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March 7, 2025

Darktrace's Early Detection of the Latest Ivanti Exploits

In January 2025, Ivanti disclosed two critical vulnerabilities affecting their products. Darktrace detected exploitation of these vulnerabilities as early as December 2024.
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
Hugh Turnbull
Cyber Analyst
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07
Mar 2025

As reported in Darktrace’s 2024 Annual Threat Report, the exploitation of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) in edge infrastructure has consistently been a significant concern across the threat landscape, with internet-facing assets remaining highly attractive to various threat actors.

Back in January 2024, the Darktrace Threat Research team investigated a surge of malicious activity from zero-day vulnerabilities such as those at the time on Ivanti Connect Secure (CS) and Ivanti Policy Secure (PS) appliances. These vulnerabilities were disclosed by Ivanti in January 2024 as CVE-2023-46805 (Authentication bypass vulnerability) and CVE-2024-21887 (Command injection vulnerability), where these two together allowed for unauthenticated, remote code execution (RCE) on vulnerable Ivanti systems.

What are the latest vulnerabilities in Ivanti products?

In early January 2025, two new vulnerabilities were disclosed in Ivanti CS and PS, as well as their Zero Trust Access (ZTA) gateway products.

  • CVE-2025-0282: A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability. Successful exploitation could lead to unauthenticated remote code execution, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code on the affected system [1]
  • CVE-2025-0283: When combined with CVE-2025-0282, this vulnerability could allow a local authenticated attacker to escalate privileges, gaining higher-level access on the affected system [1]

Ivanti also released a statement noting they are currently not aware of any exploitation of CVE-2025-0283 at the time of disclosure [1].

Darktrace coverage of Ivanti

The Darktrace Threat Research team investigated the new Ivanti vulnerabilities across their customer base and discovered suspicious activity on two customer networks. Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) potentially indicative of successful exploitation of CVE-2025-0282 were identified as early as December 2024, 11 days before they had been publicly disclosed by Ivanti.

Case 1: December 2024

Authentication with a Privileged Credential

Darktrace initially detected suspicious activity connected with the exploitation of CVE-2025-0282 on December 29, 2024, when a customer device was observed logging into the network via SMB using the credential “svc_negbackups”, before authenticating with the credential “svc_negba” via RDP.

This likely represented a threat actor attempting to identify vulnerabilities within the system or application and escalate their privileges from a basic user account to a more privileged one. Darktrace / NETWORK recognized that the credential “svc_negbackups” was new for this device and therefore deemed it suspicious.

Darktrace / NETWORK’s detection of the unusual use of a new credential.
Figure 1: Darktrace / NETWORK’s detection of the unusual use of a new credential.

Likely Malicious File Download

Shortly after authentication with the privileged credential, Darktrace observed the device performing an SMB write to the C$ share, where a likely malicious executable file, ‘DeElevate64.exe’ was detected. While this is a legitimate Windows file, it can be abused by malicious actors for Dynamic-Link Library (DLL) sideloading, where malicious files are transferred onto other devices before executing malware. There have been external reports indicating that threat actors have utilized this technique when exploiting the Ivanti vulnerabilities [2].

Darktrace’s detection the SMB write of the likely malicious file ‘DeElevate64.exe’ on December 29, 2024.
Figure 2: Darktrace’s detection the SMB write of the likely malicious file ‘DeElevate64.exe’ on December 29, 2024.

Shortly after, a high volume of SMB login failures using the credential “svc_counteract-ext” was observed, suggesting potential brute forcing activity. The suspicious nature of this activity triggered an Enhanced Monitoring model alert that was escalated to Darktrace’s Security Operations Center (SOC) for further investigation and prompt notification, as the customer was subscribed to the Security Operations Support service.  Enhanced Monitoring are high-fidelity models detect activities that are more likely to be indicative of compromise

Suspicious Scanning and Internal Reconnaissance

Darktrace then went on to observe the device carrying out network scanning activity as well as anomalous ITaskScheduler activity. Threat actors can exploit the task scheduler to facilitate the initial or recurring execution of malicious code by a trusted system process, often with elevated permissions. The same device was also seen carrying out uncommon WMI activity.

