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December 15, 2023

How Darktrace Halted A DarkGate in MS Teams

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15
Dec 2023
Discover how Darktrace thwarted DarkGate malware in Microsoft Teams. Stay informed on the latest cybersecurity measures and protect your business.

Securing Microsoft Teams and SharePoint

Given the prevalence of the Microsoft Teams and Microsoft SharePoint platforms in the workplace in recent years, it is essential that organizations stay vigilant to the threat posed by applications vital to hybrid and remote work and prioritize the security and cyber hygiene of these services. For just as the use of these platforms has increased exponentially with the rise of remote and hybrid working, so too has the malicious use of them to deliver malware to unassuming users.

Researchers across the threat landscape have begun to observe these legitimate services being leveraged by malicious actors as an initial access method. Microsoft Teams can easily be exploited to send targeted phishing messages to individuals within an organization, while appearing legitimate and safe. Although the exact contents of these messages may vary, the messages frequently use social engineering techniques to lure users to click on a SharePoint link embedded into the message. Interacting with the malicious link will then download a payload [1].

Darktrace observed one such malicious attempt to use Microsoft Teams and SharePoint in September 2023, when a device was observed downloading DarkGate, a commercial trojan that is known to deploy other strains of malware, also referred to as a commodity loader [2], after clicking on SharePoint link. Fortunately for the customer, Darktrace’s suite of products was perfectly poised to identify the initial signs of suspicious activity and Darktrace RESPOND™ was able to immediately halt the advancement of the attack.

DarkGate Attack Overview

On September 8, 2023, Darktrace DETECT™ observed around 30 internal devices on a customer network making unusual SSL connections to an external SharePoint site which contained the name of a person, 'XXXXXXXX-my.sharepoint[.]com' (107.136[.]8, 13.107.138[.]8). The organization did not have any employees who went by this name and prior to this activity, no internal devices had been seen contacting the endpoint.

At first glance, this initial attack vector would have appeared subtle and seemingly trustworthy to users. Malicious actors likely sent various users a phishing message via Microsoft Teams that contained the spoofed SharePoint link to the personalized SharePoint link ''XXXXXXXX-my.sharepoint[.]com'.

Figure 1: Advanced Search query showing a sudden spike in connections to ''XXXXXXXX -my.sharepoint[.]com'.

Darktrace observed around 10 devices downloading approximately 1 MB of data during their connections to the Sharepoint endpoint. Darktrace DETECT observed some of the devices making subsequent HTTP GET requests to a range of anomalous URIs. The devices utilized multiple user-agents for these connections, including ‘curl’, a command line tool that allows individuals to request and transfer data from a specific URL. The connections were made to the IP 5.188.87[.]58, an endpoint that has been flagged as an indicator of compromise (IoC) for DarkGate malware by multiple open-source intelligence (OSINT) sources [3], commonly associated with HTTP GET requests:

  1. GET request over port 2351 with the User-Agent header 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Win32; WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5)' and the target URI '/bfyxraav' to 5.188.87[.]58
  2. GET request over port 2351 with the user-agent header 'curl' and the target URI '/' to 5.188.87[.]58
  3. GET request over port 2351 with the user-agent header 'curl/8.0.1' and the target URI '/msibfyxraav' to 5.188.87[.]58

The HTTP GET requests made with the user-agent header 'curl' and the target URI '/' to 5.188.87[.]58 were responded to with a filename called 'Autoit3.exe'. The other requests received script files with names ending in '.au3, such as 'xkwtvq.au3', 'otxynh.au3', and 'dcthbq.au3'. DarkGate malware has been known to make use of legitimate AutoIt files, and typically runs multiple AutoIt scripts (‘.au3’) [4].

Following these unusual file downloads, the devices proceeded to make hundreds of HTTP POST requests to the target URI '/' using the user-agent header 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Synapse)' to 5.188.87[.]58. The contents of these requests, along with the contents of the responses, appear to be heavily obfuscated.

Figure 2: Example of obfuscated response, as shown in a packet capture downloaded from Darktrace.

While Microsoft’s Safe Attachments and Safe Links settings were unable to detect this camouflaged malicious activity, Darktrace DETECT observed the unusual over-the-network connectivity that occurred. While Darktrace DETECT identified multiple internal devices engaging in this anomalous behavior throughout the course of the compromise, the activity observed on one device in particular best showcases the overall kill chain of this attack.

