September 23, 2025

ShadowV2: An emerging DDoS for hire botnet

Darktrace exposed a cybercrime-as-a-service campaign using Python and Go-based malware, Docker containerization, and a full operator UI. With DDoS-as-a-service features, modular APIs, and advanced evasion, this platform highlights the need for defenders to monitor cloud workloads, container orchestration, and API activity to counter evolving threats.

Written by

Nate Bill

Threat Researcher

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

Nate Bill

Threat Researcher

Sep 2025

Introduction: ShadowV2 DDoS

Darktrace's latest investigation uncovered a novel campaign that blends traditional malware with modern devops technology.

At the center of this campaign is a Python-based command-and-control (C2) framework hosted on GitHub CodeSpaces. This campaign also utilizes a Python based spreader with a multi-stage Docker deployment as the initial access vector.

The campaign further makes use of a Go-based Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that implements a RESTful registration and polling mechanism, enabling command execution and communication with its operators.

ShadowV2 attack techniques

What sets this campaign apart is the sophistication of its attack toolkit.

‍The threat actors employ advanced methods such as HTTP/2 rapid reset, a Cloudflare under attack mode (UAM) bypass, and large-scale HTTP floods, demonstrating a capability to combine distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) techniques with targeted exploitation.

With the inclusion of an OpenAPI specification, implemented with FastAPI and Pydantic and a fully developed login panel and operator interface, the infrastructure seems to resemble a “DDoS-as-a-service” platform rather than a traditional botnet, showing the extent to which modern malware increasingly mirrors legitimate cloud-native applications in both design and usability.

Analysis of a ShadowV2 attack

Initial access

The initial compromise originates from a Python script hosted on GitHub CodeSpaces. This can be inferred from the observed headers:

User-Agent: docker-sdk-python/7.1.0

X-Meta-Source-Client: github/codespaces

The user agent shows that the attacker is using the Python Docker SDK, a library for Python programs that allows them to interact with Docker to create containers. The X-Meta-Source-Client appears to have been injected by GitHub into the request to allow for attribution, although there is no documentation online about this header.

The IP the connections originate from is 23.97.62[.]139, which is a Microsoft IP based in Singapore. This aligns with expectations as GitHub is owned by Microsoft.

This campaign targets exposed Docker daemons, specifically those running on AWS EC2. Darktrace runs a number of honeypots across multiple cloud providers and has only observed attacks against honeypots running on AWS EC2. By default, Docker is not accessible to the Internet, however, can be configured to allow external access. This can be useful for managing complex deployments where remote access to the Docker API is needed.

Typically, most campaigns targeting Docker will either take an existing image from Docker Hub and deploy their tools within it, or upload their own pre-prepared image to deploy. This campaign works slightly differently; it first spawns a generic “setup” container and installs a number of tools within it. This container is then imaged and deployed as a live container with the malware arguments passed in via environmental variables.

Figure 1: Attacker creates a blank container from an Ubuntu image.

Figure 2: Attacker sets up their tools for the attack.

Figure 3: Attacker deploys a new container using the image from the setup container.

It is unclear why the attackers chose this approach - one possibility is that the actor is attempting to avoid inadvertently leaving forensic artifacts by performing the build on the victim machine, rather than building it themselves and uploading it.

Malware analysis

The Docker container acts as a wrapper around a single binary, dropped in /app/deployment. This is an ELF binary written in Go, a popular choice for modern malware. Helpfully, the binary is unstripped, making analysis significantly easier.

The current version of the malware has not been reported by OSINT providers such as VirusTotal. Using the domain name from the MASTER_ADDR variable and other IoCs, we were able to locate two older versions of the malware that were submitted to VirusTotal on the June 25 and July 30 respectively [1] [2]. Neither of these had any detections and were only submitted once each using the web portal from the US and Canada respectively. Darktrace first observed the attack against its honeypot on June 24, so it could be a victim of this campaign submitting the malware to VirusTotal. Due to the proximity of the start of the attacks, it could also be the attacker testing for detections, however it is not possible to know for certain.

