST request contained a Windows GUID,  a username, and a configuration ID. These details were RC4 encrypted and base64 encoded [12]. The C2 server responded to this HTTP POST request with JSON-formatted configuration information [13], including an identifier string, URL paths for additional files, along with several other fields. This configuration information was also concealed using RC4 encryption and base64 encoding.  

Figure 7- Fields within the JSON-formatted configuration data [13]

In this case, the server’s response included the identifier string ‘hv4inX8BFBZhxYvKFq3x’, along with the following URL paths:

  • /l/f/hv4inX8BFBZhxYvKFq3x/77d765d8831b4a7d8b5e56950ceb96b7c7b0ed70
  • /l/f/hv4inX8BFBZhxYvKFq3x/0cb4ab70083cf5985b2bac837ca4eacb22e9b711
  • /l/f/hv4inX8BFBZhxYvKFq3x/5e2a950c07979c670b1553b59b3a25c9c2bb899b
  • /l/f/hv4inX8BFBZhxYvKFq3x/2524214eeea6452eaad6ea1135ed69e98bf72979

After retrieving configuration data, the user’s device was seen making HTTP GET requests with the above URI strings to the C2 server. The C2 server responded to these requests with legitimate library files such as sqlite3.dll. Raccoon Stealer uses these libraries to extract data from targeted applications. 

Once the Raccoon Stealer sample had collected relevant data, it made an HTTP POST request with the URI string ‘/’ to the C2 server. This posted data likely included a ZIP file (named with the identifier string) containing stolen credentials [13]. 

The observed infection chain, which lasted around 20 minutes, consisted of the following steps:

1. User’s device installs Raccoon Stealer v1 samples from the user attempting to download cracked software

2. User’s device obtains the info-stealer’s C2 IP address from the description text of a Telegram channel

3. User’s device makes an HTTP POST request with the URI string ‘/’ to the C2 server. The request contains a Windows GUID,  a username, and a configuration ID. The response to the request contains configuration details, including an identifier string and URL paths for additional files

4. User’s device downloads library files from the C2 server

5. User’s device makes an HTTP POST request with the URI string ‘/’ to the C2 server. The request contains stolen data

Darktrace Coverage 

Although RESPOND/Network was not enabled on the customer’s deployment, DETECT picked up on several of the info-stealer’s activities. In particular, the device’s downloads of library files from the C2 server caused the following DETECT/Network models to breach:

  • Anomalous File / Masqueraded File Transfer
  • Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location
  • Anomalous File / Zip or Gzip from Rare External Location
  • Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location
  • Anomalous File / Multiple EXE from Rare External Locations
Figure 8: Event Log for the infected device shows 'Anomalous File / Masqueraded File Transfer' model breach after the device's download of a library file from the C2 server

Since the customer was subscribed to the Darktrace Proactive Threat Notification (PTN) service, they were proactively notified of the info-stealer’s activities. The quick response by Darktrace’s 24/7 SOC team helped the customer to contain the infection and to prevent further damage from being caused. Having been alerted to the info-stealer activity by the SOC team, the customer would also have been able to change the passwords for the accounts whose credentials were exfiltrated.

If RESPOND/Network had been enabled on the customer’s deployment, then it would have blocked the device’s connections to the C2 server, which would have likely prevented any stolen data from being exfiltrated.

Conclusion

Towards the end of March 2022, the team behind Raccoon Stealer announced that they would be suspending their operations. Recent developments suggest that the arrest of a core Raccoon Stealer developer was responsible for this suspension. Just before the Raccoon Stealer team were forced to shut down, Darktrace’s SOC team observed a Raccoon Stealer infection within a client’s network. In this post, we have provided details of the network-based behaviors displayed by the observed Raccoon Stealer sample. Since these v1 samples are no longer active, the details provided here are only intended to provide historical insight into the development of Raccoon Stealer’s operations and the activities carried out by Raccoon Stealer v1 just before its demise. In the next post of this series, we will discuss and provide details of Raccoon Stealer v2 — the new and highly prolific version of Raccoon Stealer. 

Thanks to Stefan Rowe and the Threat Research Team for their contributions to this blog.

