November 6, 2023

How PlugX Malware Has Evolved & Adapted

Discover how Darktrace effectively detected and thwarted the PlugX remote access trojan in 2023 despite its highly evasive and adaptive nature.

Written by

Nahisha Nobregas

SOC Analyst

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

Nahisha Nobregas

SOC Analyst

Nov 2023

What is PlugX Remote Access Trojan?

Understanding remote access trojans (RATs)

As malicious actors across the threat landscape continue to pursue more efficient and effective ways of compromising target networks, all while remaining undetected by security measures, it is unsurprising to see an increase in the use of remote access trojans (RATs) in recent years. RATs typically operate stealthily, evading security tools while offering threat actors remote control over infected devices, allowing attackers to execute a wide range of malicious activities like data theft or installing additional malware.

Definition and general functionality of RATs: A Remote Access Trojan (RAT) is a type of malware that enables unauthorized remote control of an infected computer. Once installed, RATs allow attackers to monitor user activities, steal sensitive information, manipulate files, and execute commands. RATs are typically distributed via phishing emails, malicious attachments, drive-by downloads, or exploiting software vulnerabilities. Due to their ability to provide comprehensive control over a compromised system, RATs pose a significant security threat to individuals and organizations.

Historical overview of PlugX

PlugX is one such example of a RAT that has attributed to Chinese threat actors such as Mustang Panda, since it first appeared in the wild back in 2008. It is known for its use in espionage, a modular and plug-in style approach to malware development. It has the ability to evolve with the latest tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that allow it to avoid the detection of traditional security tools as it implants itself target devices.

How does PlugX work?

The ultimate goal of any RAT is to remotely control affected devices with a wide range of capabilities, which in PlugX’s case has typically included rebooting systems, keylogging, managing critical system processes, and file upload/downloads. One technique PlugX heavily relies on is dynamic-link library (DLL) sideloading to infiltrate devices. This technique involves executing a malicious payload that is embedded within a benign executable found in a data link library (DLL) [1]. The embedded payload within the DLL is often encrypted or obfuscated to prevent detection.

What’s more, a new variant of PlugX was observed in the wild across Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Mongolia, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria in August 2022, that added several new capabilities to its toolbox.

Key capabilities of PlugX

The new variation is reported to continuously monitor affected environments for new USB devices to infect, allowing it to spread further through compromised networks [2]. It is then able to hide malicious files within a USB device by using a novel technique that prevents them from being viewed on Windows operating systems (OS). These hidden files can only be viewed on a Unix-like (.nix) OS, or by analyzing an affected USB devices with a forensic tool [2]. The new PlugX variant also has the ability to create a hidden directory, “RECYCLER.BIN”, containing a collection of stolen documents, likely in preparation for exfiltration via its command and control (C2) channels. [3]

Since December 2022, PlugX has been observed targeting networks in Europe through malware delivery via HTML smuggling campaigns, a technique that has been dubbed SmugX [4].

This evasive tactic allows threat actors to prepare and deploy malware via phishing campaigns by exploiting legitimate HTML5 and JavaScript features [5].

Darktrace Coverage of PlugX

Between January and March 2023, Darktrace observed activity relating to the PlugX RAT on multiple customers across the fleet. While PlugX’s TTPs may have bypassed traditional security tools, the anomaly-based detection capabilities of Darktrace allowed it to identify and alert the subtle deviations in the behavior of affected devices, while Darktrace was able to take immediate mitigative action against such anomalous activity and stop attackers in their tracks.

C2 Communication

Between January and March 2023, Darktrace detected multiple suspicious connections related to the PlugX RAT within customer environments. When a device has been infected, it will typically communicate through C2 infrastructure established for the PlugX RAT. In most cases observed by Darktrace, affected devices exhibited suspicious C2 connections to rare endpoints that were assessed with moderate to high confidence to be linked to PlugX.