The malware begins by phoning home, using the MASTER_ADDR and VPS_NAME identifiers passed in from the Docker run environmental variables. In addition, the malware derives a unique VPS_ID, which is the VPS_NAME concatenated with the current unix timestamp. The VPS_ID is used for all communications with the C2 server as the identifier for the specific implant. If the malware is restarted, or the victim is re-infected, the C2 server will inform the implant of its original VPS_ID to ensure continuity.

Figure 4: Snippet that performs the registration by sending a POST request to the C2 API with a JSON structure.

From there, the malware then spawns two main loops that will remain active for the lifetime of the implant. Every second, it sends a heartbeat to the C2 by sending the VPS_ID to hxxps://shadow.aurozacloud[.]xyz/api/vps/heartbeat via POST request. Every 5 seconds, it retrieves hxxps://shadow.aurozacloud[.]xyz/api/vps/poll/<VPS ID> via a GET request to poll for new commands.

The poll mechanism shadow v2 — Figure 5: The poll mechanism.

At this stage, Darktrace security researchers wrote a custom client that ran on the server infected by the attacker that mimicked their implant. The goal was to intercept commands from the C2. Based on this, it was observed initiating an attack against chache08[.]werkecdn[.]me using a 120 thread HTTP2 rapid reset attack. This site appears to be hosted on an Amsterdam VPS provided by FDCServers, a server hosting company. It was not possible to identify what normally runs on this site, as it returns a 403 Forbidden error when visited.

Darktrace’s code analysis found that the returned commands contain the following fields:

Method (e.g. GET, POST)
A unique ID for the attack
A URL endpoint used to report attack statistics
The target URL & port
The duration of the attack
The number of threads to use
An optional proxy to send HTTP requests through

The malware then spins up several threads, each running a configurable number of HTTP clients using Valyala’s fasthttp library, an open source Go library for making high-performance HTTP requests. After this is complete, it uses these clients to perform an HTTP flood attack against the target.

Figure 6: A snippet showing the fasthttp client creation loop, as well as a function to report the worker count back to the C2.

In addition, it also features several flags to enable different bypass mechanisms to augment the malware:

WordPress bypass (does not appear to be implemented - the flag is not used anywhere)
Random query strings appended to the URL
Spoofed forwarding headers with random IP addresses
Cloudflare under-attack-mode (UAM) bypass
HTTP2 rapid reset

The most interesting of these is the Cloudflare UAM bypass mechanism. When this is enabled, the malware will attempt to use a bundled ChromeDP binary to solve the Cloudflare JavaScript challenge that is presented to new visitors. If this succeeds, the clearance cookie obtained is then included in subsequent requests. This is unlikely to work in most cases as headless Chrome browsers are often flagged, and a regular CAPTCHA is instead served.

Figure 7: The UAM bypass success snippet.

Additionally, the malware has a flag to enable an HTTP2 rapid reset attack mode instead of a regular HTTP flood. In HTTP2, a client can create thousands of requests within a single connection using multiplexing, allowing sites to load faster. The number of request streams per connection is capped however, so in a rapid reset attack many requests are made and then immediately cancelled to allow more requests to be created. This allows a single client to execute vastly more requests per second and use more server resources than it otherwise would, allowing for more effective denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

Figure 8: The HTTP2 rapid reset snippet from the main attack function.

API/C2 analysis

As mentioned throughout the malware analysis section, the malware communicates with a C2 server using HTTP. The server is behind Cloudflare, which obscures its hosting location and prevents analysis. However, based on analysis of the spreader, it's likely running on GitHub CodeSpaces.

When sending a malformed request to the API, an error generated by the Pydantic library is returned:

{"detail":[{"type":"missing","loc":["body","vps_id"],"msg":"Field required","input":{"vps_name":"xxxxx"},"url":"https://errors.pydantic.dev/2.11/v/missing"}]}

This shows they are using Python for the API, which is the same language that the spreader is written in.

