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January 26, 2024

Post-Exploitation Activities of Ivanti CS/PS Appliances

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26
Jan 2024
Darktrace’s teams have observed a surge in malicious activities targeting Ivanti Connect Secure (CS) and Ivanti Policy Secure (PS) appliances. Learn more!

What are 'Unknown Unknowns'?

When critical vulnerabilities in Internet-facing assets are not yet publicly disclosed, they can provide unfettered access to organizations’ networks. Threat actors’ exploitation of these vulnerabilities are prime examples of “unknown unknowns” – behaviors which security teams are not even aware that they are not aware of.  

Therefore, it is not surprising that zero-day vulnerabilities in Internet-facing assets are so attractive to state-linked actors and cybercriminals. These criminals will abuse the access these vulnerabilities afford them to progress towards harmful or disruptive objectives. This trend in threat actor activity was particularly salient in January 2024, following the disclosure of two critical vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure (CS) and Ivanti Policy Secure (PS) appliances. The widespread exploitation of these vulnerabilities was mirrored across Darktrace’s customer base in mid-January 2024, with Darktrace’s Security Operations Center (SOC) and Threat Research teams observing a surge in malicious activities targeting customers’ CS/PS appliances.

Vulnerabilities in Ivanti CS/PS

On January 10, 2024, Ivanti published a Security Advisory [1] and a Knowledge Base article [2] relating to the following two vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure (CS) and Ivanti Policy Secure (PS):

  • CVE-2023-46805 (CVSS: 8.2; Type: Authentication bypass vulnerability)
  • CVE-2024-21887 (CVSS: 9.1; Type: Command injection vulnerability)

Conjoined exploitation of these vulnerabilities allows for unauthenticated, remote code execution (RCE) on vulnerable Ivanti systems. Volexity [3] and Mandiant [4] reported clusters of CS/PS compromises, tracked as UTA0178 and UNC5221 respectively. UTA0178 and UNC5221 compromises involve exploitation of CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 to deliver web shells and JavaScript credential harvesters to targeted CS/PS appliances. Both Volexity and Mandiant linked these compromises to a likely espionage-motivated, state-linked actor. GreyNoise [5] and Volexity [6] also reported likely cybercriminal activities targeting CS/PS appliances to deliver cryptominers.

The scale of this recent Ivanti CS/PS exploitation is illustrated by research findings recently shared by Censys [7]. According to these findings, as of January 22, around 1.5% of 26,000 Internet-exposed Ivanti CS appliances have been compromised, with the majority of compromised hosts falling within the United States. As cybercriminal interest in these Ivanti CS/PS vulnerabilities continues to grow, it is likely that so too will the number of attacks targeting them.

Observed Malicious Activities

Since January 15, 2024, Darktrace’s SOC and Threat Research team have observed a significant volume of malicious activities targeting customers’ Ivanti CS/PS appliances. Amongst the string of activities that were observed, the following threads were identified as salient:

  • Exploit validation activity
  • Exfiltration of system information
  • Delivery of C2 implant from AWS
  • Delivery of JavaScript credential stealer
  • SimpleHelp usage
  • Encrypted C2 on port 53
  • Delivery of cryptominer

Exploit Validation Activity

Malicious actors were observed using the out-of-band application security testing (OAST) services, Interactsh and Burp Collaborator, to validate exploits for CS/PS vulnerabilities. Malicious use of OAST services for exploit validation is common and has been seen in the early stages of previous campaigns targeting Ivanti systems [8]. In this case, the Interact[.]sh exploit tests were evidenced by CS/PS appliances making GET requests with a cURL User-Agent header to subdomains of 'oast[.]live', 'oast[.]site', 'oast[.]fun', 'oast[.]me', 'oast[.]online' and 'oast[.]pro'.  Burp Collaborator exploit tests were evidenced by CS/PS appliances making GET requests with a cURL User-Agent header to subdomains of ‘collab.urmcyber[.]xyz’ and ‘dnslog[.]store’.

Figure 1: Event Log showing a CS/PS appliance contacting an 'oast[.]pro' endpoint.
Figure 2: Event Log showing a CS/PS appliance contacting a 'collab.urmcyber[.]xyz' endpoint.
Figure 3: Packet capture (PCAP) of an Interactsh GET request.
Figure 4: PCAP of a Burp Collaborator GET request.

Exfiltration of System Information

The majority of compromised CS/PS appliances identified by Darktrace were seen using cURL to transfer hundreds of MBs of data to the external endpoint, 139.180.194[.]132. This activity appeared to be related to a threat actor attempting to exfiltrate system-related information from CS/PS appliances. These data transfers were carried out via HTTP on ports 443 and 80, with the Target URIs ‘/hello’ and ‘/helloq’ being seen in the relevant HTTP POST requests. The files sent over these data transfers were ‘.dat’ and ‘.sys’ files with what seems to be the public IP address of the targeted appliance appearing in each file’s name.