On the network of one Darktrace customer the observed communication was a mix of successful and unsuccessful connections at a high volume to rare endpoints on ports such as 110, 443, 5938, and 80. These ports are commonly associated with POP3, HTTPS, TeamViewer RDP / DynGate, and HTTP, respectively. Figure 1 below showcases this pattern of activity.

Figure 1: Model Breach Event Log demonstrating various successful and unsuccessful connections to the PlugX C2 endpoint 103.56.53[.]46 via various destination ports.

On another customer’s network, Darktrace observed C2 communication involving multiple failed connection attempts to another rare external endpoint associated with PlugX. The device in this case was detected attempting connections to the endpoint, 45.142.166[.]112 on ports 110, 80, and 443 which caused the DETECT model ‘Anomalous Connection / Multiple Failed Connections to Rare Endpoint’ to breach. This model examines devices attempting connections to a rare external endpoint over a short period of time, and it breached in response to almost all PlugX C2 related activity detected by Darktrace. This highlights Darktrace DETECT’s unique ability to identify anomalous activity which appears benign or uncertain, rather than relying on traditional signature-based detections.

Figure 2: Device Event Log demonstrating various successful and unsuccessful connections to the PlugX C2 endpoint 45.142.166[.]112 via various destination on January 27, 2023.

New User Agent

Darktrace's Self-Learning AI approach to threat detection also allowed it to recognize connections to PlugX associated endpoints that utilized a new user agent. In almost all connections to PlugX endpoints detected by Darktrace, the same user agent, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0;Win64;x64)AppleWebKit/537.36, was observed, illustrating a clear pattern in PlugX-related activity

In one example from February 2023, an affected device successfully connected to an endpoint associated with PlugX, 45.142.166[.]112, while using the aforementioned new user agent, as depicted in Figure 3.

Figure 3: The Device Event log above showcases a successful connection to the PlugX associated IP address, 45.142.166[.]112 using the new user agent ‘Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0;Win64;x64)AppleWebKit/537.36’.

On March 21, 2023, Darktrace observed similar activity on a separate customer’s network affected by connections to PlugX. This activity included connections to the same endpoint, 45.142.166[.]112. The connection was an HTTP POST request made via proxy with the same new user agent, ‘Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0;Win64;x64)AppleWebKit/537.36’. When investigated further this user agent actually reveals very little about itself and appears to be missing a couple of common features that are typically contained in a user agent string, such as a web browser and its version or the mention of Safari before its build ID (‘537.36’).

Additionally, for this connection the URI observed consisted of a random string of 8 hexadecimal characters, namely ‘d819f07a’. This is a technique often used by malware to communicate with its C2 servers, while evading the detection of signature-based detection tools. Darktrace, however, recognized that this external connection to an endpoint with no hostname constituted anomalous behavior, and could have been indicative of a threat actor communicating with malicious infrastructure, thus the ‘Anomalous Connection / Possible Callback URI’ model was breached.

Figure 4: An affected device was detected using the new user agent, ‘Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0;Win64;x64)AppleWebKit/537.36’ while connecting to the rare external endpoint 45.142.166[.]112 via proxy.

Numeric File Download

Darktrace’s detection of PlugX activity on another customer’s network, in February 2023, helped to demonstrate related patterns of activity within the C2 communication and tooling attack phases. Observed PlugX activity on this network followed the subsequent pattern; a connection to a PlugX endpoints is made, followed by a HTTP POST request to a numeric URI with a random string of 8 hexadecimal characters, as previously highlighted. Darktrace identified that this activity represented unusual ‘New Activity’ for this device, and thus treated it with suspicion.

Figure 5: New activity was identified by Darktrace in the Device Event Log shown above for connections to the endpoint 45.142.166[.]112 followed by HTTP POSTs to URIs “/8891431c” and “/ba12b866” on February 15, 2023.