One of the larger frameworks that ships with Pydantic is FastAPI, which also ships with Swagger. The malware author left this publicly exposed, and Darktrace’s researchers were able to obtain a copy of their API documentation. The author appears to have noticed this however, as subsequent attempts to access it now returns a HTTP 404 Not Found error.

Figure 9: Swagger UI view based on the obtained OpenAPI spec.

This is useful to have as it shows all the API endpoints, including the exact fields they take and return, along with comments on each endpoint written by the attacker themselves.

It is very likely a DDoS for hire platform (or at the very least, designed for multi-tenant use) based on the extensive user API, which features authentication, distinctions between privilege level (admin vs user), and limitations on what types of attack a user can execute. The screenshot below shows the admin-only user create endpoint, with the default limits.

The admin-only user create endpoint shadow v2 — Figure 10: The admin-only user create endpoint.

The endpoint used to launch attacks can also be seen, which lines up with the options previously seen in the malware itself. Interestingly, this endpoint requires a list of zombie systems to launch the attack from. This is unusual as most DDoS for hire services will decide this internally or just launch the attack from every infected host (zombie). No endpoints that returned a list of zombies were found, however, it’s possible one exists as the return types are not documented for all the API endpoints.

The attack start endpoint shadow v2 — Figure 11: The attack start endpoint.

There is also an endpoint to manage a blacklist of hosts that cannot be attacked. This could be to stop users from launching attacks against sites operated by the malware author, however it’s also possible the author could be attempting to sell protection to victims, which has been seen previously with other DDoS for hire services.

Blacklist endpoints shadow v2 DDoS — Figure 12: Blacklist endpoints.

Attempting to visit shadow[.]aurozacloud[.]xyz results in a seizure notice. It is most likely fake the same backend is still in use and all of the API endpoints continue to work. Appending /login to the end of the path instead brings up the login screen for the DDoS platform. It describes itself as an “advanced attack platform”, which highlights that it is almost certainly a DDoS for hire service. The UI is high quality, written in Tailwind, and even features animations.

Conclusion

By leveraging containerization, an extensive API, and with a full user interface, this campaign shows the continued development of cybercrime-as-a-service. The ability to deliver modular functionality through a Go-based RAT and expose a structured API for operator interaction highlights how sophisticated some threat actors are.

For defenders, the implications are significant. Effective defense requires deep visibility into containerized environments, continuous monitoring of cloud workloads, and behavioral analytics capable of identifying anomalous API usage and container orchestration patterns. The presence of a DDoS-as-a-service panel with full user functionality further emphasizes the need for defenders to think of these campaigns not as isolated tools but as evolving platforms.

Appendices

References

1. https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/1b552d19a3083572bc433714dfbc2b75eb6930a644696dedd600f9bd755042f6 ‍

2. https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/1f70c78c018175a3e4fa2b3822f1a3bd48a3b923d1fbdeaa5446960ca8133e9c

IoCs

Malware hashes (SHA256)

● 2462467c89b4a62619d0b2957b21876dc4871db41b5d5fe230aa7ad107504c99

● 1b552d19a3083572bc433714dfbc2b75eb6930a644696dedd600f9bd755042f6

● 1f70c78c018175a3e4fa2b3822f1a3bd48a3b923d1fbdeaa5446960ca8133e9c

C2 domain

● shadow.aurozacloud[.]xyz

Spreader IPs

● 23.97.62[.]139

● 23.97.62[.]136

Yara rule

rule ShadowV2 {

meta:

author = "nathaniel.bill@darktrace.com"

description = "Detects ShadowV2 botnet implant"

strings:

$string1 = "shadow-go"

$string2 = "shadow.aurozacloud.xyz"

$string3 = "[SHADOW-NODE]"

$symbol1 = "main.registerWithMaster"