Figure 5: Event Log shows a CS/PS appliance making a POST request to 139.180.194[.]132 whilst simultaneously receiving connections from suspicious external endpoints.
Figure 6: PCAP of a POST request to 139.180.194[.]132.

Delivery of Command-and-Control (C2) implant from Amazon Web Services (AWS)

In many of the compromises observed by Darktrace, the malicious actor in question was observed delivering likely Rust-based ELF payloads to the CS/PS appliance from the AWS endpoints, archivevalley-media.s3.amazonaws[.]com, abode-dashboard-media.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws[.]com, shapefiles.fews.net.s3.amazonaws[.]com, and blooming.s3.amazonaws[.]com. In one particular case, these downloads were immediately followed by the delivery of an 18 MB payload (likely a C2 implant) from the AWS endpoint, be-at-home.s3.ap-northeast-2.amazonaws[.]com, to the CS/PS appliance. Post-delivery, the implant seems to have initiated SSL beaconing connections to the external host, music.farstream[.]org. Around this time, Darktrace also observed the actor initiating port scanning and SMB enumeration activities from the CS/PS appliance, likely in preparation for moving laterally through the network.

Figure 7: Advanced Search logs showing a CS/PS appliance beaconing to music.farstream[.]org after downloading several payloads from AWS.

Delivery of JavaScript credential stealer

In a small number of observed cases, Darktrace observed malicious actors delivering what appeared to be a JavaScript credential harvester to targeted CS/PS appliances. The relevant JavaScript code contains instructions to send login credentials to likely compromised websites. In one case, the website, www.miltonhouse[.]nl, appeared in the code snippet, and in another, the website, cpanel.netbar[.]org, was observed. Following the delivery of this JavaScript code, HTTPS connections were observed to these websites.  This likely credential harvester appears to strongly resemble the credential stealer observed by Mandiant (dubbed ‘WARPWIRE’) in UNC5221 compromises and the credential stealer observed by Veloxity in UTA0178 compromises.

Figure 8: PCAP of ‘/3.js’ GET request for JavaScript credential harvester.
Figure 9: Snippet of response to '/3.js’ GET request.
Figure 10: PCAP of ‘/auth.js’ GET request for JavaScript credential harvester.
Figure 11: Snippet of response to '/auth.js’ GET request.
Figure 12: Advanced Search logs showing VPN-connected devices sending data to www.miltonhouse[.]nl after the Ivanti CS appliance received the JavaScript code.

The usage of this JavaScript credential harvester did not occur in isolation, but rather appears to have occurred as part of a chain of activity involving several further steps. The delivery of the ‘www.miltonhouse[.]nl’ JavaScript stealer seems to have occurred as a step in the following attack chain:  

1. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads a 8.38 MB ELF file over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/revsocks_linux_amd64’) from 188.116.20[.]38

2. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 8444 to 185.243.112[.]245, with several MBs of data being exchanged

3. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads a Perl script over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/login.txt’) from 188.116.20[.]38

4. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads a 1.53 ELF MB file over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/aparche2’) from 91.92.240[.]113

5. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads a 4.5 MB ELF file over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/agent’) from 91.92.240[.]113

6. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 11601 to 45.9.149[.]215, with several MBs of data being exchanged

7. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads Javascript credential harvester over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/auth.js’) from 91.92.240[.]113

8. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads a Perl script over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/login.cgi’) from 91.92.240[.]113

9. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 11601 to 91.92.240[.]71, with several MBs of data being exchanged

10. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 11601 to 45.9.149[.]215, with several MBs of data being exchanged

11. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 8080 to 91.92.240[.]113, with several MBs of data being exchanged

12. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 11601 to 45.9.149[.]112, with several MBs of data being exchanged  

These long SSL connections likely represent a malicious actor creating reverse shells from the targeted CS/PS appliance to their C2 infrastructure. Whilst it is not certain that these behaviors are part of the same attack chain, the similarities between them (such as the Target URIs, the JA3 client fingerprint and the use of port 11601) seem to suggest a link.  

Figure 13: Advanced Search logs showing a chain of malicious behaviours from a CS/PS appliance.
Figure 14: Advanced Search data showing the JA3 client fingerprint ‘19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e’ exclusively appearing in the aforementioned, long SSL connections from the targeted CS/PS appliance.
Figure 15: PCAP of ‘/login.txt’ GET request for a Perl script.
Figure 16: PCAP of ‘/login.cgi’ GET request for a Pearl script.

SimpleHelp Usage

After gaining a foothold on vulnerable CS/PS appliances, certain actors attempted to deepen their foothold within targeted networks. In several cases, actors were seen using valid account credentials to pivot over RDP from the vulnerable CS/PS appliance to other internal systems. Over these RDP connections, the actors appear to have installed the remote support tool, SimpleHelp, onto targeted internal systems, as evidenced by these systems’ subsequent HTTP requests. In one of the observed cases, a lateral movement target downloaded a 7.33 MB executable file over HTTP (Target URI: /ta.dat; User-Agent header: Microsoft BITS/7.8) from 45.9.149[.]215 just before showing signs of SimpleHelp usage. The apparent involvement of 45.9.149[.]215 in these SimpleHelp threads may indicate a connection between them and the credential harvesting thread outlined above.