References

[1] https://twitter.com/3xp0rtblog/status/1507312171914461188

[2] https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-29OTFFPI&ct=220411&st=sb

[3] https://www.cybereason.com/blog/research/hunting-raccoon-stealer-the-new-masked-bandit-on-the-block

[4] https://www.cyberark.com/resources/threat-research-blog/raccoon-the-story-of-a-typical-infostealer

[5] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/raccoon-stealer-malware-suspends-operations-due-to-war-in-ukraine/

[6] https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdtx/pr/newly-unsealed-indictment-charges-ukrainian-national-international-cybercrime-operation

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsz6acw-ZJY

[8] https://riskybiznews.substack.com/p/raccoon-stealer-dev-didnt-die-in

[9] https://medium.com/s2wblog/raccoon-stealer-is-back-with-a-new-version-5f436e04b20d

[10] https://blog.cyble.com/2021/10/21/raccoon-stealer-under-the-lens-a-deep-dive-analysis/

[11] https://decoded.avast.io/vladimirmartyanov/raccoon-stealer-trash-panda-abuses-telegram/

[12] https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2021/09/threat-thursday-raccoon-infostealer

[13] https://cyberint.com/blog/research/raccoon-stealer/

Appendices

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
Mark Turner
SOC Shift Supervisor
Written by
Sam Lister
SOC Analyst

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April 16, 2025

Why Data Classification Isn’t Enough to Prevent Data Loss

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Why today’s data is fundamentally difficult to protect

Data isn’t what it used to be. It’s no longer confined to neat rows in a database, or tucked away in a secure on-prem server. Today, sensitive information moves freely between cloud platforms, SaaS applications, endpoints, and a globally distributed workforce – often in real time. The sheer volume and diversity of modern data make it inherently harder to monitor, classify, and secure. And the numbers reflect this challenge – 63% of breaches stem from malicious insiders or human error.

This complexity is compounded by an outdated reliance on manual data management. While data classification remains critical – particularly to ensure compliance with regulations like GDPR or HIPAA – the burden of managing this data often falls on overstretched security teams. Security teams are expected to identify, label, and track data across sprawling ecosystems, which can be time-consuming and error-prone. Even with automation, rigid policies that depend on pre-defined data classification miss the mark.

From a data protection perspective, if manual or basic automated classification is the sole methodology for preventing data loss, critical data will likely slip through the cracks. Security teams are left scrambling to fill the gaps, facing compliance risks and increasing operational overhead. Over time, the hidden costs of these inefficiencies pile up, draining resources and reducing the effectiveness of your entire security posture.

What traditional data classification can’t cover

Data classification plays an important role in data loss prevention, but it's only half the puzzle. It’s designed to spot known patterns and apply labels, yet the most common causes of data breaches don’t follow rules. They stem from something far harder to define: human behavior.

When Darktrace began developing its data loss detection capabilities, the question wasn’t what data to protect — it was how to understand the people using it. The numbers pointed clearly to where AI could make the biggest difference: 22% of email data breaches stem directly from user error, while malicious insider threats remain the most expensive, costing organizations an average of $4.99 million per incident.

Data classification is blind to nuance – it can’t grasp intent, context, or the subtle red flags that often precede a breach. And no amount of labeling, policy, or training can fully account for the reality that humans make mistakes. These problems require a system that sees beyond the data itself — one that understands how it’s being used, by whom, and in what context. That’s why Darktrace leans into its core strength: detecting the subtle symptoms of data loss by interpreting human behavior, not just file labels.

Achieving autonomous data protection with behavioral AI

Rather than relying on manual processes to understand what’s important, Darktrace uses its industry-leading AI to learn how your organization uses data — and spot when something looks wrong.

Its understanding of business operations allows it to detect subtle anomalies around data movement for your use cases, whether that’s a misdirected email, an insecure cloud storage link, or suspicious activity from an insider. Crucially, this detection is entirely autonomous, with no need for predefined rules or static labels.