The device in question continued to connect to the endpoint and make HTTP POST connections to various URIs relating to PlugX. Additionally, the user agent `Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0;Win64;x64)AppleWebKit/537.36` was again detected for these connections. Figure 6 details the activity captured by Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst.

Figure 6: The image above showcases activity captured by Darktrace’s AI Analyst for PlugX connections made on February 15, 2023.

Darktrace detected that during these connections, the device in question attempted to download a suspicious file named only with numbers. The use of numeric file names is a technique often used by threat actors to obfuscate the download of malicious files or programs and bypass traditional security tools. Darktrace understood that the download of a numeric file, coupled with the use of an anomalous new user agent, mean the incident should be treated with suspicion. Fortunately, Darktrace RESPOND was enabled in autonomous response mode during this attack, meaning it was able to automatically block the device from downloading the file, or any other files, from the suspicious external location for a two-hour period, potentially preventing the download of PlugX’s malicious tooling.

Conclusion

Amid the continued evolution of PlugX from an espionage tool to a more widely available malware, it is essential that threat detection does not rely on a set of characteristics or indicators, but rather is focused on anomalies. Throughout these cases, Darktrace demonstrated the efficacy of its detection and alerting on emerging activity pertaining to a particularly stealthy and versatile RAT. Over the years, PlugX has continually looked to evolve and survive in the ever-changing threat landscape by adapting new capabilities and TTPs through which it can infect a system and spread to new devices without being noticed by security teams and their tools.

However, Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI allows it to gain a strong understanding of customer networks, learning what constitutes expected network behavior which in turn allows it to recognize the subtle deviations indicative of an ongoing compromise.

Darktrace’s ability to identify emerging threats through anomaly-based detection, rather than relying on established threat intelligence, uniquely positions it to detect and respond to highly adaptable and dynamic threats, like the PlugX malware, regardless of how it may evolve in the future.

Credit to: Nahisha Nobregas, SOC Analyst & Dylan Hinz, Cyber Analyst

Appendices

MITRE ATT&CK Framework

Execution

T1059.003 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell

Persistence and Privilege Escalation

T1547.001 Boot or Logon AutoStart Execution: Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder
T1574.001 Hijack Execution Flow: DLL Search Order Hijacking
T1574.002 Hijack Execution Flow: DLL Side-Loading
T1543.003 Create or Modify System Process: Windows Service
T1140 Deobfuscate / Decode Files or Information
T1083 File and Directory Discovery

Defense Evasion

T1564.001 Hide Artifacts: Hidden Files and Directories
T1036.004 Masquerading: Task or Service
T1036.005 Masquerading: Match Legitimate Name or Location
T1027.006 Obfuscated Files or Information: HTML Smuggling

Credential Access

T1056.001 Input Capture: Keylogging

Collection

T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

Command and Control

T1573.001 Encrypted Channel: Symmetric Cryptography
T1070.003 Mail Protocols
T1071.001 Web Protocol

DETECT Model Breaches

Anomalous Connection / Multiple Failed Connections to Rare Endpoint
Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname
Anomalous File / New User Agent Followed By Numeric File Download
Anomalous Connection / Possible Callback URL

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

IoC - Type - Description + Confidence

45.142.166[.]112 - IP - PlugX C2 Endpoint / moderate - high

103.56.53[.]46 - IP - PlugX C2 Endpoint / moderate - high

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0;Win64;x64)AppleWebKit/537.36 - User Agent - PlugX User Agent / moderate – high

/8891431c - URI - PlugX URI / moderate-high

/ba12b866 - URI - PlugX URI / moderate -high

References

1. https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/dll-side-loading-how-to-combat-threat-actor-evasion-techniques/

2. https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/plugx-variants-in-usbs/

3. https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2023/03/09/border-hopping-plugx-usb-worm/