The device in question was observed using two different user agents (curl/8.0.1 and Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Win32; WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5)) when connecting to the endpoint 5.188.87[.]58 and target URI ‘/bfyxraav’. Additionally, Darktrace DETECT recognized that it was unusual for this device to be making these HTTP connections via destination port 2351.

As a result, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst™ launched an autonomous investigation into the suspicious activity and was able to connect the unusual external connections together, viewing them as one beaconing incident as opposed to isolated series of connections.

Figure 3: Cyber AI Analyst investigation summarizing the unusual repeated connections made to 5.188.87[.]58 via destination port 2351.

Darktrace then observed the device downloading the ‘Autoit3.exe’ file. Darktrace RESPOND took swift mitigative action by blocking similar connections to this endpoint, preventing the device from downloading any additional suspicious files.

Figure 4: Suspicious ‘Autoit3.exe’ downloaded by the source device from the malicious external endpoint.

Just one millisecond later, Darktrace observed the device making suspicious HTTP GET requests to URIs including ‘/msibfyxraav’. Darktrace recognized that the device had carried out several suspicious actions within a relatively short period of time, breaching multiple DETECT models, indicating that it may have been compromised. As a result, RESPOND took action against the offending device by preventing it from communicating externally [blocking all outbound connections] for a period of one hour, allowing the customer’s security team precious time to address the issue.

It should be noted that, at this point, had the customer subscribed to Darktrace’s Proactive Threat Notification (PTN) service, the Darktrace Security Operations Center (SOC) would have investigated these incidents in greater detail, and likely would have sent a notification directly to the customer to inform them of the suspicious activity.

Additionally, AI Analyst collated various distinct events and suggested that these stages were linked as part of an attack. This type of augmented understanding of events calculated at machine speed is extremely valuable since it likely would have taken a human analyst hours to link all the facets of the incident together.  

Figure 5: AI Analyst investigation showcasing the use of the ‘curl’ user agent to connect to the target URI ‘/msibfyxraav’.
Figure 6: Darktrace RESPOND moved to mitigate any following connections by blocking all outgoing traffic for 1 hour.

Following this, an automated investigation was launched by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Darktrace is designed to coordinate with multiple third-party security tools, allowing for information on ongoing incidents to be seamlessly exchanged between Darktrace and other security tools. In this instance, Microsoft Defender identified a ‘low severity’ incident on the device, this automatically triggered a corresponding alert within DETECT, presented on the Darktrace Threat Visuallizer.

The described activity occurred within milliseconds. At each step of the attack, Darktrace RESPOND took action either by enforcing expected patterns of life [normality] on the affected device, blocking connections to suspicious endpoints for a specified amount of time, and/or blocking all outgoing traffic from the device. All the relevant activity was detected and promptly stopped for this device, and other compromised devices, thus containing the compromise and providing the security team invaluable remediation time.

Figure 7: Overview of the compromise activity, all of which took place within a matter of miliseconds.

Darktrace identified similar activity on other devices in this customer’s network, as well as across Darktrace’s fleet around the same time in early September.

On a different customer environment, Darktrace DETECT observed more than 25 ‘.au3’ files being downloaded; this activity can be seen in Figure 9.

Figure 8: High volume of file downloads following GET request and 'curl' commands.

Figure 9 provides more details of this activity, including the source and destination IP addresses (5.188.87[.]58), the destination port, the HTTP method used and the MIME/content-type of the file

Figure 9: Additional information of the anomalous connections.

A compromised server in another customer deployment was seen establishing unusual connections to the external IP address 80.66.88[.]145 – an endpoint that has been associated with DarkGate by OSINT sources [5]. This activity was identified by Darktrace/DETECT as a new connection for the device via an unusual destination port, 2840. As the device in question was a critical server, Darktrace DETECT treated it with suspicion and generated an ‘Anomalous External Activity from Critical Network Device’ model breach.  

Figure 10: Model breach and model breach event log for suspicious connections to additional endpoint.

Conclusion

While Microsoft Teams and SharePoint are extremely prominent tools that are essential to the business operations of many organizations, they can also be used to compromise via living off the land, even at initial intrusion. Any Microsoft Teams user within a corporate setting could be targeted by a malicious actor, as such SharePoint links from unknown senders should always be treated with caution and should not automatically be considered as secure or legitimate, even when operating within legitimate Microsoft infrastructure.

