March 8, 2024

Malicious Use of Dropbox in Phishing Attacks

Understand the tactics of phishing attacks that exploit Dropbox and learn how to recognize and mitigate these emerging cybersecurity threats.

Written by

Ryan Traill

Analyst Content Lead

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

Ryan Traill

Analyst Content Lead

Mar 2024

Evolving Phishing Attacks

While email has long been the vector of choice for carrying out phishing attacks, threat actors, and their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), are continually adapting and evolving to keep pace with the emergence of new technologies that represent new avenues to exploit. As previously discussed by the Darktrace analyst team, several novel threats relating to the abuse of commonly used services and platforms were observed throughout 2023, including the rise of QR Code Phishing and the use of Microsoft SharePoint and Teams in phishing campaigns.

Dropbox Phishing Attacks

It should, therefore, come as no surprise that the malicious use of other popular services has gained traction in recent years, including the cloud storage platform Dropbox.

With over 700 million registered users [1], Dropbox has established itself as a leading cloud storage service celebrated for its simplicity in file storage and sharing, but in doing so it has also inadvertently opened a new avenue for threat actors to exploit. By leveraging the legitimate infrastructure of Dropbox, threat actors are able to carry out a range of malicious activities, from convincing their targets to unknowingly download malware to revealing sensitive information like login credentials.

Darktrace Detection of Dropbox Phishing Attack

Darktrace detected a malicious attempt to use Dropbox in a phishing attack in January 2024, when employees of a Darktrace customer received a seemingly innocuous email from a legitimate Dropbox address. Unbeknownst to the employees, however, a malicious link had been embedded in the contents of the email that could have led to a widespread compromise of the customer’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environment. Fortunately for this customer, Darktrace / EMAIL quickly identified the suspicious emails and took immediate actions to stop them from being opened. If an email was accessed by an employee, Darktrace / IDENTITY was able to recognize any suspicious activity on the customer’s SaaS platform and bring it to the immediate detection of their security team.

Attack overview

Initial infection

On January 25, 2024, Darktrace / EMAIL observed an internal user on a customer’s SaaS environment receiving an inbound email from ‘no-reply@dropbox[.]com’, a legitimate email address used by the Dropbox file storage service. Around the same time 15 other employees also received the same email.

The email itself contained a link that would lead a user to a PDF file hosted on Dropbox, that was seemingly named after a partner of the organization. Although the email and the Dropbox endpoint were both legitimate, Darktrace identified that the PDF file contained a suspicious link to a domain that had never previously been seen on the customer’s environment, ‘mmv-security[.]top’.

Darktrace understood that despite being sent from a legitimate service, the email’s initiator had never previously corresponded with anyone at the organization and therefore treated it with suspicion. This tactic, whereby a legitimate service sends an automated email using a fixed address, such as ‘no-reply@dropbox[.]com’, is often employed by threat actors attempting to convince SaaS users to follow a malicious link.

As there is very little to distinguish between malicious or benign emails from these types of services, they can often evade the detection of traditional email security tools and lead to disruptive account takeovers.

As a result of this detection, Darktrace / EMAIL immediately held the email, stopping it from landing in the employee’s inbox and ensuring the suspicious domain could not be visited. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) sources revealed that this suspicious domain was, in fact, a newly created endpoint that had been reported for links to phishing by multiple security vendors [2].

A few days later on January 29, the user received another legitimate email from ‘no-reply@dropbox[.]com’ that served as a reminder to open the previously shared PDF file. This time, however, Darktrace / EMAIL moved the email to the user’s junk file and applied a lock link action to prevent the user from directly following a potentially malicious link.

Figure 1: Anomaly indicators associated with the suspicious emails sent by ’no.reply@dropbox[.]com’, and the corresponding actions performed by Darktrace / EMAIL

Unfortunately for the customer in this case, their employee went on to open the suspicious email and follow the link to the PDF file, despite Darktrace having previously locked it.

Figure 2: Confirmation that the SaaS user read the suspicious email and followed the link to the PDF file hosted on Dropbox, despite it being junked and link locked.

Darktrace / NETWORK subsequently identified that the internal device associated with this user connected to the malicious endpoint, ‘mmv-security[.]top’, a couple of days later.