Figure 17: Advanced Search logs showing an internal system making SimpleHelp-indicating HTTP requests immediately after receiving large volumes of data over RDP from an CS/PS appliance.
Figure 18: PCAP of a SimpleHelp-related GET request.

Encrypted C2 over port 53

In a handful of the recently observed CS/PS compromises, Darktrace identified malicious actors dropping a 16 MB payload which appears to use SSL-based C2 communication on port 53. C2 communication on port 53 is a commonly used attack method, with various malicious payloads, including Cobalt Strike DNS, being known to tunnel C2 communications via DNS requests on port 53. Encrypted C2 communication on port 53, however, is less common. In the cases observed by Darktrace, payloads were downloaded from 103.13.28[.]40 and subsequently reached back out to 103.13.28[.]40 over SSL on port 53.

Figure 19: PCAP of a ‘/linb64.png’ GET request.
Figure 20: Advanced Search logs showing a CS/PS appliance making SSL conns over port 53 to 103.13.28[.]40 immediately after downloading a 16 MB payload from 103.13.28[.]40.

Delivery of cryptominer

As is often the case, financially motivated actors also appeared to have sought to exploit the Ivanti appliances, with actors observed exploiting CS/PS appliances to deliver cryptomining malware. In one case, Darktrace observed an actor installing a Monero cryptominer onto a vulnerable CS/PS appliance, with the miner being downloaded via HTTP on port 8089 from 192.252.183[.]116.

Figure 21: PCAP of GET request for a Bash script which appeared to kill existing cryptominers.
Figure 22: PCAP of a GET request for a JSON config file – returned config file contains mining details such as ‘auto.3pool[.]org:19999’.
Figure 23: PCAP of a GET request for an ELF payload

Potential Pre-Ransomware Post-Compromise Activity

In one observed case, a compromise of a customer’s CS appliance was followed by an attacker using valid account credentials to connect to the customer’s CS VPN subnet. The attacker used these credentials to pivot to other parts of the customer’s network, with tools and services such as PsExec, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service, and Service Control being abused to facilitate the lateral movement. Other Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools, such as AnyDesk and ConnectWise Control (previously known as ScreenConnect), along with certain reconnaissance tools such as Netscan, Nmap, and PDQ, also appear to have been used. The attacker subsequently exfiltrated data (likely via Rclone) to the file storage service, put[.]io, potentially in preparation for a double extortion ransomware attack. However, at the time of writing, it was not clear what the relation was between this activity and the CS compromise which preceded it.

Darktrace Coverage

Darktrace has observed malicious actors carrying out a variety of post-exploitation activities on Internet-exposed CS/PS appliances, ranging from data exfiltration to the delivery of C2 implants and crypto-miners. These activities inevitably resulted in CS/PS appliances displaying patterns of network traffic greatly deviating from their typical “patterns of life”.

Darktraceidentified these deviations and generated a variety of model breaches (i.e, alerts) highlighting the suspicious activity. Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst™ autonomously investigated the ongoing compromises and connected the individual model breaches, viewing them as related incidents rather than isolated events. When active and configured in autonomous response mode, Darktracntainted attackers’ operations by autonomously blocking suspicious patterns of network traffic as soon as they were identified by Darktrace

The exploit validation activities carried out by malicious actors resulted in CS/PS servers making HTTP connections with cURL User-Agent headers to endpoints associated with OAST services such as Interactsh and Burp Collaborator. Darktrace recognized that this HTTP activity was suspicious for affected devices, causing the following models to breach:

  • Compromise / Possible Tunnelling to Bin Services
  • Device / Suspicious Domain
  • Anomalous Server Activity / New User Agent from Internet Facing System
  • Device / New User Agent
Figure 24: Event Log showing a CS/PS appliance breaching models due to its Interactsh HTTP requests.
Figure 25: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting a CS/PS appliance's Interactsh connections.

Malicious actors’ uploads of system information to 139.180.194[.]132 resulted in cURL POST requests being sent from the targeted CS/PS appliances. Darktrace DETECT judged these HTTP POST requests to be anomalous, resulting in combinations of the following model breaches:

  • Anomalous Connection / Posting HTTP to IP Without Hostname
  • Anomalous Server Activity / Outgoing from Server
  • Anomalous Server Activity / New User Agent from Internet Facing System
  • Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data Transfer
  • Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data to New Endpoint
  • Anomalous Connection / Data Sent to Rare Domain
Figure 26: Event Log showing the creation of a model breach due to a CS/PS appliance’s POST request to 139.180.194[.]132.
Figure 27: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting POST requests from a CS/PS appliance to 139.180.194[.]132.

The installation of AWS-hosted C2 implants onto vulnerable CS/PS appliances resulted in beaconing connections which Darktrace recognized as anomalous, leading to the following model breaches:

  • Compromise / Beacon to Young Endpoint
  • Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare
  • Compromise / High Volume of Connections with Beacon Score

When enabled in autonomous response mode, Darktrace's Autonomous Response was able to follow up these detections by blocking affected devices from connecting externally over port 80, 443, 445 or 8081, effectively shutting down the attacker’s beaconing activity.