Malicious actors can leverage these commonly used platforms as a means to carry out their cyber-attacks, therefore organizations must take appropriate measures to protect and secure their digital environments. As demonstrated here, threat actors can attempt to deploy malware, like DarkGate, by targeting users with spoofed Microsoft Teams messages. By masking malicious links as legitimate SharePoint links, these attempts can easily convince targets and bypass traditional security tools and even Microsoft’s own Safe Links and Safe Attachments security capabilities.

When the chain of events of an attack escalates within milliseconds, organizations must rely on AI-driven tools that can quickly identify and automatically respond to suspicious events without latency. As such, the value of Darktrace DETECT and Darktrace RESPOND cannot be overstated. Given the efficacy and efficiency of Darktrace’s detection and autonomous response capabilities, a more severe network compromise in the form of the DarkGate commodity loader was ultimately averted.

Credit to Natalia Sánchez Rocafort, Cyber Security Analyst, Zoe Tilsiter.

Appendices

Darktrace DETECT Model Detections

  • [Model Breach: Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114039 ] (Enhanced Monitoring)·      [Model Breach: Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114124 ] (Enhanced Monitoring)
  • [Model Breach: Device / New User Agent and New IP 62% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114030 ]
  • [Model Breach: Anomalous Connection / Application Protocol on Uncommon Port 46% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114031 ]
  • [Model Breach: Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname 62% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114032 ]
  • [Model Breach: Device / New User Agent 32% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114035 ]
  • [Model Breach: Device / Three Or More New User Agents 31% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114036 ]
  • [Model Breach: Anomalous Server Activity / Anomalous External Activity from Critical Network Device 62% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/612173 ]
  • [Model Breach: Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location 61% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114037 ]
  • [Model Breach: Anomalous Connection / Multiple Connections to New External TCP Port 61% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114042 ]
  • [Model Breach: Security Integration / Integration Ransomware Detected 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114049 ]
  • [Model Breach: Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare 62% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114059 ]
  • [Model Breach: Compromise / HTTP Beaconing to New Endpoint 30% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114067 ]
  • [Model Breach: Security Integration / C2 Activity and Integration Detection 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114069 ]
  • [Model Breach: Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location 55% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114077 ]
  • [Model Breach: Compromise / High Volume of Connections with Beacon Score 66% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114260 ]
  • [Model Breach: Security Integration / Low Severity Integration Detection 59% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114293 ]
  • [Model Breach: Security Integration / Low Severity Integration Detection 33% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114462 ]
  • [Model Breach: Security Integration / Integration Ransomware Detected 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114109 ]·      [Model Breach: Device / Three Or More New User Agents 31% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114118 ]·      [Model Breach: Anomalous Connection / Application Protocol on Uncommon Port 46% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114113 ] ·      [Model Breach: Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname 62% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114114 ]·      [Model Breach: Device / New User Agent 32% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114117 ]·      [Model Breach: Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location 61% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114122 ]·      [Model Breach: Security Integration / Low Severity Integration Detection 54% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114310 ]
  • [Model Breach: Security Integration / Integration Ransomware Detected 65% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114662 ]Darktrace/Respond Model Breaches
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious File Block 61% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114033 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena File then New Outbound Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114038 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Enhanced Monitoring from Client Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114040 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Significant Anomaly from Client Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114041 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Controlled and Model Breach 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114043 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Ransomware Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114052 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Significant Security Integration and Network Activity Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114070 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Breaches Over Time Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114071 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious Activity Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114072 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious File Block 53% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114079 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Breaches Over Time Block 64% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114539 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Ransomware Block 66% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114667 ]
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious Activity Block 79% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114684 ]·      
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Ransomware Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114110 ]·      
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Significant Anomaly from Client Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114111 ]·      
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Controlled and Model Breach 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114115 ]·      
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Breaches Over Time Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114116 ]·      
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious File Block 61% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114121 ]·      
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena File then New Outbound Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114123 ]·      
  • [Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Enhanced Monitoring from Client Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114125 ]

List of IoCs

IoC - Type - Description + Confidence

5.188.87[.]58 - IP address - C2 endpoint

80.66.88[.]145 - IP address - C2 endpoint

/bfyxraav - URI - Possible C2 endpoint URI

/msibfyxraav - URI - Possible C2 endpoint URI

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Win32; WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5) - User agent - Probable user agent leveraged

curl - User agent - Probable user agent leveraged

curl/8.0.1 - User agent - Probable user agent leveraged

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Synapse) - User agent - Probable user agent leveraged