4. https://thehackernews.com/2023/07/chinese-hackers-use-html-smuggling-to.html

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

Written by

Nahisha Nobregas

SOC Analyst

Inside the SOC

Written by

Nahisha Nobregas

SOC Analyst

•

August 3, 2026

Nathaniel Jones

SVP, Global Threat Intelligence

Watch the NIS2 Webinar

Blog

August 5, 2026

Testing a Prompt injection Attack Against an Enterprise AI Agent

Key takeaways

Darktrace successfully detected and quarantined a prompt injection email before it could be processed by an enterprise AI agent.
Prompt injection attacks increasingly rely on natural language rather than traditional malware, making behavioral analysis an important complement to signature-based detection.
Organizations deploying AI agents should combine model guardrails with behavioral monitoring to reduce the risk of malicious instructions reaching enterprise systems.

How behavioral detection helps stop prompt injection attacks

A Darktrace customer running a Gemini AI agent in Google Cloud asked us two simple questions:

“If my agent can read inbound emails and access internal data, what stops an attacker from hiding malicious instructions in the message? Couldn’t the agent be tricked into deleting or exfiltrating sensitive data?”

The scenario centers on an indirect prompt injection attack, where malicious instructions are hidden inside content that an AI model later interprets as trusted input. The same weakness was exposed by EchoLeak (CVE-2025-32711), a zero-click Microsoft 365 Copilot vulnerability enabled data exfiltration from a single well-crafted email..

This blog follows the Darktrace team’s investigation of the customer’s hypothesis and examines how the attack interacted with their existing security stack. The results highlight which defenses held, where gaps emerged, and how behavioral detection mattered more than guardrails. This investigation also demonstrates why behavioral detection is becoming increasingly important for AI security, as prompt injections often contain no traditional indicators of compromise.

How do prompt injection attacks work?

Prompt injection works by carefully crafting the content and structure of the prompt to alter the LLM’s behavior or output in unintended ways. This can cause models to violate guardrails, generate harmful content or enable unauthorised access.

Prompt injection attack example

The well-known example, EchoLeak (CVE-2025-32711), was a zero-click vulnerability in Microsoft 365 Copilot that relied on a carefully crafted email containing hidden instructions that the AI system interpreted as commands rather than content, creating a pathway for unauthorized access to sensitive information without any user interaction.

While Darktrace / SECURE AI is designed to prevent agents from producing unintended outcomes, we wanted to see if we could catch and prevent this threat type earlier in the attack life-cycle, at the email security layer.

How we tested prompt injection attacks on an enterprise agent

Summary:

Claude generated a prompt injection payload.
Hidden instructions were embedded in an email.
The email passed traditional validation checks.
Darktrace analyzed the language and sender behavior.
The email was quarantined before the AI agent could process it.

To test Darktrace / EMAIL against this attack class, we opened Claude, gave it the customer's context and problem statement (Gemini agent with inbox access, internal tool calls), told it we were validating Darktrace / EMAIL's detection of prompt injections, and asked for a test payload. See below:

Despite the guardrails supposedly built into the model, Claude surprisingly gave us the entire exploit in plaintext (albeit very basic), illegible to a human as the text was sent in white text (see Figure 1) but framed as an authoritative override for anything downstream reading the mail programmatically (i.e. the Gemini agent).

How Darktrace detected a prompt injection attack

We then sent the Claude-crafted email from a freemail address to the target recipient’s inbox. Despite the email containing no malicious payload, the freemail address having no malicious reputation, and the validation checks all passing, Darktrace /EMAIL flagged the email as a 93/100 anomaly and moved it to junk, out of scope for the AI agent.

