Stay ahead of cyber threats with insights from Black Hat 2019. Learn how Darktrace is securing cities of the future.
As thousands of hackers descended upon the desert for Las Vegas’ annual Black Hat conference, it quickly became clear that nothing was immune to cyber-attack. From hotel smart locks to ATM machines to emergency call centers, hackers and security experts alike showed how cyber-criminals can infiltrate a plethora of supposedly airtight systems. And when it comes to the latest exploit, what happens in Vegas won’t stay there for long.
Yet this state of perpetual vulnerability is, of course, unacceptable for online defenders — particularly for cities whose primary responsibility is the safety of their citizens. Whereas smart city technology like IoT traffic sensors, driverless vehicles, and connected energy grids promise to unlock new heights of efficiency, such innovations are replete with uncharted security flaws that put the world’s most critical infrastructure at risk. Ultimately, Black Hat demonstrated why, to safeguard the cities of tomorrow, we must go beyond looking for yesterday’s threats.
If it’s smart, it’s vulnerable
This phrase was a consistent theme for the researchers who discussed threats facing the Internet of Things — perhaps the defining feature of smart cities around the globe. Coinciding with an explosion in the number of connected devices, 2018 witnessed a 100% year-over-year increase in IoT attacks, and it seems criminals have been ramping up their efforts in 2019. Meanwhile, conventional cyber defenses, designed to protect standard IT from known threats, are often incompatible with these nontraditional machines.
More fundamentally, the race to produce even more IoT devices prevents experts from anticipating their weaknesses. Such was the case when two German hackers compromised high-end smart locks at a European hotel — whose name was not disclosed because the locks were still in use. Known as “mobile keys” due to their reliance on mobile phones rather than on access cards, the locks leveraged Bluetooth low energy (BLE), a technology that many IoT devices employ. The researchers explained how they easily intercepted the BLE traffic in order to develop their exploit, which could have been used for malicious ends to break into private rooms or even to shut down the hotel elevator.
A cautious host
Hosting a conference for hackers can be a nail-biting experience to say the least — one only exacerbated for local governments with highly bespoke smart infrastructure. Thus, among the entities that garnered the most attention at Black Hat was none other than the City of Las Vegas itself.
A town made famous by bold wagers and grand ambitions, Las Vegas is betting big that it knows what the city of tomorrow looks like. As riders glide down the Strip aboard the first completely autonomous shuttle ever deployed on a public roadway, they can rest assured that a network of IoT sensors are helping officials anticipate gridlock at busy intersections, while AI-powered surveillance cameras monitor for litter on the sidewalks around them. In the near future, everything from The Venetian to Mandalay Bay may well be integrated into a single vast, municipal network — a digital labyrinth far too complex for traditional security tools to make sense of, much less defend.
“For all the benefit the IoT brings, it also brings with it that side of security,” Michael Sherwood, Las Vegas’ Director of IT and Innovation and a Darktrace customer, told Reuters. “These things are carrying people across the street, they’re controlling our traffic signals, [so] a lot could go wrong if someone could get into that system.”
Breaching the ballot
In addition to threats imperiling physical infrastructure, the cities of tomorrow cannot disregard trust-eroding attacks against a more abstract target: the democratic process. The subject of election hacking in particular received top billing at the conference, in light of the blind spots posed by not only voting machines themselves, but also voter registration databases and the distribution process. Many experts feared that all three areas remained susceptible to compromise ahead of the 2020 US elections.
These revelations are not without precedent. Until 2015, Virginia used the infamous WINVote machine, which lacked any security controls whatsoever. And although future digital voting technologies may have better safeguards, cyber-criminals have proven undeterred by even the most impressive perimeter defenses. With the conflict surrounding Russian interference in the last national election and worries that similar attacks on the American election systems will happen again, researchers emphasized the need to rethink our approach to election security altogether.
The takeaways from Black Hat all share a common theme: the legacy approach to cyber security is no longer keeping pace with an ever-evolving threat landscape. As a result, for smart cities like Las Vegas, the path forward looks little like the road already traveled. Innovative, AI-powered security platforms have become an imperative to catch novel threats against novel devices — before the black hats’ work is done.
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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.