$symbol2 = "main.handleStartAttack"

$symbol3 = "attacker.bypassUAM"

$symbol4 = "attacker.performHTTP2RapidReset"

$code1 = { 48 8B 05 ?? ?? ?? ?? 48 8B 1D ?? ?? ?? ?? E8 ?? ?? ?? ?? 48 8D 0D ?? ?? ?? ?? 48 89 8C 24 38 01 00 00 48 89 84 24 40 01 00 00 48 8B 4C 24 40 48 BA 00 09 6E 88 F1 FF FF FF 48 8D 04 0A E8 ?? ?? ?? ?? 48 8D 0D ?? ?? ?? ?? 48 89 8C 24 48 01 00 00 48 89 84 24 50 01 00 00 48 8D 05 ?? ?? ?? ?? BB 05 00 00 00 48 8D 8C 24 38 01 00 00 BF 02 00 00 00 48 89 FE E8 ?? ?? ?? ?? }

$code2 = { 48 89 35 ?? ?? ?? ?? 0F B6 94 24 80 02 00 00 88 15 ?? ?? ?? ?? 0F B6 94 24 81 02 00 00 88 15 ?? ?? ?? ?? 0F B6 94 24 82 02 00 00 88 15 ?? ?? ?? ?? 0F B6 94 24 83 02 00 00 88 15 ?? ?? ?? ?? 48 8B 05 ?? ?? ?? ?? }

$code3 = { 48 8D 15 ?? ?? ?? ?? 48 89 94 24 68 04 00 00 48 C7 84 24 78 04 00 00 15 00 00 00 48 8D 15 ?? ?? ?? ?? 48 89 94 24 70 04 00 00 48 8D 15 ?? ?? ?? ?? 48 89 94 24 80 04 00 00 48 8D 35 ?? ?? ?? ?? 48 89 B4 24 88 04 00 00 90 }

condition:

uint16(0) == 0x457f and (2 of ($string*) or 2 of ($symbol*) or any of ($code*))

}

‍

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^{Nothing in this blog constitutes legal, technical, or professional advice, and readers should consult qualified professionals before acting on any information contained herein. Any references to third-party organizations, technologies, threat actors, or incidents are for informational purposes only and do not imply affiliation, endorsement, or recommendation.}

^{Darktrace, its affiliates, employees, or agents shall not be held liable for any loss, damage, or harm arising from the use of or reliance on the information in this blog.}

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Written by

Nate Bill

Threat Researcher

Inside the SOC

Written by

Nate Bill

Threat Researcher

Product Marketing Manager, OT Security & Compliance

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Blog

Email

September 30, 2025

Out of Character: Detecting Vendor Compromise and Trusted Relationship Abuse with Darktrace

What is Vendor Email Compromise?

Vendor Email Compromise (VEC) refers to an attack where actors breach a third-party provider to exploit their access, relationships, or systems for malicious purposes. The initially compromised entities are often the target’s existing partners, though this can extend to any organization or individual the target is likely to trust.

It sits at the intersection of supply chain attacks and business email compromise (BEC), blending technical exploitation with trust-based deception. Attackers often infiltrate existing conversations, leveraging AI to mimic tone and avoid common spelling and grammar pitfalls. Malicious content is typically hosted on otherwise reputable file sharing platforms, meaning any shared links initially seem harmless.

While techniques to achieve initial access may have evolved, the goals remain familiar. Threat actors harvest credentials, launch subsequent phishing campaigns, attempt to redirect invoice payments for financial gain, and exfiltrate sensitive corporate data.

Why traditional defenses fall short

These subtle and sophisticated email attacks pose unique challenges for defenders. Few busy people would treat an ongoing conversation with a trusted contact with the same level of suspicion as an email from the CEO requesting ‘URGENT ASSISTANCE!’ Unfortunately, many traditional secure email gateways (SEGs) struggle with this too. Detecting an out-of-character email, when it does not obviously appear out of character, is a complex challenge. It’s hardly surprising, then, that 83% of organizations have experienced a security incident involving third-party vendors [1].