Autoit3.exe - Filename - Exe file

CvUYLoTv.au3    

eDVeqcCe.au3

FeLlcFRS.au3

FTEZlGhe.au3

HOrzcEWV.au3

rKlArXHH.au3

SjadeWUz.au3

ZgOLxJQy.au3

zSrxhagw.au3

ALOXitYE.au3

DKRcfZfV.au3

gQZVKzek.au3

JZrvmJXK.au3

kLECCtMw.au3

LEXCjXKl.au3

luqWdAzF.au3

mUBNrGpv.au3

OoCdHeJT.au3

PcEJXfIl.au3

ssElzrDV.au3

TcBwRRnp.au3

TFvAUIgu.au3

xkwtvq.au3

otxynh.au3

dcthbq.au3 - Filenames - Possible exe files delivered in response to curl/8.0.1 GET requests with Target URI '/msibfyxraav

f3a0a85fe2ea4a00b3710ef4833b07a5d766702b263fda88101e0cb804d8c699 - SHA256 file hash - Possible SHA256 hashes of 'Autoit3.exe' files

afa3feea5964846cd436b978faa7d31938e666288ffaa75d6ba75bfe6c12bf61 - SHA256 file hash - Possible SHA256 hashes of 'Autoit3.exe' files

63aeac3b007436fa8b7ea25298362330423b80a4cb9269fd2c3e6ab1b1289208 - SHA256 file hash - Possible SHA256 hashes of 'Autoit3.exe' files

ab6704e836a51555ec32d1ff009a79692fa2d11205f9b4962121bda88ba55486 - SHA256 file hash - Possible SHA256 hashes of 'Autoit3.exe' files

References

1. https://www.truesec.com/hub/blog/darkgate-loader-delivered-via-teams

2. https://feedit.cz/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/YiR2022_onepager_ransomware_loaders.pdf

‍3. https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/5.188.87[.]58

‍4. https://www.forescout.com/resources/darkgate-loader-malspam-campaign/

‍5. https://otx.alienvault.com/indicator/ip/80.66.88[.]145

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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Natalia Sánchez Rocafort
Cyber Security Analyst
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January 29, 2025

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Inside the SOC

Bytesize Security: Insider Threats in Google Workspace

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What is an insider threat?

An insider threat is a cyber risk originating from within an organization. These threats can involve actions such as an employee inadvertently clicking on a malicious link (e.g., a phishing email) or an employee with malicious intent conducting data exfiltration for corporate sabotage.

Insiders often exploit their knowledge and access to legitimate corporate tools, presenting a continuous risk to organizations. Defenders must protect their digital estate against threats from both within and outside the organization.

For example, in the summer of 2024, Darktrace / IDENTITY successfully detected a user in a customer environment attempting to steal sensitive data from a trusted Google Workspace service. Despite the use of a legitimate and compliant corporate tool, Darktrace identified anomalies in the user’s behavior that indicated malicious intent.

Attack overview: Insider threat

In June 2024, Darktrace detected unusual activity involving the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) account of a former employee from a customer organization. This individual, who had recently left the company, was observed downloading a significant amount of data in the form of a “.INDD” file (an Adobe InDesign document typically used to create page layouts [1]) from Google Drive.

While the use of Google Drive and other Google Workspace platforms was not unexpected for this employee, Darktrace identified that the user had logged in from an unfamiliar and suspicious IPv6 address before initiating the download. This anomaly triggered a model alert in Darktrace / IDENTITY, flagging the activity as potentially malicious.

A Model Alert in Darktrace / IDENTITY showing the unusual “.INDD” file being downloaded from Google Workspace.
Figure 1: A Model Alert in Darktrace / IDENTITY showing the unusual “.INDD” file being downloaded from Google Workspace.

Following this detection, the customer reached out to Darktrace’s Security Operations Center (SOC) team via the Security Operations Support service for assistance in triaging and investigating the incident further. Darktrace’s SOC team conducted an in-depth investigation, enabling the customer to identify the exact moment of the file download, as well as the contents of the stolen documents. The customer later confirmed that the downloaded files contained sensitive corporate data, including customer details and payment information, likely intended for reuse or sharing with a new employer.

In this particular instance, Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability was not active, allowing the malicious insider to successfully exfiltrate the files. If Autonomous Response had been enabled, Darktrace would have immediately acted upon detecting the login from an unusual (in this case 100% rare) location by logging out and disabling the SaaS user. This would have provided the customer with the necessary time to review the activity and verify whether the user was authorized to access their SaaS environments.