Figure 3: *The test email sent with the hidden prompt injection*

*Figure 4: The email analysis in Darktrace / EMAIL*

Figure 5: Darktrace / EMAIL detection of malicious activity

The interesting part is what triggered the detection (see Figure 5)

Possible machine prompt content: text in the body detected as instructions written for a machine to execute, not for a human to read

Possible machine prompt content + basic suspicious correspondence: the same content, correlated with sender-side anomalies: freemail domain (yahoo[.]com), unknown correspondent, no prior mail history with the recipient, and suspicious references to payment information

Neither of those is a signature match. Nothing in the email was on a blacklist. There was no malware, no link and no attachment. Darktrace analyzed the context in which the email was delivered and flagged it as likely risky. The anomalous language features and the context of the sender relative to the recipient's normal behavior, combined with the unusual hidden text (prompt) were enough for Darktrace / EMAIL to act on the risk.

Result: Darktrace / EMAIL autonomously junked the email, out of scope for any AI agent parsing the inbox.

Why behavioral security makes a difference detecting prompt injection attacks

Cyberattacks don't look like traditional exploits anymore. They now operate in natural language, not strictly code.

That breaks the traditional stack. AV, firewalls, static scanning and signature-based SEGs all assume a payload to inspect.

A prompt injection has no payload. It's just an instruction, written in natural language, dressed up as anything the attacker wants: an invoice, an HR request, a calendar invite, some simple PowerPoint slides.

EchoLeak proved that hidden instructions can sit inside an email invisible to the user but fully readable by the LLM, and the LLM will follow them blindly.

This test and GTG-1002 proved that the LLM itself can be socially engineered. Tell it you're an authorized tester and it will hand you the attack.

Rules and static classifiers can catch the obvious cases. But natural language has infinite variants, and the attack surface is the model's innate functionality to comply.

The deeper problem here is intent: an LLM can't reliably tell whether an instruction in its context came from its developer, its user, or an attacker who slipped it into an email. To the LLM, everything reads as language and looks like a legitimate ask. This is why behavioural detection wins, as you become aware of intent when you look at the context of an interaction. Does this sender normally send this kind of message to this recipient? Does this prompt fit the user's normal pattern? Is this agent behaving the way this agent normally behaves?

Intent can't be read off a single email, it emerges from behavioral context. Which is how Darktrace enables threat detection, through behavioral understanding.

Why enterprise AI security requires more than guardrails

Claude didn't roll over immediately… the first section of the response was a (slight) pushback, but then it wrote the payload anyway without having to ask twice.

Here the framing of the prompt did all the work. The “testing security capabilities” angle moved the model from refusal to unquestioned compliance to the user prompt.

This isn't the first time this has happened, of course. Anthropic disclosed in November 2025 that a Chinese state-sponsored group they tracked as GTG-1002 ran the first documented AI-orchestrated espionage campaign against ~30 targets by posing as employees of a legitimate cybersecurity firm doing authorised penetration testing.

The takeaway isn't that AI guardrails are ineffective. They raise the cost of low-effort attacks and remain an important first layer of defense. However, for most organizations today, they’re the only line of defense when deploying AI agents. If a prompt injection bypasses those controls, organizations still need a way to detect and stop malicious behavior elsewhere in the attack chain.

Attackers will continue to have working prompt injections easily and quickly. The question is what stops one when it lands in an inbox your agent is reading.

That's where behavioral detection comes in.

How Darktrace detects prompt injection attacks in emails

Two things Darktrace does that a model-level guardrail or static rules and signatures can't:

Natural language analysis at the email or prompt layer. The email is assessed on its own merits: is this content shaped like instructions for a machine, regardless of what the receiving agent decides to do about it?

Behavioral context around the language. An AI agent behaves like an extremely agreeable human, and it will go above and beyond to comply with the user’s request. That's exactly why you must consider the business context, such sender behaviour, mailing history, and organisational norms, as these matter even more when the recipient is an AI.

Darktrace has been perfecting behavioral anomaly detection for over a decade; the same self-learning approach that catches BEC and account takeover applies directly to prompt injection delivery. Our multi-layered AI stack extracts content from the message, builds behavioural understanding through social graphing and Pattern of Life analysis, and then combines natural language, topic, inducement, sender relationship and anomaly signals before deciding what action to take.