This article explores how Darktrace detected four different vendor compromise campaigns for a single customer, within a two-week period in 2025. Darktrace / EMAIL successfully identified the subtle indicators that these seemingly benign emails from trusted senders were, in fact, malicious. Due to the configuration of Darktrace / EMAIL in this customer’s environment, it was unable to take action against the malicious emails. However, if fully enabled to take Autonomous Response, it would have held all offending emails identified.

How does Darktrace detect vendor compromise?

The answer lies at the core of how Darktrace operates: anomaly detection. Rather than relying on known malicious rules or signatures, Darktrace learns what ‘normal’ looks like for an environment, then looks for anomalies across a wide range of metrics. Despite the resourcefulness of the threat actors involved in this case, Darktrace identified many anomalies across these campaigns.

Different campaigns, common traits

A wide variety of approaches was observed. Individuals, shared mailboxes and external contractors were all targeted. Two emails originated from compromised current vendors, while two came from unknown compromised organizations - one in an associated industry. The sender organizations were either familiar or, at the very least, professional in appearance, with no unusual alphanumeric strings or suspicious top-level domains (TLDs). Subject line, such as “New Approved Statement From [REDACTED]” and “[REDACTED] - Proposal Document” appeared unremarkable and were not designed to provoke heightened emotions like typical social engineering or BEC attempts.

All emails had been given a Microsoft Spam Confidence Level of 1, indicating Microsoft did not consider them to be spam or malicious [2]. They also passed authentication checks (including SPF, and in some cases DKIM and DMARC), meaning they appeared to originate from an authentic source for the sender domain and had not been tampered with in transit.

All observed phishing emails contained a link hosted on a legitimate and commonly used file-sharing site. These sites were often convincingly themed, frequently featuring the name of a trusted vendor either on the page or within the URL, to appear authentic and avoid raising suspicion. However, these links served only as the initial step in a more complex, multi-stage phishing process.

‍

Figure 1: A legitimate file sharing site used in phishing emails to host a secondary malicious link.

Figure 2: Another example of a legitimate file sharing endpoint sent in a phishing email and used to host a malicious link.

If followed, the recipient would be redirected, sometimes via CAPTCHA, to fake Microsoft login pages designed to capturing credentials, namely http://pub-ac94c05b39aa4f75ad1df88d384932b8.r2[.]dev/offline[.]html and https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws[.]com/s3cure0line-0365cql0.19db86c3-b2b9-44cc-b339-36da233a3be2ml0qin/s3cccql0.19db86c3-b2b9-44cc-b339-36da233a3be2%26l0qn[.]html#.

The latter made use of homoglyphs to deceive the user, with a link referencing ‘s3cure0line’, rather than ‘secureonline’. Post-incident investigation using open-source intelligence (OSINT) confirmed that the domains were linked to malicious phishing endpoints [3] [4].

Figure 3: Fake Microsoft login page designed to harvest credentials.

Figure 4: Phishing kit with likely AI-generated image, designed to harvest user credentials. The URL uses ‘s3cure0line’ instead of ‘secureonline’, a subtle misspelling intended to deceive users.

Darktrace Anomaly Detection

Some senders were unknown to the network, with no previous outbound or inbound emails. Some had sent the email to multiple undisclosed recipients using BCC, an unusual behavior for a new sender.

Where the sender organization was an existing vendor, Darktrace recognized out-of-character behavior, in this case it was the first time a link to a particular file-sharing site had been shared. Often the links themselves exhibited anomalies, either being unusually prominent or hidden altogether - masked by text or a clickable image.

Crucially, Darktrace / EMAIL is able to identify malicious links at the time of processing the emails, without needing to visit the URLs or analyze the destination endpoints, meaning even the most convincing phishing pages cannot evade detection – meaning even the most convincing phishing emails cannot evade detection. This sets it apart from many competitors who rely on crawling the endpoints present in emails. This, among other things, risks disruption to user experience, such as unsubscribing them from emails, for instance.