Further investigation into this suspicious domain revealed that it led to a fake Microsoft 365 login page, designed to harvest the credentials of legitimate SaaS account holders. By masquerading as a trusted organization, like Microsoft, these credential harvesters are more likely to appear trustworthy to their targets, and therefore increase the likelihood of stealing privileged SaaS account credentials.

Figure 3: The fake Microsoft login page that the user was directed to after clicking the link in the PDF file.

Suspicious SaaS activity

In the days following the initial infection, Darktrace / IDENTITY began to observe a string of suspicious SaaS activity being performed by the now compromised Microsoft 365 account.

Beginning on January 31, Darktrace observed a number of suspicious SaaS logins from multiple unusual locations that had never previously accessed the account, including 73.95.165[.]113. Then on February 1, Darktrace detected unusual logins from the endpoints 194.32.120[.]40 and 185.192.70[.]239, both of which were associated with ExpressVPN indicating that threat actors may have been using a virtual private network (VPN) to mask their true location.

FIgure 4: Graph Showing several unusual logins from different locations observed by Darktrace/Apps on the affected SaaS account.

Interestingly, the threat actors observed during these logins appeared to use a valid multi-factor authentication (MFA) token, indicating that they had successfully bypassed the customer’s MFA policy. In this case, it appears likely that the employee had unknowingly provided the attackers with an MFA token or unintentionally approved a login verification request. By using valid tokens and meeting the necessary MFA requirements, threat actors are often able to remain undetected by traditional security tools that view MFA as the silver bullet. However, Darktrace’s anomaly-based approach to threat detection allows it to quickly identify unexpected activity on a device or SaaS account, even if it occurs with legitimate credentials and successfully passed authentication requirements, and bring it to the attention of the customer’s security team.

Shortly after, Darktrace observed an additional login to the SaaS account from another unusual location, 87.117.225[.]155, this time seemingly using the HideMyAss (HMA) VPN service. Following this unusual login, the actor was seen creating a new email rule on the compromised Outlook account. The new rule, named ‘….’, was intended to immediately move any emails from the organization’s accounts team directly to the ‘Conversation History’ mailbox folder. This is a tactic often employed by threat actors during phishing campaigns to ensure that their malicious emails (and potential responses to them) are automatically moved to less commonly visited mailbox folders in order to remain undetected on target networks. Furthermore, by giving this new email rule a generic name, like ‘….’ it is less likely to draw the attention of the legitimate account holder or the organizations security team.

Following this, Darktrace / EMAIL observed the actor sending updated versions of emails that had previously been sent by the legitimate account holder, with subject lines containing language like “Incorrect contract” and “Requires Urgent Review”, likely in an attempt to illicit some kind of follow-up action from the intended recipient. This likely represented threat actors using the compromised account to send further malicious emails to the organization’s accounts team in order to infect additional accounts across the customer’s SaaS environment.

Unfortunately, Darktrace's Autonomous Response was not deployed in the customer’s SaaS environment in this instance, meaning that the aforementioned malicious activity did not lead to any mitigative actions to contain the compromise. Had RESPOND been enabled in autonomous response mode at the time of the attack, it would have quickly moved to log out and disable the suspicious actor as soon as they had logged into the SaaS environment from an unusual location, effectively shutting down this account takeover attempt at the earliest opportunity.

Nevertheless, Darktrace / EMAIL's swift identification and response to the suspicious phishing emails, coupled with Darktrace / IDENTITY's detection of the unusual SaaS activity, allowed the customer’s security team to quickly identify the offending SaaS actor and take the account offline before the attack could escalate further

Conclusion

As organizations across the world continue to adopt third-party solutions like Dropbox into their day-to-day business operations, threat actors will, in turn, continue to seek ways to exploit these and add them to their arsenal. As illustrated in this example, it is relatively simple for attackers to abuse these legitimate services for malicious purposes, all while evading detection by endpoint users and security teams alike.

By leveraging these commonly used platforms, malicious actors are able to carry out disruptive cyber-attacks, like phishing campaigns, by taking advantage of legitimate, and seemingly trustworthy, infrastructure to host malicious files or links, rather than relying on their own infrastructure. While this tactic may bypass traditional security measures, Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI enables it to recognize unusual senders within an organization’s email environment, even if the email itself seems to have come from a legitimate source, and prevent them from landing in the target inbox. In the event that a SaaS account does become compromised, Darktrace is able to identify unusual login locations and suspicious SaaS activities and bring them to the attention of the customer for remediation.