Figure 28: Event Log showing the creation of a model breach and the triggering of an autonomous RESPOND action due to a CS/PS appliance's beaconing connections.

The use of encrypted C2 on port 53 by malicious actors resulted in CS/PS appliances making SSL connections over port 53. Darktrace judged this port to be uncommon for SSL traffic and consequently generated the following model breach:

  • Anomalous Connection / Application Protocol on Uncommon Port
Figure 29: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting a ‘/linb64.png’ GET request from a CS/PS appliance to 103.13.28[.]40.
Figure 30: Event Log showing the creation of a model breach due to CS/PS appliance’s external SSL connection on port 53.
Figure 31: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting a CS/PS appliance’s SSL connections over port 53 to 103.13.28[.]40.

Malicious actors’ attempts to run cryptominers on vulnerable CS/PS appliances resulted in downloads of Bash scripts and JSON files from external endpoints rarely visited by the CS/PS appliances themselves or by neighboring systems. Darktrace identified these deviations in device behavior and generated the following model breaches:

  • Anomalous File / Script from Rare External Location
  • Anomalous File / Internet Facing System File Download

Darktrace's Autonomous Response, when configured to respond autonomously, was subsequently able to carry out a number of actions to contain the attacker’s activity. This included blocking all outgoing traffic on offending devices and enforcing a “pattern of life” on devices ensuring they had to adhere to expected network behavior.

Figure 32: Event Log showing the creation of model breaches and the triggering of autonomous RESPOND actions in response to a CS/PS appliance’s cryptominer download.
Figure 33: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting a CS/PS appliance’s cryptominer download.

The use of RDP to move laterally and spread SimpleHelp to other systems resulted in CS/PS appliances using privileged credentials to initiate RDP sessions. These RDP sessions, and the subsequent traffic resulting from usage of SimpleHelp, were recognized by Darktrace as being highly out of character, prompting the following model breaches:

  • Anomalous Connection / Unusual Admin RDP Session
  • Device / New User Agent
  • Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname
  • Compromise / Suspicious HTTP Beacons to Dotted Quad
  • Anomalous File / Anomalous Octet Stream (No User Agent)
  • Anomalous Server Activity / Rare External from Server
Figure 34: Event Log showing the creation of a model breach due to a CS/PS appliance’s usage of an admin credential to RDP to another internal system.
Figure 35: Event Log showing the creation of model breaches due to SimpleHelp-HTTP requests from a device targeted for lateral movement.
Figure 36: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting the SimpleHelp-indicating HTTP requests made by an internal system.

Conclusion

The recent widespread exploitation of Ivanti CS/PS is a stark reminder of the threat posed by malicious actors armed with exploits for Internet-facing assets.

Based on the telemetry available to Darktrace, a wide range of malicious activities were carried out against CS/PS appliances, likely via exploitation of the recently disclosed CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 vulnerabilities.

These activities include the usage of OAST services for exploit validation, the exfiltration of system information to 139.180.194[.]132, the delivery of AWS-hosted C2 implants, the delivery of JavaScript credential stealers, the usage of SimpleHelp, the usage of SSL-based C2 on port 53, and the delivery of crypto-miners. These activities are far from exhaustive, and many more activities will undoubtedly be uncovered as the situation develops and our understanding grows.

While there were no patches available at the time of writing, Ivanti stated that they were expected to be released shortly, with the “first version targeted to be available to customers the week of 22 January 2023 and the final version targeted to be available the week of 19 February” [9].

Fortunately for vulnerable customers, in their absence of patches Darktrace was able to identify and alert for anomalous network activity that was carried out by malicious actors who had been able to successfully exploit the Ivanti CS and PS vulnerabilities. While the activity that followed these zero-day vulnerabilities may been able to have bypass traditional security tools reliant upon existing threat intelligence and indicators of compromise (IoCs), Darktrace’s anomaly-based approach allows it to identify such activity based on the subtle deviations in a devices behavior that typically emerge as threat actors begin to work towards their goals post-compromise.

In addition to Darktrace’s ability to identify this type of suspicious behavior, its autonomous response technology, Darktrace's Autonomous Response is able to provide immediate follow-up with targeted mitigative actions to shut down malicious activity on affected customer environments as soon as it is detected.