Darktrace was also able to determine that the malicious emails originated from a compromised mailbox, using a series of behavioral and contextual metrics to make the identification. Upon analysis of the emails, Darktrace autonomously assigned several contextual tags to highlight their concerning elements, indicating that the messages contained phishing links, were likely sent from a compromised account, and originated from a known correspondent exhibiting out-of-character behavior.

A summary of the anomalous email, confirming that it contained a highly suspicious link. — Figure 5: Tags assigned to offending emails by Darktrace / EMAIL.

‍

Figure 6: A summary of the anomalous email, confirming that it contained a highly suspicious link.

Out-of-character behavior caught in real-time

In another customer environment around the same time Darktrace / EMAIL detected multiple emails with carefully crafted, contextually appropriate subject lines sent from an established correspondent being sent to 30 different recipients. In many cases, the attacker hijacked existing threads and inserted their malicious emails into an ongoing conversation in an effort to blend in and avoid detection. As in the previous, the attacker leveraged a well-known service, this time ClickFunnels, to host a document containing another malicious link. Once again, they were assigned a Microsoft Spam Confidence Level of 1, indicating that they were not considered malicious.

Figure 7: The legitimate ClickFunnels page used to host a malicious phishing link.

This time, however, the customer had Darktrace / EMAIL fully enabled to take Autonomous Response against suspicious emails. As a result, when Darktrace detected the out-of-character behavior, specifically, the sharing of a link to a previously unused file-sharing domain, and identified the likely malicious intent of the message, it held the email, preventing it from reaching recipients’ inboxes and effectively shutting down the attack.

Figure 8: Darktrace / EMAIL’s detection of malicious emails inserted into an existing thread.*

*To preserve anonymity, all real customer names, email addresses, and other identifying details have been redacted and replaced with fictitious placeholders.

Legitimate messages in the conversation were assigned an Anomaly Score of 0, while the newly inserted malicious emails identified and were flagged with the maximum score of 100.

Key takeaways for defenders

Phishing remains big business, and as the landscape evolves, today’s campaigns often look very different from earlier versions. As with network-based attacks, threat actors are increasingly leveraging legitimate tools and exploiting trusted relationships to carry out their malicious goals, often staying under the radar of security teams and traditional email defenses.

As attackers continue to exploit trusted relationships between organizations and their third-party associates, security teams must remain vigilant to unexpected or suspicious email activity. Protecting the digital estate requires an email solution capable of identifying malicious characteristics, even when they originate from otherwise trusted senders.

Credit to Jennifer Beckett (Cyber Analyst), Patrick Anjos (Senior Cyber Analyst), Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead), Kiri Addison (Director of Product)

Appendices

IoC - Type - Description + Confidence

- http://pub-ac94c05b39aa4f75ad1df88d384932b8.r2[.]dev/offline[.]html#p – fake Microsoft login page

- https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws[.]com/s3cure0line-0365cql0.19db86c3-b2b9-44cc-b339-36da233a3be2ml0qin/s3cccql0.19db86c3-b2b9-44cc-b339-36da233a3be2%26l0qn[.]html# - link to domain used in homoglyph attack

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Tactic – Technique – Sub-Technique

Initial Access - Phishing – (T1566)

References

1. https://gitnux.org/third-party-risk-statistics/

2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-office-365/anti-spam-spam-confidence-level-scl-about

3. https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/5df9aae8f78445a590f674d7b64c69630c1473c294ce5337d73732c03ab7fca2/detection

4. https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/695d0d173d1bd4755eb79952704e3f2f2b87d1a08e2ec660b98a4cc65f6b2577/details

^{Darktrace, its affiliates, employees, or agents shall not be held liable for any loss, damage, or harm arising from the use of or reliance on the information in this blog.}