Conclusion

Insider threats pose a significant challenge for traditional security tools as they involve internal users who are expected to access SaaS platforms. These insiders have preexisting knowledge of the environment, sensitive data, and how to make their activities appear normal, as seen in this case with the use of Google Workspace. This familiarity allows them to avoid having to use more easily detectable intrusion methods like phishing campaigns.

Darktrace’s anomaly detection capabilities, which focus on identifying unusual activity rather than relying on specific rules and signatures, enable it to effectively detect deviations from a user’s expected behavior. For instance, an unusual login from a new location, as in this example, can be flagged even if the subsequent malicious activity appears innocuous due to the use of a trusted application like Google Drive.

Credit to Vivek Rajan (Cyber Analyst) and Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)

Appendices

Darktrace Model Detections

SaaS / Resource::Unusual Download Of Externally Shared Google Workspace File

References

[1]https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/file-types/image/vector/indd-file.html

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Technqiue – Tactic – ID

Data from Cloud Storage Object – COLLECTION -T1530

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About the author
Vivek Rajan
Cyber Analyst

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January 28, 2025

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Reimagining Your SOC: How to Achieve Proactive Network Security

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Introduction: Challenges and solutions to SOC efficiency

For Security Operation Centers (SOCs), reliance on signature or rule-based tools – solutions that are always chasing the latest update to prevent only what is already known – creates an excess of false positives. SOC analysts are therefore overwhelmed by a high volume of context-lacking alerts, with human analysts able to address only about 10% due to time and resource constraints. This forces many teams to accept the risks of addressing only a fraction of the alerts while novel threats go completely missed.

74% of practitioners are already grappling with the impact of an AI-powered threat landscape, which amplifies challenges like tool sprawl, alert fatigue, and burnout. Thus, achieving a resilient network, where SOC teams can spend most of their time getting proactive and stopping threats before they occur, feels like an unrealistic goal as attacks are growing more frequent.

Despite advancements in security technology (advanced detection systems with AI, XDR tools, SIEM aggregators, etc...), practitioners are still facing the same issues of inefficiency in their SOC, stopping them from becoming proactive. How can they select security solutions that help them achieve a proactive state without dedicating more human hours and resources to managing and triaging alerts, tuning rules, investigating false positives, and creating reports?

To overcome these obstacles, organizations must leverage security technology that is able to augment and support their teams. This can happen in the following ways:

  1. Full visibility across the modern network expanding into hybrid environments
  2. Have tools that identifies and stops novel threats autonomously, without causing downtime
  3. Apply AI-led analysis to reduce time spent on manual triage and investigation

Your current solutions might be holding you back

Traditional cybersecurity point solutions are reliant on using global threat intelligence to pattern match, determine signatures, and consequently are chasing the latest update to prevent only what is known. This means that unknown threats will evade detection until a patient zero is identified. This legacy approach to threat detection means that at least one organization needs to be ‘patient zero’, or the first victim of a novel attack before it is formally identified.

Even the point solutions that claim to use AI to enhance threat detection rely on a combination of supervised machine learning, deep learning, and transformers to

train and inform their systems. This entails shipping your company’s data out to a large data lake housed somewhere in the cloud where it gets blended with attack data from thousands of other organizations. The resulting homogenized dataset gets used to train AI systems — yours and everyone else’s — to recognize patterns of attack based on previously encountered threats.

While using AI in this way reduces the workload of security teams who would traditionally input this data by hand, it emanates the same risk – namely, that AI systems trained on known threats cannot deal with the threats of tomorrow. Ultimately, it is the unknown threats that bring down an organization.

The promise and pitfalls of XDR in today's threat landscape

Enter Extended Detection and Response (XDR): a platform approach aimed at unifying threat detection across the digital environment. XDR was developed to address the limitations of traditional, fragmented tools by stitching together data across domains, providing SOC teams with a more cohesive, enterprise-wide view of threats. This unified approach allows for improved detection of suspicious activities that might otherwise be missed in siloed systems.

However, XDR solutions still face key challenges: they often depend heavily on human validation, which can aggravate the already alarmingly high alert fatigue security analysts experience, and they remain largely reactive, focusing on detecting and responding to threats rather than helping prevent them. Additionally, XDR frequently lacks full domain coverage, relying on EDR as a foundation and are insufficient in providing native NDR capabilities and visibility, leaving critical gaps that attackers can exploit. This is reflected in the current security market, with 57% of organizations reporting that they plan to integrate network security products into their current XDR toolset[1].