Credit to: Nahisha Nobregas, SOC Analyst, Emma Foulger, Principle Cyber Analyst, and the Darktrace Threat Research Team

Appendices

List of IoCs Possible IoCs:

-       curl/7.19.7 (i686-redhat-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.63.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2n zlib/1.2.3

-       curl/7.19.7 (i686-redhat-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.63.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2n zlib/1.2.7

Mid-high confidence IoCs:

-       http://139.180.194[.]132:443/hello

‍-       http://139.180.194[.]132:443/helloq

‍-       http://blooming.s3.amazonaws[.]com/Ea7fbW98CyM5O (SHA256 hash: 816754f6eaf72d2e9c69fe09dcbe50576f7a052a1a450c2a19f01f57a6e13c17)

-       http://abode-dashboard-media.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws[.]com/kaffMm40RNtkg (SHA256 hash: 47ff0ae9220a09bfad2a2fb1e2fa2c8ffe5e9cb0466646e2a940ac2e0cf55d04)

-       http://archivevalley-media.s3.amazonaws[.]com/bbU5Yn3yayTtV (SHA256 hash: c7ddd58dcb7d9e752157302d516de5492a70be30099c2f806cb15db49d466026)

-       http://shapefiles.fews.net.s3.amazonaws[.]com/g6cYGAxHt4JC1 (SHA256 hash: c26da19e17423ce4cb4c8c47ebc61d009e77fc1ac4e87ce548cf25b8e4f4dc28)

-       http://be-at-home.s3.ap-northeast-2.amazonaws[.]com/2ekjMjslSG9uI

‍-       music.farstream[.]org  • 104.21.86[.]153 / 172.67.221[.]78

-       http://197.243.22[.]27/3.js

‍-       http://91.92.240[.]113/auth.js

‍-       www.miltonhouse[.]nl • 88.240.53[.]22

-       cpanel.netbar[.]org • 146.19.212[.]12

-       http://188.116.20[.]38/revsocks_linux_amd64

‍-       185.243.112[.]245:8444

-        http://188.116.20[.]38/login.txt

‍-       http://91.92.240[.]113/aparche2 (SHA256 hash: 9d11c3cf10b20ff5b3e541147f9a965a4e66ed863803c54d93ba8a07c4aa7e50)

-       http://91.92.240[.]113/agent (SHA256 hash: 7967def86776f36ab6a663850120c5c70f397dd3834f11ba7a077205d37b117f)

-       45.9.149[.]215:11601

-       45.9.149[.]112:11601

-       http://91.92.240[.]113/login.cgi

-       91.92.240[.]71:11601

-       91.92.240[.]113:8080

-       http://45.9.149[.]215/ta.dat (SHA256 hash: 4bcf1333b3ad1252d067014c606fb3a5b6f675f85c59b69ca45669d45468e923)

-       91.92.241[.]18

-       94.156.64[.]252

-       http://144.172.76[.]76/lin86

‍-       144.172.122[.]14:443

-       http://185.243.115[.]58:37586/

‍-       http://103.13.28[.]40/linb64.png

-       103.13.28[.]40:53

-       159.89.82[.]235:8081

-       http://192.252.183[.]116:8089/u/123/100123/202401/d9a10f4568b649acae7bc2fe51fb5a98.sh

-       http://192.252.183[.]116:8089/u/123/100123/202401/sshd

-       http://192.252.183[.]116:8089/u/123/100123/202401/31a5f4ceae1e45e1a3cd30f5d7604d89.json

-       http://103.27.110[.]83/module/client_amd64

‍-       http://103.27.110[.]83/js/bootstrap.min.js?UUID=...

-       http://103.27.110[.]83/js/jquery.min.js

-       http://95.179.238[.]3/bak

‍-       http://91.92.244[.]59:8080/mbPHenSdr6Cf79XDAcKEVA

‍-       31.220.30[.]244

-       http://172.245.60[.]61:8443/SMUkbpX-0qNtLGsuCIuffAOLk9ZEBCG7bIcB2JT6GA/

-       http://172.245.60[.]61/ivanti

-       http://89.23.107[.]155:8080/l-5CzlHWjkp23gZiVLzvUg

-       http://185.156.72[.]51:8080/h7JpYIZZ1-rrk98v3YEy6w

-       http://185.156.72[.]51:8080/8uSQsOTwFyEAsXVwbAJ2mA

-       http://185.156.72[.]51:8080/vuln

-       185.156.72[.]51:4440

-       185.156.72[.]51:8080

-       185.156.72[.]51:4433

-       185.156.72[.]51:4446

-       185.156.72[.]51:4445

-       http://185.156.72[.]51/set.py

-       185.156.72[.]51:7777

-       45.9.151[.]107:7070

-       185.195.59[.]74:7070

-       185.195.59[.]74:20958

-       185.195.59[.]74:34436

-       185.195.59[.]74:37464

-       185.195.59[.]74:41468    

References

[1] https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/CVE-2023-46805-Authentication-Bypass-CVE-2024-21887-Command-Injection-for-Ivanti-Connect-Secure-and-Ivanti-Policy-Secure-Gateways?language=en_US

[2] https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/KB-CVE-2023-46805-Authentication-Bypass-CVE-2024-21887-Command-Injection-for-Ivanti-Connect-Secure-and-Ivanti-Policy-Secure-Gateways?language=en_US

[3] https://www.volexity.com/blog/2024/01/10/active-exploitation-of-two-zero-day-vulnerabilities-in-ivanti-connect-secure-vpn/

[4] https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/suspected-apt-targets-ivanti-zero-day