^{The cybersecurity landscape evolves rapidly, and blog content may become outdated or superseded. We reserve the right to update, modify, or remove any content}

About the author

Blog

OT

October 1, 2025

Announcing Unified OT Security with Dedicated OT Workflows, Segmentation-Aware Risk Insights, and Next-Gen Endpoint Visibility for Industrial Teams

The challenge of convergence without clarity

Convergence is no longer a roadmap idea, it is the daily reality for industrial security teams. As Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) environments merge, the line between a cyber incident and an operational disruption grows increasingly hard to define. A misconfigured firewall rule can lead to downtime. A protocol misuse might look like a glitch. And when a pump stalls but nothing appears in the Security Operations Center (SOC) dashboard, teams are left asking: is this operational or is this a threat?

The lack of shared context slows down response, creates friction between SOC analysts and plant engineers, and leaves organizations vulnerable at exactly the points where IT and OT converge. Defenders need more than alerts, they need clarity that both sides can trust.

The breakthrough with Darktrace / OT

This latest Darktrace / OT release was built to deliver exactly that. It introduces shared context between Security, IT, and OT operations, helping reduce friction and close the security gaps at the intersection of these domains.

With a dedicated dashboard built for operations teams, extended visibility into endpoints for new forms of detection and CVE collection, expanded protocol coverage, and smarter risk modeling aligned to segmentation policies, teams can now operate from a shared source of truth. These enhancements are not just incremental upgrades, they are foundational improvements designed to bring clarity, efficiency, and trust to converged environments.

A dashboard built for OT engineers

The new Operational Overview provides OT engineers with a workspace designed for them, not for SOC analysts. It brings asset management, risk insights and operational alerts into one place. Engineers can now see activity like firmware changes, controller reprograms or the sudden appearance of a new workstation on the network, providing a tailored view for critical insights and productivity gains without navigating IT-centric workflows. Each device view is now enriched with cross-linked intelligence, make, model, firmware version and the roles inferred by Self-Learning AI, making it easier to understand how each asset behaves, what function it serves, and where it fits within the broader industrial process. By suppressing IT-centric noise, the dashboard highlights only the anomalies that matter to operations, accelerating triage, enabling smoother IT/OT collaboration, and reducing time to root cause without jumping between tools.

This is usability with purpose, a view that matches OT workflows and accelerates response.

Figure 1: The Operational Overview provides an intuitive dashboard summarizing all OT Assets, Alerts, and Risk.

Full-spectrum coverage across endpoints, sensors and protocols

The release also extends visibility into areas that have traditionally been blind spots. Engineering workstations, Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs), contractor laptops and field devices are often the entry points for attackers, yet the hardest to monitor.

Darktrace introduces Network Endpoint eXtended Telemetry (NEXT) for OT, a lightweight collector built for segmented and resource-constrained environments. NEXT for OT uses Endpoint sensors to capture localized network, and now process-level telemetry, placing it in context alongside other network and asset data to:

Identify vulnerabilities and OS data, which is leveraged by OT Risk Management for risk scoring and patching prioritization, removing the need for third-party CVE collection.

Surface novel threats using Self-Learning AI that standalone Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) would miss.

Extend Cyber AI Analyst investigations through to the endpoint root cause.

NEXT is part of our existing cSensor endpoint agent, can be deployed standalone or alongside existing EDR tools, and allows capabilities to be enabled or disabled depending on factors such as security or OT team objectives and resource utilization.

Figure 2: Darktrace / OT delivers CVE patch priority insights by combining threat intelligence with extended network and endpoint telemetry

The family of Darktrace Endpoint sensors also receive a boost in deployment flexibility, with on-prem server-based setups, as well as a Windows driver tailored for zero-trust and high-security environments.

Protocol coverage has been extended where it matters most. Darktrace now performs protocol analysis of a wider range of GE and Mitsubishi protocols, giving operators real-time visibility into commands and state changes on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), robots and controllers. Backed by Self-Learning AI, this inspection does more than parse traffic, it understands what normal looks like and flags deviations that signal risk.