Why settling is risky and how to unlock SOC efficiency

The result of these shortcomings within the security solutions market is an acceptance of inevitable risk. From false positives driving the barrage of alerts, to the siloed tooling that requires manual integration, and the lack of multi-domain visibility requiring human intervention for business context, security teams have accepted that not all alerts can be triaged or investigated.

While prioritization and processes have improved, the SOC is operating under a model that is overrun with alerts that lack context, meaning that not all of them can be investigated because there is simply too much for humans to parse through. Thus, teams accept the risk of leaving many alerts uninvestigated, rather than finding a solution to eliminate that risk altogether.

Darktrace / NETWORK is designed for your Security Operations Center to eliminate alert triage with AI-led investigations , and rapidly detect and respond to known and unknown threats. This includes the ability to scale into other environments in your infrastructure including cloud, OT, and more.

Beyond global threat intelligence: Self-Learning AI enables novel threat detection & response

Darktrace does not rely on known malware signatures, external threat intelligence, historical attack data, nor does it rely on threat trained machine learning to identify threats.

Darktrace’s unique Self-learning AI deeply understands your business environment by analyzing trillions of real-time events that understands your normal ‘pattern of life’, unique to your business. By connecting isolated incidents across your business, including third party alerts and telemetry, Darktrace / NETWORK uses anomaly chains to identify deviations from normal activity.

The benefit to this is that when we are not predefining what we are looking for, we can spot new threats, allowing end users to identify both known threats and subtle, never-before-seen indicators of malicious activity that traditional solutions may miss if they are only looking at historical attack data.

AI-led investigations empower your SOC to prioritize what matters

Anomaly detection is often criticized for yielding high false positives, as it flags deviations from expected patterns that may not necessarily indicate a real threat or issues. However, Darktrace applies an investigation engine to automate alert triage and address alert fatigue.

Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst revolutionizes security operations by conducting continuous, full investigations across Darktrace and third-party alerts, transforming the alert triage process. Instead of addressing only a fraction of the thousands of daily alerts, Cyber AI Analyst automatically investigates every relevant alert, freeing up your team to focus on high-priority incidents and close security gaps.

Powered by advanced machine-learning techniques, including unsupervised learning, models trained by expert analysts, and tailored security language models, Cyber AI Analyst emulates human investigation skills, testing hypotheses, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions. According to Darktrace Internal Research, Cyber AI Analyst typically provides a SOC with up to  50,000 additional hours of Level 2 analysis and written reporting annually, enriching security operations by producing high level incident alerts with full details so that human analysts can focus on Level 3 tasks.

Containing threats with Autonomous Response

Simply quarantining a device is rarely the best course of action - organizations need to be able to maintain normal operations in the face of threats and choose the right course of action. Different organizations also require tailored response functions because they have different standards and protocols across a variety of unique devices. Ultimately, a ‘one size fits all’ approach to automated response actions puts organizations at risk of disrupting business operations.

Darktrace’s Autonomous Response tailors its actions to contain abnormal behavior across users and digital assets by understanding what is normal and stopping only what is not. Unlike blanket quarantines, it delivers a bespoke approach, blocking malicious activities that deviate from regular patterns while ensuring legitimate business operations remain uninterrupted.

Darktrace offers fully customizable response actions, seamlessly integrating with your workflows through hundreds of native integrations and an open API. It eliminates the need for costly development, natively disarming threats in seconds while extending capabilities with third-party tools like firewalls, EDR, SOAR, and ITSM solutions.

Unlocking a proactive state of security

Securing the network isn’t just about responding to incidents — it’s about being proactive, adaptive, and prepared for the unexpected. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF 2.0) emphasizes this by highlighting the need for focused risk management, continuous incident response (IR) refinement, and seamless integration of these processes with your detection and response capabilities.

Despite advancements in security technology, achieving a proactive posture is still a challenge to overcome because SOC teams face inefficiencies from reliance on pattern-matching tools, which generate excessive false positives and leave many alerts unaddressed, while novel threats go undetected. If SOC teams are spending all their time investigating alerts then there is no time spent getting ahead of attacks.

Achieving proactive network resilience — a state where organizations can confidently address challenges at every stage of their security posture — requires strategically aligned solutions that work seamlessly together across the attack lifecycle.

‍References

1.       Market Guide for Extended Detection and Response, Gartner, 17thAugust 2023 - ID G00761828

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