This matters for prompt injection because the threat is not the plain language itself, but the intent behind the language that can cause an AI agent to respond in unexpected ways.

How to secure enterprise AI operations from prompt injection attacks

Email was the entry point in this case, but it is only one of many possible vectors.

Anywhere an agent can retrieve information, an attacker can potentially introduce a prompt injection.

Emails, documents, SharePoint sites, web pages, knowledge bases, chat platforms, and third-party integrations all provide opportunities to influence an agent's behavior. Wherever an agent finds its orders, a prompt injection opportunity exists.

This is why securing AI requires more than blocking malicious inputs. Organizations also need visibility into how agents behave after consuming information from across their environment. If an agent begins accessing unexpected data, taking unusual actions, or operating outside its normal patterns, those behaviors may provide the strongest signal that something has gone wrong.

Effective AI security requires defense in depth: reducing the likelihood of malicious instructions reaching the agent while maintaining the ability to detect and investigate suspicious behavior if they do.

The challenge isn't protecting a single entry point. It's recognizing that, in an AI-powered environment, every source of information is also a potential source of influence.

Are you deploying autonomous agents across your enterprise and want to see this tested in your environment? Let's talk.

About the author

Carlo Loregian

Solutions Engineer

Blog

August 4, 2026

Extending AI Security Visibility with Darktrace and Microsoft Agent 365

AI agents are rapidly becoming embedded in everyday business operations, helping employees automate workflows, access information, and accelerate decision-making. As organizations embrace agentic AI, security teams face a growing challenge: understanding how AI is being used, what agents can access, and where risk may emerge.

As agents take on more business-critical work, security teams often need to move across multiple portals to understand risks spanning identity, data, and threat activity. This fragmented view can make it difficult to assess an agent's overall risk posture and determine where attention is needed. Organizations need a way to bring these signals together without disrupting existing security investments or workflows.

Today, Darktrace is announcing an integration between Darktrace / SECURE AI and Microsoft Agent 365 that brings Darktrace's Adaptive AI-driven risk signals directly into the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. By extending the visibility and risk understanding provided by Darktrace / SECURE AI into the Microsoft ecosystem, organizations can gain a more unified understanding of AI agent risk across their environments.

As one of the first security companies to partner with Microsoft to contribute third-party risk signals to the Agent Registry, Darktrace is helping shape how organizations understand and manage AI agent risk.

Extending visibility into the Microsoft Agent 365 experience

Microsoft Agent 365 provides administrators with a centralized registry of AI agents operating within their environment. As organizations expand their use of AI agents, this centralized visibility becomes increasingly important for governance and oversight.

This new integration extends that visibility by allowing Darktrace-generated risk signals to be surfaced directly within the Microsoft Agent 365 experience. By combining Microsoft's agent management and security capabilities with Darktrace's AI-powered risk analysis, organizations gain greater awareness of potential security concerns associated with AI agents operating across their environments.

By integrating Darktrace telemetry into Agent 365, customers can:

Surface Darktrace-detected risks and signals alongside Microsoft-native signals in a single interface

Identify potentially compromised or anomalous AI agents more quickly

Gain unified understanding of context and agent behavior

This approach reinforces a single control plane for AI security while allowing organizations to continue leveraging existing investments across both platforms.

Why unified visibility of AI agent risk signals matters

As AI adoption accelerates across Microsoft environments, organizations must manage new forms of behavior, access patterns, and risk. Security teams need more than inventories and permissions. They need visibility into how AI systems operate and how risk evolves over time.

This integration addresses a critical gap: how to bring behavioral AI security insights into the same control plane as identity, access, and agent management.