Darktrace’s detection of a suspicious network scan from the compromised device.
Figure 3: Darktrace’s detection of a suspicious network scan from the compromised device.

Further information on the suspicious scanning activity retrieved by Cyber AI Analyst, including total number of connections and ports scanned.
Figure 4: Further information on the suspicious scanning activity retrieved by Cyber AI Analyst, including total number of connections and ports scanned.
Darktrace’s detection of a significant spike in WMI activity represented by DCE_RPC protocol request increases at the time, with little to no activity observed one week either side.
Figure 5: Darktrace’s detection of a significant spike in WMI activity represented by DCE_RPC protocol request increases at the time, with little to no activity observed one week either side.

Case 2: January 2025

Suspicious File Downloads

On January 13, 2025, Darktrace began to observe activity related to the exploitation of CVE-2025-0282  on the network of another customer, with one in particular device attempting to download likely malicious files.

Firstly, Darktrace observed the device making a GET request for the file “DeElevator64.dll” hosted on the IP 104.238.130[.]185. The device proceeded to download another file, this time “‘DeElevate64.exe”. from the same IP. This was followed by the download of “DeElevator64.dll”, similar to the case observed in December 2024. External reporting indicates that this DLL has been used by actors exploiting CVE-2025-0282 to sideload backdoor into infected systems [2]

Darktrace’s detection of the download of the suspicious file “DeElevator64.dll” on January 13, 2025.
Figure 6: Darktrace’s detection of the download of the suspicious file “DeElevator64.dll” on January 13, 2025.

Suspicious Internal Activity

Just like the previous case, on January 15, the same device was observed making numerous internal connections consistent with network scanning activity, as well as DCE-RPC requests.

Just a few minutes later, Darktrace again detected the use of a new administrative credential, observing the following details:

  • domain=REDACTED hostname=DESKTOP-1JIMIV3 auth_successful=T result=success ntlm_version=2 .

The hostname observed by Darktrace, “DESKTOP-1JIMIV3,” has also been identified by other external vendors and was associated with a remote computer name seen accessing compromised accounts [2].

Darktrace also observed the device performing an SMB write of an additional file, “to.bat,” which may have represented another malicious file loaded from the DLL files that the device had downloaded earlier. It is possible this represented the threat actor attempting to deploy a remote scheduled task.

Darktrace’s detection of SMB Write of the suspicious file “to.bat”.
Figure 7: Darktrace’s detection of SMB Write of the suspicious file “to.bat”.

Further investigation revealed that the device was likely a Veeam server, with its MAC address indicating it was a VMware device. It also appeared that the Veeam server was capturing activities referenced from the hostname DESKTOP-1JIMIV3. This may be analogous to the remote computer name reported by external researchers as accessing accounts [2]. However, this activity might also suggest that while the same threat actor and tools could be involved, they may be targeting a different vulnerability in this instance.

Autonomous Response

In this case, the customer had Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability enabled on their network. As a result, Darktrace was able to contain the compromise and shut down any ongoing suspicious connectivity by blocking internal connections and enforcing a “pattern of life” on the affected device. This action allows a device to make its usual connections while blocking any that deviate from expected behavior. These mitigative actions by Darktrace ensured that the compromise was promptly halted, preventing any further damage to the customer’s environment.

Darktrace's Autonomous Response capability actively mitigating the suspicious internal connectivity.
Figure 8: Darktrace's Autonomous Response capability actively mitigating the suspicious internal connectivity.

Conclusion

If the previous blog in January 2024 was a stark reminder of the threat posed by malicious actors exploiting Internet-facing assets, the recent activities surrounding CVE-2025-0282 and CVE-2025-0283 emphasize this even further.