Bytesize Security: Insider Threats in Google Workspace
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.
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)
Get the latest insights on emerging cyber threats
Attackers are adapting, are you ready? This report explores the latest trends shaping the cybersecurity landscape and what defenders need to know in 2025.
Identity-based attacks: How attackers are bypassing traditional defenses
Zero-day exploitation: The rise of previously unknown vulnerabilities
AI-driven threats: How adversaries are leveraging AI to outmaneuver security controls
RansomHub Ransomware: investigación de Darktrace sobre la herramienta más nueva en ShadowSyndicate's Arsenal
What is ShadowSyndicate?
ShadowSyndicate, also known as Infra Storm, is a threat actor reportedly active since July 2022, working with various ransomware groups and affiliates of ransomware programs, such as Quantum, Nokoyawa, and ALPHV. This threat actor employs tools like Cobalt Strike, Sliver, IcedID, and Matanbuchus malware in its attacks. ShadowSyndicate utilizes the same SSH fingerprint (1ca4cbac895fc3bd12417b77fc6ed31d) on many of their servers—85 as of September 2023. At least 52 of these servers have been linked to the Cobalt Strike command and control (C2) framework [1].
What is RansomHub?
First observed following the FBI's takedown of ALPHV/BlackCat in December 2023, RansomHub quickly gained notoriety as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operator. RansomHub capitalized on the law enforcement’s disruption of the LockBit group’s operations in February 2024 to market themselves to potential affiliates who had previously relied on LockBit’s encryptors. RansomHub's success can be largely attributed to their aggressive recruitment on underground forums, leading to the absorption of ex-ALPHV and ex-LockBit affiliates. They were one of the most active ransomware operators in 2024, with approximately 500 victims reported since February, according to their Dedicated Leak Site (DLS) [2].
ShadowSyndicate and RansomHub
External researchers have reported that ShadowSyndicate had as many as seven different ransomware families in their arsenal between July 2022, and September 2023. Now, ShadowSyndicate appears to have added RansomHub’s their formidable stockpile, becoming an affiliate of the RaaS provider [1].
Darktrace’s analysis of ShadowSyndicate across its customer base indicates that the group has been leveraging RansomHub ransomware in multiple attacks in September and October 2024. ShadowSyndicate likely shifted to using RansomHub due to the lucrative rates offered by this RaaS provider, with affiliates receiving up to 90% of the ransom—significantly higher than the general market rate of 70-80% [3].
In many instances where encryption was observed, ransom notes with the naming pattern “README_[a-zA-Z0-9]{6}.txt” were written to affected devices. The content of these ransom notes threatened to release stolen confidential data via RansomHub’s DLS unless a ransom was paid. During these attacks, data exfiltration activity to external endpoints using the SSH protocol was observed. The external endpoints to which the data was transferred were found to coincide with servers previously associated with ShadowSyndicate activity.
Darktrace’s coverage of ShadowSyndicate and RansomHub
Darktrace’s Threat Research team identified high-confidence indicators of compromise (IoCs) linked to the ShadowSyndicate group deploying RansomHub. The investigation revealed four separate incidents impacting Darktrace customers across various sectors, including education, manufacturing, and social services. In the investigated cases, multiple stages of the kill chain were observed, starting with initial internal reconnaissance and leading to eventual file encryption and data exfiltration.
Attack Overview
Internal Reconnaissance
The first observed stage of ShadowSyndicate attacks involved devices making multiple internal connection attempts to other internal devices over key ports, suggesting network scanning and enumeration activity. In this initial phase of the attack, the threat actor gathers critical details and information by scanning the network for open ports that might be potentially exploitable. In cases observed by Darktrace affected devices were typically seen attempting to connect to other internal locations over TCP ports including 22, 445 and 3389.
C2 Communication and Data Exfiltration
In most of the RansomHub cases investigated by Darktrace, unusual connections to endpoints associated with Splashtop, a remote desktop access software, were observed briefly before outbound SSH connections were identified.
Following this, Darktrace detected outbound SSH connections to the external IP address 46.161.27[.]151 using WinSCP, an open-source SSH client for Windows used for secure file transfer. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) identified this IP address as malicious and associated it with ShadowSyndicate’s C2 infrastructure [4]. During connections to this IP, multiple gigabytes of data were exfiltrated from customer networks via SSH.