With Darktrace and Microsoft Agent 365 together, organizations benefit from:

Unified visibility: A single pane of glass for understanding AI agent risk signals across Microsoft and Darktrace signals

Faster detection of abnormal agent behavior: Darktrace's Adaptive AI highlights deviations that may not be captured by static controls

Operational efficiency: Security teams can triage and prioritize risk signals without switching between systems

Stronger trust in AI deployments: Clear attribution, context, and investigation pathways improve confidence in AI agent usage

Extending Microsoft's AI security model, not replacing it

Securing AI requires a layered approach that combines governance, visibility, threat detection, and risk management. This integration is designed to complement Microsoft's security capabilities, not duplicate them.

Through Darktrace / SECURE AI, Darktrace contributes:

Identification of risk via advanced prompt analysis

Behavioral anomaly detection across AI agents

Cross-environment threat correlation

Autonomous insight into emerging or unknown risks

Microsoft provides:

Centralized agent management

Identity and access governance

Native detection of risk signals and enforcement capabilities

Together, these capabilities create a more complete, layered approach to securing AI-driven enterprises. Organizations gain the governance and policy controls needed to manage AI adoption while benefiting from continuous visibility into how AI is used across the business.

Building the future of secure AI

As AI agents become more deeply embedded in business processes, organizations need more than inventories and static controls. They need to understand how AI is being used, how agents behave, and where risk is emerging across the enterprise.

Darktrace / SECURE AI delivers that understanding through continuous visibility into AI activity, helping security teams assess intent, identify behavioral drift, and uncover emerging risk across both human and agent-driven workflows. Powered by Adaptive AI, it provides the context needed to secure AI as it evolves.

The integration with Microsoft Agent 365 extends those insights into the workflows organizations already use. Agent 365 provides a unified control plane for governing and securing AI agents, while Darktrace contributes complementary behavioral risk signals that can be surfaced within the Agent 365 experience. Together, they give customers broader context on agent activity and risk while preserving the value of their existing Microsoft and Darktrace investments.

As enterprises move from AI experimentation to AI-powered execution, Microsoft and Darktrace help bring together governance, compliance, behavioral understanding, and oversight in a unified approach to AI security. For organizations adopting Microsoft 365 E7, Darktrace / SECURE AI further strengthens that foundation by providing continuous visibility into AI activity, agent behavior, and emerging risk as AI adoption scales.

About the author

The Darktrace Community

Your data. Our AI.

Elevate your network security with Darktrace AI

Get a demo

How PlugX Malware Has Evolved & Adapted

What is PlugX Remote Access Trojan?

Understanding remote access trojans (RATs)

How does PlugX work?

Key capabilities of PlugX

Darktrace Coverage of PlugX

C2 Communication

New User Agent

Numeric File Download

Conclusion

Appendices

MITRE ATT&CK Framework

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

References

Why Trust is the New Attack Surface: Darktrace’s Mid-Year Threat Update 2026

Testing a Prompt injection Attack Against an Enterprise AI Agent

Enjoying the blog?

More in this series

Hiding in Plain Sight: Uncovering a Multi-Stage Ransomware Attack Through Behavioral Detection

From Click to Command: Behavioral Detection of AppleScript-Led MacOS Intrusions

Hola VPN Abuse: From Proxy Traffic to Malware and Cryptomining

Blog

August 5, 2026

Testing a Prompt injection Attack Against an Enterprise AI Agent

Key takeaways

How behavioral detection helps stop prompt injection attacks

How do prompt injection attacks work?

Prompt injection attack example

How we tested prompt injection attacks on an enterprise agent

How Darktrace detected a prompt injection attack

Why behavioral security makes a difference detecting prompt injection attacks

Why enterprise AI security requires more than guardrails

How Darktrace detects prompt injection attacks in emails

How to secure enterprise AI operations from prompt injection attacks

Blog

August 4, 2026

Extending AI Security Visibility with Darktrace and Microsoft Agent 365

Extending visibility into the Microsoft Agent 365 experience

Why unified visibility of AI agent risk signals matters

Extending Microsoft's AI security model, not replacing it

Building the future of secure AI