Based on the telemetry available to Darktrace, a wide range of malicious activities were identified, including the malicious use of administrative credentials, the download of suspicious files, and network scanning in the cases investigated .

These activities included the download of suspicious files such as “DeElevate64.exe” and “DeElevator64.dll” potentially used by attackers to sideload backdoors into infected systems. The suspicious hostname DESKTOP-1JIMIV3 was also observed and appears to be associated with a remote computer name seen accessing compromised accounts. These activities are far from exhaustive, and many more will undoubtedly be uncovered as threat actors evolve.

Fortunately, Darktrace was able to swiftly detect and respond to suspicious network activity linked to the latest Ivanti vulnerabilities, sometimes even before these vulnerabilities were publicly disclosed.

Credit to: Nahisha Nobregas, Senior Cyber Analyst, Emma Foulger, Principle Cyber Analyst, Ryan Trail, Analyst Content Lead and the Darktrace Threat Research Team

Appendices

Darktrace Model Detections

Case 1

·      Anomalous Connection / Unusual Admin SMB Session

·      Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location

·      Anomalous File / Internal / Unusual SMB Script Write

·      Anomalous File / Multiple EXE from Rare External Locations

·      Anomalous File / Script from Rare External Location

·      Compliance / SMB Drive Write

·      Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Alerts

·      Device / Network Range Scan

·      Device / Network Scan

·      Device / New or Uncommon WMI Activity

·      Device / RDP Scan

·      Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity

·      Device / Suspicious SMB Scanning Activity

·      User / New Admin Credentials on Client

·      User / New Admin Credentials on Server 

Case 2

·      Anomalous Connection / Unusual Admin SMB Session

·      Anomalous Connection / Unusual Admin RDP Session

·      Compliance / SMB Drive Write

·      Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Alerts

·      Device / SMB Lateral Movement

·      Device / Possible SMB/NTLM Brute Force

·      Device / Suspicious SMB Scanning Activity

·      Device / Network Scan

·      Device / RDP Scan

·      Device / Large Number of Model Alerts

·      Device / Anomalous ITaskScheduler Activity

·      Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity

·      Device / New or Uncommon WMI Activity

List of IoCs Possible IoCs:

·      DeElevator64.dll

·      deelevator64.dll

·      DeElevate64.exe

·      deelevator64.dll

·      deelevate64.exe

·      to.bat

Mid-high confidence IoCs:

-       104.238.130[.]185

-       http://104.238.130[.]185/DeElevate64.exe

-       http://104.238.130[.]185/DeElevator64.dll

-       DESKTOP-1JIMIV3

References:

1.     https://www.ivanti.com/blog/security-update-ivanti-connect-secure-policy-secure-and-neurons-for-zta-gateways

2.     https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/threat-brief-ivanti-cve-2025-0282-cve-2025-0283/

3.     https://www.proofpoint.com/uk/blog/identity-threat-defense/privilege-escalation-attack#:~:text=In%20this%20approach%2C%20attackers%20exploit,handing%20over%20their%20login%20credentials

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
Hugh Turnbull
Cyber Analyst

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October 24, 2025

Patch Smarter, Not Harder: Now Empowering Security Teams with Business-Aligned Threat Context Agents

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Most risk management programs remain anchored in enumeration: scanning every asset, cataloging every CVE, and drowning in lists that rarely translate into action. Despite expensive scanners, annual pen tests, and countless spreadsheets, prioritization still falters at two critical points.

Context gaps at the device level: It’s hard to know which vulnerabilities actually matter to your business given existing privileges, what software it runs, and what controls already reduce risk.

Business translation: Even when the technical priority is clear, justifying effort and spend in financial terms—especially across many affected devices—can delay action. Especially if it means halting other areas of the business that directly generate revenue.

The result is familiar: alert fatigue, “too many highs,” and remediation that trails behind the threat landscape. Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management addresses this by pairing precise, endpoint‑level context with clear, financial insight so teams can prioritize confidently and mobilize faster.