Darktrace uses its contextual understanding of each user to stop all types of sensitive or misdirected data from leaving the organization
Fig 1: Darktrace uses its contextual understanding of each user to stop all types of sensitive or misdirected data from leaving the organization

Darktrace / EMAIL’s DLP add-on continuously learns in real time, enabling:

  • Automatic detection: Identifies risky data behavior to catch threats that traditional approaches miss – from human error to sophisticated insider threats.
  • A dynamic range of actions: Darktrace always aims to avoid business disruption in its blocking actions, but this can be adjusted according to the unique risk appetite of each customer – taking the most appropriate response for that business from a whole scale of possibilities.
  • Enhanced context: While Darktrace doesn’t require sensitivity data labeling, it integrates with Microsoft Purview to ingest sensitivity labels and enrich its understanding of the data – for even more accurate decision-making.

Beyond preventing data loss, Darktrace uses DLP activity to enhance its contextual understanding of the user itself. In other words, outbound activity can be a useful symptom in identifying a potential account compromise, or can be used to give context to that user’s inbound activity. Because Darktrace sees the whole picture of a user across their inbound, outbound, and lateral mail, as well as messaging (and into collaboration tools with Darktrace / IDENTITY), every interaction informs its continuous learning of normal.

With Darktrace, you can achieve dynamic data loss prevention for the most challenging human-related use cases – from accidental misdirected recipients to malicious insiders – that evade detection from manual classification. So don’t stand still on data protection – make the switch to autonomous, adaptive DLP that understands your business, data, and people.

[related-resource]

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Carlos Gray
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email

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April 14, 2025

Email bombing exposed: Darktrace’s email defense in action

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What is email bombing?

An email bomb attack, also known as a "spam bomb," is a cyberattack where a large volume of emails—ranging from as few as 100 to as many as several thousand—are sent to victims within a short period.

How does email bombing work?

Email bombing is a tactic that typically aims to disrupt operations and conceal malicious emails, potentially setting the stage for further social engineering attacks. Parallels can be drawn to the use of Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) endpoints in Command-and-Control (C2) communications, where an attacker generates new and seemingly random domains in order to mask their malicious connections and evade detection.

In an email bomb attack, threat actors typically sign up their targeted recipients to a large number of email subscription services, flooding their inboxes with indirectly subscribed content [1].

Multiple threat actors have been observed utilizing this tactic, including the Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) group Black Basta, also known as Storm-1811 [1] [2].

Darktrace detection of email bombing attack

In early 2025, Darktrace detected an email bomb attack where malicious actors flooded a customer's inbox while also employing social engineering techniques, specifically voice phishing (vishing). The end goal appeared to be infiltrating the customer's network by exploiting legitimate administrative tools for malicious purposes.

The emails in these attacks often bypass traditional email security tools because they are not technically classified as spam, due to the assumption that the recipient has subscribed to the service. Darktrace / EMAIL's behavioral analysis identified the mass of unusual, albeit not inherently malicious, emails that were sent to this user as part of this email bombing attack.

Email bombing attack overview

In February 2025, Darktrace observed an email bombing attack where a user received over 150 emails from 107 unique domains in under five minutes. Each of these emails bypassed a widely used and reputable Security Email Gateway (SEG) but were detected by Darktrace / EMAIL.

Graph showing the unusual spike in unusual emails observed by Darktrace / EMAIL.
Figure 1: Graph showing the unusual spike in unusual emails observed by Darktrace / EMAIL.

The emails varied in senders, topics, and even languages, with several identified as being in German and Spanish. The most common theme in the subject line of these emails was account registration, indicating that the attacker used the victim’s address to sign up to various newsletters and subscriptions, prompting confirmation emails. Such confirmation emails are generally considered both important and low risk by email filters, meaning most traditional security tools would allow them without hesitation.

Additionally, many of the emails were sent using reputable marketing tools, such as Mailchimp’s Mandrill platform, which was used to send almost half of the observed emails, further adding to their legitimacy.

 Darktrace / EMAIL’s detection of an email being sent using the Mandrill platform.
Figure 2: Darktrace / EMAIL’s detection of an email being sent using the Mandrill platform.
Darktrace / EMAIL’s detection of a large number of unusual emails sent during a short period of time.
Figure 3: Darktrace / EMAIL’s detection of a large number of unusual emails sent during a short period of time.

While the individual emails detected were typically benign, such as the newsletter from a legitimate UK airport shown in Figure 3, the harmful aspect was the swarm effect caused by receiving many emails within a short period of time.