[5] https://www.greynoise.io/blog/ivanti-connect-secure-exploited-to-install-cryptominers

[6] https://www.volexity.com/blog/2024/01/18/ivanti-connect-secure-vpn-exploitation-new-observations/

[7] https://censys.com/the-mass-exploitation-of-ivanti-connect-secure/

[8] https://darktrace.com/blog/entry-via-sentry-analyzing-the-exploitation-of-a-critical-vulnerability-in-ivanti-sentry


[9] https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/CVE-2023-46805-Authentication-Bypass-CVE-2024-21887-Command-Injection-for-Ivanti-Connect-Secure-and-Ivanti-Policy-Secure-Gateways?language=en_US  

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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Cloud

Cloud security: addressing common CISO challenges with advanced solutions

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Cloud adoption is a cornerstone of modern business with its unmatched potential for scalability, cost efficiency, flexibility, and net-zero targets around sustainability. However, as organizations migrate more workloads, applications, and sensitive data to the cloud it introduces more complex challenges for CISO’s. Let’s dive into the most pressing issues keeping them up at night—and how Darktrace / CLOUD provides a solution for each.

1. Misconfigurations: The Silent Saboteur

Misconfigurations remain the leading cause of cloud-based data breaches. In 2023 alone over 80%  of data breaches involved data stored in the cloud.1  Think open storage buckets or overly permissive permissions; seemingly minor errors that are easily missed and can snowball into major disasters. The fallout of breaches can be costly—both financially and reputationally.

How Darktrace / CLOUD Helps:

Darktrace / CLOUD continuously monitors your cloud asset configurations, learning your environment and using these insights to flag potential misconfigurations. New scans are triggered when changes take place, then grouped and prioritised intelligently, giving you an evolving and prioritised view of vulnerabilities, best practice and mitigation strategies.

2. Hybrid Environments: The Migration Maze

Many organizations are migrating to the cloud, but hybrid setups (where workloads span both on-premises and cloud environments) create unique challenges and visibility gaps which significantly increase complexity. More traditional and most cloud native security tooling struggles to provide adequate monitoring for these setups.

How Darktrace / CLOUD Helps:

Provides the ability to monitor runtime activity for both on-premises and cloud workloads within the same user interface. By leveraging the right AI solution across this diverse data set, we understand the behaviour of your on-premises workloads and how they interact with cloud systems, spotting unusual connectivity or data flow activity during and after the migration process.

This unified visibility enables proactive detection of anomalies, ensures seamless monitoring across hybrid environments, and provides actionable insights to mitigate risks during and after the migration process.

3. Securing Productivity Suites: The Last Mile

Cloud productivity suites like Microsoft 365 (M365) are essential for modern businesses and are often the first step for an organization on a journey to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS) use cases. They also represent a prime target for attackers. Consider a scenario where an attacker gains access to an M365 account, and proceeds to; access sensitive emails, downloading files from SharePoint, and impersonating the user to send phishing emails to internal employees and external partners. Without a system to detect these behaviours, the attack may go unnoticed until significant damage is done.

How Darktrace helps:

Darktrace’s Active AI platform integrates with M365 and establishes an understanding of normal business activity, enabling the detection of abnormalities across its suite including Email, SharePoint and Teams. By identifying subtle deviations in behaviour, such as:

   •    Unusual file accesses

   •    Anomalous login attempts from unexpected locations or devices.

   •    Suspicious email forwarding rules created by compromised accounts.

Darktrace’s Autonomous Response can act precisely to block malicious actions, by disabling compromised accounts and containing threats before they escalate. Precise actions also ensure that critical business operations are maintained even when a response is triggered.  

4. Agent Fatigue: The Visibility Struggle

To secure cloud environments, visibility is critical. If you don’t know what’s there, how can you secure it? Many solutions require agents to be deployed on every server, workload, and endpoint. But managing and deploying agents across sprawling hybrid environments can be both complex and time-consuming when following change controls, and especially as cloud resources scale dynamically.

How Darktrace / CLOUD Helps:

Darktrace reduces or eliminates the need for widespread agent deployment. Its agentless by default, integrating directly with cloud environments and providing instant visibility without the operational headache. Darktrace ensures coverage with minimal friction. By intelligently graphing the relationships between assets and logically grouping your deployed Cloud resources, you are equipped with real-time visibility to quickly understand and protect your environment.

So why Darktrace / CLOUD?

Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI redefines cloud security by adapting to your unique environment, detecting threats as they emerge, and responding in real-time. From spotting misconfigurations to protecting productivity suites and securing hybrid environments. Darktrace / CLOUD simplifies cloud security challenges without adding operational burdens.

From Chaos to Clarity

Cloud security doesn’t have to be a game of endless whack-a-mole. With Darktrace / CLOUD, CISOs can achieve the visibility, control, and proactive protection they need to navigate today’s complex cloud ecosystems confidently.