In addition to the prompt identification of emerging threats, Darktrace's Autonomous Response is uniquely placed to take swift autonomous action against any suspicious activity detected within a customer’s SaaS environment, effectively containing any account takeover attempts in the first instance.

Credit to Ryan Traill, Threat Content Lead, Emily Megan Lim, Cyber Security Analyst

Appendices

Darktrace Model Detections

- Model Breach: SaaS / Access::Unusual External Source for SaaS Credential Use

- Model Breach: SaaS / Unusual Activity::Multiple Unusual External Sources For SaaS Credential

- Model Breach: SaaS / Access::Unusual External Source for SaaS Credential Use

- Model Breach: SaaS / Unusual Activity::Multiple Unusual SaaS Activities

- Model Breach: SaaS / Unusual Activity::Unusual MFA Auth and SaaS Activity

- Model Breach: SaaS / Compromise::Unusual Login and New Email Rule

- Model Breach: SaaS / Compliance::Anomalous New Email Rule

- Model Breach: SaaS / Compliance::New Email Rule

- Model Breach: SaaS / Compromise::SaaS Anomaly Following Anomalous Login

- Model Breach: Device / Suspicious Domain

List of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

Domain IoC

mmv-security[.]top’ - Credential Harvesting Endpoint

IP Address

73.95.165[.]113 - Unusual Login Endpoint

194.32.120[.]40 - Unusual Login Endpoint

87.117.225[.]155 - Unusual Login Endpoint

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

DEFENSE EVASION, PERSISTENCE, PRIVILEGE ESCALATION, INITIAL ACCESS

T1078.004 - Cloud Accounts

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DISCOVERY

T1538 - Cloud Service Dashboard

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RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

T1586 - Compromise Accounts

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CREDENTIAL ACCESS

T1539 - Steal Web Session Cookie

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PERSISTENCE

T1137 - Outlook Rules

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INITIAL ACCESS

T156.002 Spearphishing Link

Written by

Ryan Traill

Analyst Content Lead

Inside the SOC

Written by

Ryan Traill

Analyst Content Lead

Product Marketing Manager, Network Detection & Response

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November 13, 2025

Unmasking Vo1d: Inside Darktrace’s Botnet Detection

What is vo1d APK malware?

Vo1d malware first appeared in the wild in September 2024 and has since evolved into one of the most widespread Android botnets ever observed. This large-scale Android malware primarily targets smart TVs and low-cost Android TV boxes. Initially, Vo1d was identified as a malicious backdoor capable of installing additional third-party software [1]. Its functionality soon expanded beyond the initial infection to include deploying further malicious payloads, running proxy services, and conducting ad fraud operations. By early 2025, it was estimated that Vo1d had infected 1.3 to 1.6 million devices worldwide [2].

From a technical perspective, Vo1d embeds components into system storage to enable itself to download and execute new modules at any time. External researchers further discovered that Vo1d uses Domain Generation Algorithms (DGAs) to create new command-and-control (C2) domains, ensuring that regardless of existing servers being taken down, the malware can quickly reconnect to new ones. Previous published analysis identified dozens of C2 domains and hundreds of DGA seeds, along with new downloader families. Over time, Vo1d has grown increasingly sophisticated with clear signs of stronger obfuscation and encryption methods designed to evade detection [2].

Darktrace’s coverage

Earlier this year, Darktrace observed a surge in Vo1d-related activity across customer environments, with the majority of affected customers based in South Africa. Devices that had been quietly operating as expected began exhibiting unusual network behavior, including excessive DNS lookups. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) has long highlighted South Africa as one of the countries most impacted by Vo1d infections [2].

What makes the recent activity particularly interesting is that the surge observed by Darktrace appears to be concentrated specifically in South African environments. This localized spike suggests that a significant number of devices may have been compromised, potentially due to vulnerable software, outdated firmware, or even preloaded malware. Regions with high prevalence of low-cost, often unpatched devices are especially susceptible, as these everyday consumer electronics can be quietly recruited into the botnet’s network. This specifically appears to be the case with South Africa, where public reporting has documented widespread use of low-cost boxes, such as non-Google-certified Android TV sticks, that frequently ship with outdated firmware [3].