Traditional security tools, which analyze emails individually, often struggle to identify email bombing incidents. However, Darktrace / EMAIL recognized the unusual volume of new domain communication as suspicious. Had Darktrace / EMAIL been enabled in Autonomous Response mode, it would have automatically held any suspicious emails, preventing them from landing in the recipient’s inbox.

Example of Darktrace / EMAIL’s response to an email bombing attack taken from another customer environment.
Figure 4: Example of Darktrace / EMAIL’s response to an email bombing attack taken from another customer environment.

Following the initial email bombing, the malicious actor made multiple attempts to engage the recipient in a call using Microsoft Teams, while spoofing the organizations IT department in order to establish a sense of trust and urgency – following the spike in unusual emails the user accepted the Teams call. It was later confirmed by the customer that the attacker had also targeted over 10 additional internal users with email bombing attacks and fake IT calls.

The customer also confirmed that malicious actor successfully convinced the user to divulge their credentials with them using the Microsoft Quick Assist remote management tool. While such remote management tools are typically used for legitimate administrative purposes, malicious actors can exploit them to move laterally between systems or maintain access on target networks. When these tools have been previously observed in the network, attackers may use them to pursue their goals while evading detection, commonly known as Living-off-the-Land (LOTL).

Subsequent investigation by Darktrace’s Security Operations Centre (SOC) revealed that the recipient's device began scanning and performing reconnaissance activities shortly following the Teams call, suggesting that the user inadvertently exposed their credentials, leading to the device's compromise.

Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst was able to identify these activities and group them together into one incident, while also highlighting the most important stages of the attack.

Figure 5: Cyber AI Analyst investigation showing the initiation of the reconnaissance/scanning activities.

The first network-level activity observed on this device was unusual LDAP reconnaissance of the wider network environment, seemingly attempting to bind to the local directory services. Following successful authentication, the device began querying the LDAP directory for information about user and root entries. Darktrace then observed the attacker performing network reconnaissance, initiating a scan of the customer’s environment and attempting to connect to other internal devices. Finally, the malicious actor proceeded to make several SMB sessions and NTLM authentication attempts to internal devices, all of which failed.

Device event log in Darktrace / NETWORK, showing the large volume of connections attempts over port 445.
Figure 6: Device event log in Darktrace / NETWORK, showing the large volume of connections attempts over port 445.
Darktrace / NETWORK’s detection of the number of the login attempts via SMB/NTLM.
Figure 7: Darktrace / NETWORK’s detection of the number of the login attempts via SMB/NTLM.

While Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability suggested actions to shut down this suspicious internal connectivity, the deployment was configured in Human Confirmation Mode. This meant any actions required human approval, allowing the activities to continue until the customer’s security team intervened. If Darktrace had been set to respond autonomously, it would have blocked connections to port 445 and enforced a “pattern of life” to prevent the device from deviating from expected activities, thus shutting down the suspicious scanning.

Conclusion

Email bombing attacks can pose a serious threat to individuals and organizations by overwhelming inboxes with emails in an attempt to obfuscate potentially malicious activities, like account takeovers or credential theft. While many traditional gateways struggle to keep pace with the volume of these attacks—analyzing individual emails rather than connecting them and often failing to distinguish between legitimate and malicious activity—Darktrace is able to identify and stop these sophisticated attacks without latency.

Thanks to its Self-Learning AI and Autonomous Response capabilities, Darktrace ensures that even seemingly benign email activity is not lost in the noise.

Credit to Maria Geronikolou (Cyber Analyst and SOC Shift Supervisor) and Cameron Boyd (Cyber Security Analyst), Steven Haworth (Senior Director of Threat Modeling), Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)

Appendices

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2024/05/15/threat-actors-misusing-quick-assist-in-social-engineering-attacks-leading-to-ransomware/

[2] https://thehackernews.com/2024/12/black-basta-ransomware-evolves-with.html

Darktrace Models Alerts

Internal Reconnaissance

·      Device / Suspicious SMB Scanning Activity

·      Device / Anonymous NTLM Logins

·      Device / Network Scan

·      Device / Network Range Scan

·      Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity

·      Device / ICMP Address Scan

·      Anomalous Connection / Large Volume of LDAP Download

·      Device / Suspicious LDAP Search Operation

·      Device / Large Number of Model Alerts

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About the author
Maria Geronikolou
Cyber Analyst
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