A powerful combination: No-Telemetry Endpoint Agent + Cost-Benefit Analysis

Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management now uniquely combines technical precision with business clarity in a single workflow.  With this release, Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management delivers a more holistic approach, uniting technical context and financial insight to drive proactive risk reduction. The result is a single solution that helps security teams stay ahead of threats while reducing noise, delays, and complexity.

  • No-Telemetry Endpoint: Collects installed software data and maps it to known CVEs—without network traffic—providing device-level vulnerability context and operational relevance.
  • Cost-Benefit Analysis for Patching: Calculates ROI by comparing patching effort with potential exploit impact, factoring in headcount time, device count, patch difficulty, and automation availability.

Introducing the No-Telemetry Endpoint Agent

Darktrace’s new endpoint agent inventories installed software on devices and maps it to known CVEs without collecting network data so you can prioritize using real device context and available security controls.

By grounding vulnerability findings in the reality of each endpoint, including its software footprint and existing controls, teams can cut through generic severity scores and focus on what matters most. The agent is ideal for remote devices, BYOD-adjacent fleets, or environments standardizing on Darktrace, and is available without additional licensing cost.

Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management user interface
Figure 1: Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management user interface

Built-In Cost-Benefit Analysis for Patching

Security teams often know what needs fixing but stakeholders need to understand why now. Darktrace’s new cost-benefit calculator compares the total cost to patch against the potential cost of exploit, producing an ROI for the patch action that expresses security action in clear financial terms.

Inputs like engineer time, number of affected devices, patch difficulty, and automation availability are factored in automatically. The result is a business-aligned justification for every patching decision—helping teams secure buy-in, accelerate approvals, and move work forward with one-click ticketing, CSV export, or risk acceptance.

Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management Cost Benefit Analysis
Figure 2: Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management Cost Benefit Analysis

A Smarter, Faster Approach to Exposure Management

Together, the no-telemetry endpoint and Cost–Benefit Analysis advance the CTEM motion from theory to practice. You gain higher‑fidelity discovery and validation signals at the device level, paired with business‑ready justification that accelerates mobilization. The result is fewer distractions, clearer priorities, and faster measurable risk reduction. This is not from chasing every alert, but by focusing on what moves the needle now.

  • Smarter Prioritization: Device‑level context trims noise and spotlights the exposures that matter for your business.
  • Faster Decisions: Built‑in ROI turns technical urgency into executive clarity—speeding approvals and action.
  • Practical Execution: Privacy‑conscious endpoint collection and ticketing/export options fit neatly into existing workflows.
  • Better Outcomes: Close the loop faster—discover, prioritize, validate, and mobilize—on the same operating surface.

Committed to innovation

These updates are part of the broader Darktrace release, which also included:

1. Major innovations in cloud security with the launch of the industry’s first fully automated cloud forensics solution, reinforcing Darktrace’s leadership in AI-native security.

2. Darktrace Network Endpoint eXtended Telemetry (NEXT) is revolutionizing NDR with the industry’s first mixed-telemetry agent using Self-Learning AI.

3. Improvements to our OT product, purpose built for industrial infrastructure, Darktrace / OT now brings dedicated OT dashboard, segmentation-aware risk modeling, and expanded visibility into edge assets and automation protocols.

Join our Live Launch Event

When? 

December 9, 2025

What will be covered?

Join our live broadcast to experience how Darktrace is eliminating blind spots for detection and response across your complete enterprise with new innovations in Agentic AI across our ActiveAI Security platform. Industry leaders from IDC will join Darktrace customers to discuss challenges in cross-domain security, with a live walkthrough reshaping the future of Network Detection & Response, Endpoint Detection & Response, Email Security, and SecOps in novel threat detection and autonomous investigations.