The initial triage highlighted the core mechanism Vo1d uses to remain resilient: its use of DGA. A DGA deterministically creates a large list of pseudo-random domain names on a predictable schedule. This enables the malware to compute hundreds of candidate domains using the same algorithm, instead of using a hard-coded single C2 hostname that defenders could easily block or take down. To ensure reproducible from the infected device’s perspective, Vo1d utilizes DGA seeds. These seeds might be a static string, a numeric value, or a combination of underlying techniques that enable infected devices to generate the same list of candidate domains for a time window, provided the same DGA code, seed, and date are used.

Interestingly, Vo1d’s DGA seeds do not appear to be entirely unpredictable, and the generated domains lack fully random-looking endings. As observed in Figure 1, there is a clear pattern in the names generated. In this case, researchers identified that while the first five characters would change to create the desired list of domain names, the trailing portion remained consistent as part of the seed: 60b33d7929a, which OSINT sources have linked to the Vo1d botnet. [2]. Darktrace’s Threat Research team also identified a potential second DGA seed, with devices in some cases also engaging in activity involving hostnames matching the regular expression /[a-z]{5}fc975904fc9\.(com|top|net). This second seed has not been reported by any OSINT vendors at the time of writing.

Another recurring characteristic observed across multiple cases was the choice of top-level domains (TLDs), which included .com, .net, and .top.

Figure 1: Advanced Search results showing DNS lookups, providing a glimpse on the DGA seed utilized.

The activity was detected by multiple models in Darktrace / NETWORK, which triggered on devices making an unusually large volume of DNS requests for domains uncommon across the network.

During the network investigation, Darktrace analysts traced Vo1d’s infrastructure and uncovered an interesting pattern related to responder ASNs. A significant number of connections pointed to AS16509 (AMAZON-02). By hosting redirectors or C2 nodes inside major cloud environments, Vo1d is able to gain access to highly available and geographically diverse infrastructure. When one node is taken down or reported, operators can quickly enable a new node under a different IP within the same ASN. Another feature of cloud infrastructure that hardens Vo1d’s resilience is the fact that many organizations allow outbound connections to cloud IP ranges by default, assuming they are legitimate. Despite this, Darktrace was able to identify the rarity of these endpoints, identifying the unusualness of the activity.

Analysts further observed that once a generated domain successfully resolved, infected devices consistently began establishing outbound connections to ephemeral port ranges like TCP ports 55520 and 55521. These destination ports are atypical for standard web or DNS traffic. Even though the choice of high-numbered ports appears random, it is likely far from not accidental. Commonly used ports such as port 80 (HTTP) or 443 (HTTPS) are often subject to more scrutiny and deeper inspection or content filtering, making them riskier for attackers. On the other hand, unregistered ports like 55520 and 55521 are less likely to be blocked, providing a more covert channel that blends with outbound TCP traffic. This tactic helps evade firewall rules that focus on common service ports. Regardless, Darktrace was able to identify external connections on uncommon ports to locations that the network does not normally visit.

The continuation of the described activity was identified by Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst, which correlated individual events into a broader interconnected incident. It began with the multiple DNS requests for the algorithmically generated domains, followed by repeated connections to rare endpoints later confirmed as attacker-controlled infrastructure. Cyber AI Analyst’s investigation further enabled it to categorize the events as part of the “established foothold” phase of the attack.

Figure 2: Cyber AI Analyst incident illustrating the transition from DNS requests for DGA domains to connections with resolved attacker-controlled infrastructure.

Conclusion

The observations highlighted in this blog highlight the precision and scale of Vo1d’s operations, ranging from its DGA-generated domains to its covert use of high-numbered ports. The surge in affected South African environments illustrate how regions with many low-cost, often unpatched devices can become major hubs for botnet activity. This serves as a reminder that even everyday consumer electronics can play a role in cybercrime, emphasizing the need for vigilance and proactive security measures.

Credit to Christina Kreza (Cyber Analyst & Team Lead) and Eugene Chua (Principal Cyber Analyst & Team Lead)

Edited by Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)

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