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[1] https://hbr.org/2024/02/why-data-breaches-spiked-in-2023

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About the author
Adam Stevens
Director of Product, Cloud Security

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November 28, 2024

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Thought Leadership

Preparing for 2025: Darktrace's top 10 AI and cybersecurity predictions

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Each year, Darktrace's AI and cybersecurity experts reflect on the events of the past 12 months and predict the trends we expect to shape the cybersecurity landscape in the year ahead. In 2024, we predicted that the global elections, fast-moving AI innovations, and increasingly cloud-based IT environments would be key factors shaping the cyber threat landscape.

Looking ahead to 2025, we expect the total addressable market of cybercrime to expand as attackers add more tactics to their toolkits. Threat actors will continue to take advantage of the volatile geopolitical environment and cybersecurity challenges will increasingly move to new frontiers like space. When it comes to AI, we anticipate the innovation in AI agents in 2024 to pave the way for the rise of multi-agent systems in 2025, creating new challenges and opportunities for cybersecurity professionals and attackers alike.

Here are ten trends to watch for in 2025:

The overall Total Addressable Market (TAM) of cybercrime gets bigger

Cybercrime is a global business, and an increasingly lucrative one, scaling through the adoption of AI and cybercrime-as-a-service. Annual revenue from cybercrime is already estimated to be over $8 trillion, which we’ve found is almost 5x greater than the revenue of the Magnificent Seven stocks. There are a few key factors driving this growth.

The ongoing growth of devices and systems means that existing malware families will continue to be successful. As of October 2024, it’s estimated that more than 5.52 billion people (~67%) have access to the internet and sources estimate 18.8 billion connected devices will be online by the end of 2024. The increasing adoption of AI is poised to drive even more interconnected systems as well as new data centers and infrastructure globally.

At the same time, more sophisticated capabilities are available for low-level attackers – we’ve already seen the trickle-down economic benefits of living off the land, edge infrastructure exploitation, and identity-focused exploitation. The availability of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) and Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) make more advanced tactics the norm. The subscription income that these groups can generate enables more adversarial innovation, so attacks are getting faster and more effective with even bigger financial ramifications.

While there has also been an increasing trend in the last year of improved cross-border law enforcement, the efficacy of these efforts remains to be seen as cybercriminal gangs are also getting more resilient and professionalized. They are building better back-up systems and infrastructure as well as more multi-national networks and supply chains.

Security teams need to prepare for the rise of AI agents and multi-agent systems

Throughout 2024, we’ve seen major announcements about advancements in AI agents from the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft, Salesforce, and more. In 2025, we’ll see increasing innovation in and adoption of AI agents as well as the emergence of multi-agent systems (or “agent swarms”), where groups of autonomous agents work together to tackle complex tasks.

The rise of AI agents and multi-agent systems will introduce new challenges in cybersecurity, including new attack vectors and vulnerabilities. Security teams need to think about how to protect these systems to prevent data poisoning, prompt injection, or social engineering attacks.

One benefit of multi-agent systems is that agents can autonomously communicate, collaborate, and interact. However without clear and distinct boundaries and explicit permissions, this can also pose a major data privacy risk and avenue for manipulation. These issues cannot be addressed by traditional application testing alone. We must ensure these systems are secure by design, where robust protective mechanisms and data guardrails are built into the foundations.

Threat actors will be the earliest adopters of AI agents and multi-agent systems

We’ve already seen how quickly threat actors have been able to adopt generative AI for tasks like email phishing and reconnaissance. The next frontier for threat actors will be AI agents and multi-agent systems that are specialized in autonomous tasks like surveillance, initial access brokering, privilege escalation, vulnerability exploitation, data summarization for smart exfiltration, and more. Because they have no concern for safe, secure, accurate, and responsible use, adversaries will adopt these systems faster than cyber defenders.

We could also start to see use cases emerge for multi-agent systems in cyber defense – with potential for early use cases in incident response, application testing, and vulnerability discovery. On the whole, security teams will be slower to adopt these systems than adversaries because of the need to put in place proper security guardrails and build trust over time.

There is heightened supply chain risk for Large Language Models (LLMs)

Training LLMs requires a lot of data, and many experts have warned that world is running out of quality data for that training. As a result, there will be an increasing reliance on synthetic data, which can introduce new issues of accuracy and efficacy. Moreover, data supply chain risks will be an Achilles heel for organizations, with the potential interjection of vulnerabilities through the data and machine learning providers that they rely on. Poisoning one data set could have huge trickle-down impacts across many different systems. Data security will be paramount in 2025.

The race to identify software vulnerabilities intensifies

The time it takes for threat actors to exploit newly published CVEs is getting shorter, giving defenders an even smaller window to apply patches and remediations. A 2024 report from Cloudflare found that threat actors quickly weaponized proof of concept exploits in attacks as quickly as 22 minutes after the exploits were made public.

At the same time, 2024 also saw the first reports from researchers across academia and the tech industry using AI for vulnerability discovery in real-world code. With threat actors getting faster at exploiting vulnerabilities, defenders will need to use AI to identify vulnerabilities in their software stack and to help identify and prioritize remediations and patches.