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Kelland Goodin
Product Marketing Specialist

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October 24, 2025

Darktrace Announces Extended Visibility Between Confirmed Assets and Leaked Credentials from the Deep and Dark Web

Darktrace Announces Extended Visibility Between Confirmed Assets and Leaked Credentials from the Deep and Dark Web Default blog imageDefault blog image

Why exposure management needs to evolve beyond scans and checklists

The modern attack surface changes faster than most security programs can keep up. New assets appear, environments change, and adversaries are increasingly aided by automation and AI. Traditional approaches like periodic scans, static inventories, or annual pen tests are no longer enough. Without a formal exposure program, many businesses are flying blind, unaware of where the next threat may emerge.

This is where Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) becomes essential. Introduced by Gartner, CTEM helps organizations continuously assess, validate, and improve their exposure to real-world threats. It reframes the problem: scope your true attack surface, prioritize based on business impact and exploitability, and validate what attackers can actually do today, not once a year.

With two powerful new capabilities, Darktrace / Attack Surface Management helps organizations evolve their CTEM programs to meet the demands of today’s threat landscape. These updates make CTEM a reality, not just a strategy.

Too much data, not enough direction

Modern Attack Surface Management tools excel at discovering assets such as cloud workloads, exposed APIs, and forgotten domains. But they often fall short when it comes to prioritization. They rely on static severity scores or generic CVSS ratings, which do not reflect real-world risk or business impact.

This leaves security teams with:

  • Alert fatigue from hundreds of “critical” findings
  • Patch paralysis due to unclear prioritization
  • Blind spots around attacker intent and external targeting

CISOs need more than visibility. They need confidence in what to fix first and context to justify those decisions to stakeholders.

Evolving Attack Surface Management

Attack Surface Management (ASM) must evolve from static lists and generic severity scores to actionable intelligence that helps teams make the right decision now.

Joining the recent addition of Exploit Prediction Assessment, which debuted in late June 2025, today we’re introducing two capabilities that push ASM into that next era:

  • Exploit Prediction Assessment: Continuously validates whether top-priority exposures are actually exploitable in your environment without waiting for patch cycles or formal pen tests.  
  • Deep & Dark Web Monitoring: Extends visibility across millions of sources in the deep and dark web to detect leaked credentials linked to your confirmed domains.
  • Confidence Score: our newly developed AI classification platform will compare newly discovered assets to assets that are known to belong to your organization. The more these newly discovered assets look similar to assets that belong to your organization, the higher the score will be.

Together, these features compress the window from discovery to decision, so your team can act with precision, not panic. The result is a single solution that helps teams stay ahead of attackers without introducing new complexities.

Exploit Prediction Assessment

Traditional penetration tests are invaluable, but they’re often a snapshot of that point-in-time, are potentially disruptive, and compliance frameworks still expect them. Not to mention, when vulnerabilities are present, teams can act immediately rather than relying solely on information from CVSS scores or waiting for patch cycles.  

Unlike full pen tests which can be obtrusive and are usually done only a couple times per year, Exploit Prediction Assessment is surgical, continuous, and focused only on top issues Instead of waiting for vendor patches or the next pen‑test window. It helps confirm whether a top‑priority exposure is actually exploitable in your environment right now.  

For more information on this visit our blog: Beyond Discovery: Adding Intelligent Vulnerability Validation to Darktrace / Attack Surface Management

Deep and Dark Web Monitoring: Extending the scope

Customers have been asking for this for years, and it is finally here. Defense against the dark web. Darktrace / Attack Surface Management’s reach now spans millions of sources across the deep and dark web including forums, marketplaces, breach repositories, paste sites, and other hard‑to‑reach communities to detect leaked credentials linked to your confirmed domains.  

Monitoring is continuous, so you’re alerted as soon as evidence of compromise appears. The surface web is only a fraction of the internet, and a sizable share of risk hides beyond it. Estimates suggest the surface web represents roughly ~10% of all online content, with the rest gated or unindexed—and the TOR-accessible dark web hosts a high proportion of illicit material (a King’s College London study found ~57% of surveyed onion sites contained illicit content), underscoring why credential leakage and brand abuse often appear in places traditional monitoring doesn’t reach. Making these spaces high‑value for early warning signals when credentials or brand assets appear. Most notably, this includes your company’s reputation, assets like servers and systems, and top executives and employees at risk.