Data exfiltration attempts were consistent across investigated cases; however, the method of egress varied from one attack to another, as one would expect with a RaaS strain being employed by different affiliates. In addition to transfers to ShadowSyndicate’s infrastructure, threat actors were also observed transferring data to the cloud storage and file transfer service, MEGA, via HTTP connections using the ‘rclone’ user agent – a command-line program used to manage files on cloud storage. In another case, data exfiltration activity occurred over port 443, utilizing SSL connections.
Lateral Movement
In investigated incidents, lateral movement activity began shortly after C2 communications were established. In one case, Darktrace identified the unusual use of a new administrative credential which was quickly followed up with multiple suspicious executable file writes to other internal devices on the network.
The filenames for this executable followed the regex naming convention “[a-zA-Z]{6}.exe”, with two observed examples being “bWqQUx.exe” and “sdtMfs.exe”.
Figure 1: Cyber AI Analyst Investigation Process for the SMB Writes of Suspicious Files to Multiple Devices' incident.
Additionally, script files such as “Defeat-Defender2.bat”, “Share.bat”, and “def.bat” were also seen written over SMB, suggesting that threat actors were trying to evade network defenses and detection by antivirus software like Microsoft Defender.
File Encryption
Among the three cases where file encryption activity was observed, file names were changed by adding an extension following the regex format “.[a-zA-Z0-9]{6}”. Ransom notes with a similar naming convention, “README_[a-zA-Z0-9]{6}.txt”, were written to each share. While the content of the ransom notes differed slightly in each case, most contained similar text. Clear indicators in the body of the ransom notes pointed to the use of RansomHub ransomware in these attacks. As is increasingly the case, threat actors employed double extortion tactics, threatening to leak confidential data if the ransom was not paid. Like most ransomware, RansomHub included TOR site links for communication between its "customer service team" and the target.
Figure 2: The graph shows the behavior of a device with encryption activity, using the “SMB Sustained Mimetype Conversion” and “Unusual Activity Events” metrics over three weeks.
Since Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability was not enabled during the compromise, the ransomware attack succeeded in its objective. However, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst provided comprehensive coverage of the kill chain, enabling the customer to quickly identify affected devices and initiate remediation.
Figure 3: Cyber AI Analyst panel showing the critical incidents of the affected device from one of the cases investigated.
In lieu of Autonomous Response being active on the networks, Darktrace was able to suggest a variety of manual response actions intended to contain the compromise and prevent further malicious activity. Had Autonomous Response been enabled at the time of the attack, these actions would have been quickly applied without any human interaction, potentially halting the ransomware attack earlier in the kill chain.
Figure 4: A list of suggested Autonomous Response actions on the affected devices."
Conclusion
The Darktrace Threat Research team has noted a surge in attacks by the ShadowSyndicate group using RansomHub’s RaaS of late. RaaS has become increasingly popular across the threat landscape due to its ease of access to malware and script execution. As more individual threat actors adopt RaaS, security teams are struggling to defend against the increasing number of opportunistic attacks.
For customers subscribed to Darktrace’s Security Operations Center (SOC) services, the Analyst team promptly investigated detections of the aforementioned unusual and anomalous activities in the initial infection phases. Multiple alerts were raised via Darktrace’s Managed Threat Detection to warn customers of active ransomware incidents. By emphasizing anomaly-based detection and response, Darktrace can effectively identify devices affected by ransomware and take action against emerging activity, minimizing disruption and impact on customer networks.
Credit to Kwa Qing Hong (Senior Cyber Analyst and Deputy Analyst Team Lead, Singapore) and Signe Zahark (Principal Cyber Analyst, Japan)
Get the latest insights on emerging cyber threats
Attackers are adapting, are you ready? This report explores the latest trends shaping the cybersecurity landscape and what defenders need to know in 2025.
Identity-based attacks: How attackers are bypassing traditional defenses
Zero-day exploitation: The rise of previously unknown vulnerabilities
AI-driven threats: How adversaries are leveraging AI to outmaneuver security controls