Insider threat risks will force organizations to evolve zero trust strategies

In 2025, an increasingly volatile geopolitical situation and the intensity of the AI race will make insider threats an even bigger risk for businesses, forcing organizations to expand zero-trust strategies. The traditional zero-trust model provides protection from external threats to an organization’s network by requiring continuous verification of the devices and users attempting to access critical business systems, services, and information from multiple sources. However, as we have seen in the more recent Jack Teixeira case, malicious insiders can still do significant damage to an organization within their approved and authenticated boundary.

To circumvent the remaining security gaps in a zero-trust architecture and mitigate increasing risk of insider threats, organizations will need to integrate a behavioral understanding dimension to their zero-trust approaches. The zero-trust best practice of “never trust, always verify” needs to evolve to become “never trust, always verify, and continuously monitor.”

Identity remains an expensive problem for businesses

2024 saw some of the biggest and costliest attacks – all because the attacker had access to compromised credentials. Essentially, they had the key to the front door. Businesses still struggle with identity and access management (IAM), and it’s getting more complex now that we’re in the middle of a massive Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) migration driven by increasing rates of AI and cloud use across businesses.

This challenge is going to be exacerbated in 2025 by a few global and business factors. First, there is an increasing push for digital identities, such as the rollout of the EU Digital Identity Framework that is underway, which could introduce additional attack vectors. As they scale, businesses are turning more and more to centralized identity and access solutions with decentralized infrastructure and relying on SaaS and application-native security.

Increasing vulnerabilities at the edge

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations had to stand-up remote access solutions quickly – in a matter of days or weeks – without the high level of due diligence that they require to be fully secured. In 2025, we expect to see continued fall-out as these quickly spun-up solutions start to present genuine vulnerability to businesses. We’ve already seen this start to play out in 2024 with the mass-exploitation of internet-edge devices like firewalls and VPN gateway products.

By July 2024, Darktrace’s threat research team observed that the most widely exploited edge infrastructure devices were those related to Ivanti Connect Secure, JetBrains TeamCity, FortiClient Enterprise Management Server, and Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS. Across the industry, we’ve already seen many zero days and vulnerabilities exploiting these internet-connected devices, which provide inroads into the network and store/cache credentials and passwords of other users that are highly valuable for threat actors.

Hacking Operational Technology (OT) gets easier

Hacking OT is notoriously complex – causing damage requires an intimate knowledge of the specific systems being targeted and historically was the reserve of nation states. But as OT has become more reliant and integrated with IT systems, attackers have stumbled on ways to cause disruption without having to rely on the sophisticated attack-craft normally associated with nation-state groups. That’s why some of the most disruptive attacks of the last year have come from hacktivist and financially-motivated criminal gangs – such as the hijacking of internet-exposed Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) by anti-Israel hacking groups and ransomware attacks resulting in the cancellation of hospital operations.  

In 2025, we expect to see an increase in cyber-physical disruption caused by threat groups motivated by political ideology or financial gain, bringing the OT threat landscape closer in complexity and scale to that of the IT landscape. The sectors most at risk are those with a strong reliance on IoT sensors, including healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing sectors.

Securing space infrastructure and systems becomes a critical imperative

The global space industry is growing at an incredibly fast pace, and 2025 is on track to be another record-breaking year for spaceflight with major missions and test flights planned by NASA, ESA, CNSA as well as the expected launch of the first commercial space station from Vast and programs from Blue Origin, Amazon and more. Research from Analysis Mason suggests that 38,000 additional satellites will be built and launched by 2033 and the global space industry revenue will reach $1.7 trillion by 2032. Space has also been identified as a focus area for the incoming US administration.

In 2025, we expect to see new levels of tension emerge as private and public infrastructure increasingly intersect in space, shining a light on the lack of agreed upon cyber norms and the increasing challenge of protecting complex and remote space systems against modern cyber threats.  Historically focused on securing earth-bound networks and environments, the space industry will face challenges as post-orbit threats rise, with satellites moving up the target list.

The EU’s NIS2 Directive now recognizes the space sector as an essential entity that is subject to its most strict cybersecurity requirements. Will other jurisdictions follow suit? We expect global debates about cyber vulnerabilities in space to come to the forefront as we become more reliant on space-based technology.

Preparing for the future

Whatever 2025 brings, Darktrace is committed to providing robust cybersecurity leadership and solutions to enterprises around the world. Our team of subject matter experts will continue to monitor emerging threat trends, advising both our customers and our product development teams.

And for day-to-day security, our multi-layered AI cybersecurity platform can protect against all types of threats, whether they are known, unknown, entirely novel, or powered by AI. It accomplishes this by learning what is normal for your unique organization, therefore identifying unusual and suspicious behavior at machine speed, regardless of existing rules and signatures. In this way, organizations with Darktrace can be ready for any developments in the cybersecurity threat landscape that the new year may bring.

Discover more about Darktrace's predictions on the AI and cybersecurity landscape for 2025 by joining the upcoming webinar on December 12, 2024 at 10:00am EST/3:00pm GMT. Register here.

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