What changes for your team

Before:

  • Hundreds of findings, unclear what to start with
  • Reactive investigations triggered by incidents

After:

  • A prioritized backlog based on confidence score or exploit prediction assessment verification
  • Proactive verification of exposure with real-world risk without manual efforts

Confidence Score: Prioritize based on the use-case you care most about

What is it?

Confidence Score is a metric that expresses similarity of newly discover assets compared to the confirmed asset inventory. Several self-learning algorithms compare features of assets to be able to calculate a score.

Why it matters

Traditional Attack Surface Management tools treat all new discovery equally, making it unclear to your team how to identify the most important newly discovered assets, potentially causing you to miss a spoofing domain or shadow IT that could impact your business.

How it helps your team

We’re dividing newly discovered assets into separate insight buckets that each cover a slightly different business case.

  • Low scoring assets: to cover phishing & spoofing domains (like domain variants) that are just being registered and don't have content yet.
  • Medium scoring assets: have more similarities to your digital estate, but have better matching to HTML, brand names, keywords. Can still be phishing but probably with content.
  • High scoring assets: These look most like the rest of your confirmed digital estate, either it's phishing that needs the highest attention, or the asset belongs to your attack surface and requires asset state confirmation to enable the platform to monitor it for risks.

Smarter Exposure Management for CTEM Programs

Recent updates to Darktrace / Attack Surface Management directly advance the core phases of Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM): scope, discover, prioritize, validate, and mobilize. The new Exploit Prediction Assessment helps teams validate and prioritize vulnerabilities based on real-world exploitability, while Deep & Dark Web Monitoring extends discovery into hard-to-reach areas where stolen data and credentials often surface. Together, these capabilities reduce noise, accelerate remediation, and help organizations maintain continuous visibility over their expanding attack surface.

Building on these innovations, Darktrace / Attack Surface Management empowers security teams to focus on what truly matters. By validating exploitability, it cuts through the noise of endless vulnerability lists—helping defenders concentrate on exposures that represent genuine business risk. Continuous monitoring for leaked credentials across the deep and dark web further extends visibility beyond traditional asset discovery, closing critical blind spots where attackers often operate. Crucially, these capabilities complement, not replace, existing security controls such as annual penetration tests, providing continuous, low-friction validation between formal assessments. The result is a more adaptive, resilient security posture that keeps pace with an ever-evolving threat landscape.

If you’re building or maturing a CTEM program—and want fewer open exposures, faster remediation, and better outcomes, Darktrace / Attack Surface Management’s new Exploit Prediction Assessment and Deep & Dark Web Monitoring are ready to help.

  • Want a more in-depth look at how Exploit Prediction Assessment functions? Read more here

Committed to innovation

These updates are part of the broader Darktrace release, which also included:

1. Major innovations in cloud security with the launch of the industry’s first fully automated cloud forensics solution, reinforcing Darktrace’s leadership in AI-native security.

2. Darktrace Network Endpoint eXtended Telemetry (NEXT) is revolutionizing NDR with the industry’s first mixed-telemetry agent using Self-Learning AI.

3. Improvements to our OT product, purpose built for industrial infrastructure, Darktrace / OT now brings dedicated OT dashboard, segmentation-aware risk modeling, and expanded visibility into edge assets and automation protocols.

Join our Live Launch Event

When? 

December 9, 2025

What will be covered?

Join our live broadcast to experience how Darktrace is eliminating blind spots for detection and response across your complete enterprise with new innovations in Agentic AI across our ActiveAI Security platform. Industry leaders from IDC will join Darktrace customers to discuss challenges in cross-domain security, with a live walkthrough reshaping the future of Network Detection & Response, Endpoint Detection & Response, Email Security, and SecOps in novel threat detection and autonomous investigations.

Continue reading
About the author
Kelland Goodin
Product Marketing Specialist
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