Integrated risk and governance workflows

Security data is only valuable when it drives action. Darktrace / OT delivers risk insights that go beyond patching, helping teams take meaningful steps even when remediation isn't possible. Risk is assessed not just by CVE presence, but by how network segmentation, firewall policies, and attack path logic neutralize or contain real-world exposure. This approach empowers defenders to deprioritize low-impact vulnerabilities and focus effort where risk truly exists. Building on the foundation introduced in release 6.3, such as KEV enrichment, endpoint OS data, and exploit mapping, this release introduces new integrations that bring Darktrace / OT intelligence directly into governance workflows.

Fortinet FortiGate firewall ingestion feeds segmentation rules into attack path modeling, revealing real exposure when policies fail and closing feeds into patching prioritization based on a policy to CVE exposure assessment.

ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB) sync ensures asset intelligence stays current across governance platforms, eliminating manual inventory work.

Risk modeling has also been made more operationally relevant. Scores are now contextualized by exploitability, asset criticality, firewall policy, and segmentation posture. Patch recommendations are modeled in terms of safety, uptime and compliance rather than just Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) numbers. And importantly, risk is prioritized across the Purdue Model, giving defenders visibility into whether vulnerabilities remain isolated to IT or extend into OT-critical layers.

Figure 3: Attack Path Modeling based on NetFlow and network topology reveals high risk points of IT/OT convergence.

The real-world impact for defenders

In today’s environments, attackers move fluidly between IT and OT. Without unified visibility and shared context, incidents cascade faster than teams can respond.

With this release, Darktrace / OT changes that reality. The Operational Overview gives Engineers a dashboard they can use daily, tailored to their workflows. SOC analysts can seamlessly investigate telemetry across endpoints, sensors and protocols that were once blind spots. Operators gain transparency into PLCs and controllers. Governance teams benefit from automated integrations with platforms like Fortinet and ServiceNow. And all stakeholders work from risk models that reflect what truly matters: safety, uptime and compliance.

This release is not about creating more alerts. It is about providing more clarity. By unifying context across IT and OT, Darktrace / OT enables defenders to see more, understand more and act faster.

Because in environments where safety and uptime are non-negotiable, clarity is what matters most.

Join us for our live event where we will discuss these product innovations in greater detail

About the author

Pallavi Singh

Product Marketing Manager, OT Security & Compliance

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ShadowV2: An emerging DDoS for hire botnet

Introduction: ShadowV2 DDoS

ShadowV2 attack techniques

Analysis of a ShadowV2 attack

Initial access

Malware analysis

API/C2 analysis

Conclusion

Appendices

References

IoCs

Yara rule

Out of Character: Detecting Vendor Compromise and Trusted Relationship Abuse with Darktrace

Announcing Unified OT Security with Dedicated OT Workflows, Segmentation-Aware Risk Insights, and Next-Gen Endpoint Visibility for Industrial Teams

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Blog

Email

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Out of Character: Detecting Vendor Compromise and Trusted Relationship Abuse with Darktrace

What is Vendor Email Compromise?

Why traditional defenses fall short

How does Darktrace detect vendor compromise?

Different campaigns, common traits

Darktrace Anomaly Detection

Out-of-character behavior caught in real-time

Key takeaways for defenders

Appendices

IoC - Type - Description + Confidence

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Tactic – Technique – Sub-Technique

References

Blog

OT

October 1, 2025

Announcing Unified OT Security with Dedicated OT Workflows, Segmentation-Aware Risk Insights, and Next-Gen Endpoint Visibility for Industrial Teams

The challenge of convergence without clarity

The breakthrough with Darktrace / OT

A dashboard built for OT engineers

Full-spectrum coverage across endpoints, sensors and protocols

Integrated risk and governance workflows

The real-world impact for defenders

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