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November 21, 2018

How Black Hats Take Advantage of Black Friday

The retail industry must be willing to adapt its cyber defenses against an ever-evolving adversary, or it may end Black Friday firmly in the red.
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
Justin Fier
SVP, Red Team Operations
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21
Nov 2018

From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, shoppers across the globe will splurge tens of billions of dollars on everything from pillows to parkas to Pokémon pajamas.

U.S. consumers alone spent a record $19.62 billion last Black Friday weekend — on just online purchases. And while the number of customers at brick-and-mortar stores declined 4% from 2016, e-commerce sales were 18% higher in 2017, when for the first time more Americans shopped online than in person. There is every reason to suspect that a virtually unprecedented volume of virtual cash is about to change hands, presenting an equally unprecedented opportunity for a massive holiday cyber-heist. Here’s what such a heist might look like:

Proof of concept

While the incentive for cyber-crime during this Black Friday weekend is historically unparalleled, it has long been the holiday of choice for criminals. On Cyber Monday of 2014, for instance, a DNS provider was hit by a relatively rudimentary DDoS attack that nonetheless disrupted its clients’ websites. More advanced DDoS attacks launched by modern Mirai botnets — like the 2016 Dyn attack that crippled many of the Internet’s top websites — would be devastating on Black Friday, when companies like Amazon reel in upwards of a million dollars per minute. And for smaller retailers, a ransomware or DDoS attack this weekend poses existential risk, both because of lost revenue and because of reputational damage in such a highly competitive industry.

Prior to last year’s Black Friday weekend, experts anticipated more than 50 million attacks on businesses during peak shopping days, and cyber-criminals did not disappoint. Darktrace detected a 70% uptick in significant threats facing its retail clients during the holiday season, from November and December, compared to the previous two months, an uptick that helps explain why cyber-crime cost the world $600 billion last year. At least in the short term, it appears that online crime does pay — especially after Thanksgiving.

Mode of attack

As forensics continue to improve and CCTVs rapidly proliferate, the in-person criminal heist has largely been replaced by online robbery, which leaves no fingerprints and can be seen by no camera. One example: the annual amount of money stolen in U.S. bank robberies — the quintessential heist — has fallen by more than 60% since 2003, while cyber-crimes like credit card fraud have simultaneously skyrocketed. This transition to digital larceny makes financial sense as well, given that less than 10% of the world’s currency still exists as physical cash.

Indeed, identity theft is even more lucrative than bank robbery if done at scale, yet it entails far less risk for the perpetrators. Stolen credit card numbers can each sell for $100 on the Dark Web, rendering crimes like the Target breach — which took place during Black Friday weekend in 2013 and exposed 40 million debit and credit accounts — extremely profitable. With more than 100 million Americans and close to a billion global shoppers online during the holiday season, ’tis certainly the season for a large-scale assault on personal information.

But perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of cyber-heists is that they need not even steal anything to make off with loot. Faced with a well-timed ransomware attack, retailers often simply hand over their cash to remain operational: 70% of businesses paid the ransom after attacks in 2016, prompting criminals to quadruple their average demand. And on the busiest shopping day in history, there’s no telling how exorbitant these demands might be.

Cyber-threats that are specifically aimed at the retail sector make the challenge of security even more difficult for defenders, since much like a targeted traditional heist, they exploit their victims’ unique vulnerabilities. The numbers validate common sense here: insights from across Darktrace’s customer base reveal that these key retail threats — which include personalized phishing attacks, Cloud and SaaS attacks, as well as trojans — are more than twice as likely to become high-priority incidents as the average threat. With so much money on the line, every retailer should expect to confront targeted attacks throughout the weekend.

Bypassing the defenses

From ransomware to data exfiltration, one can make an educated guess about the kinds of threats facing retailers this Black Friday. But the truth is that no one knows exactly what the next global cyber-attack will look like, particularly given the enormous incentive for criminals to create an entirely new attack strain — or even a new type of attack altogether. Several recent, state-sponsored exploits have proven that the financial and technical backing exists to produce malware sophisticated enough to deliver a serious blow to the U.S. economy.

Innovative attacks pose a fundamental problem for traditional security tools, which rely on knowledge of past incidents to stop future ones. By updating their predefined notions of what constitutes a cyber-threat when a breach occurs, the best of these tools stop previously known attacks, but they are nonetheless blind to unknown threats. Many retailers have deployed Darktrace’s AI cyber security because it doesn’t presume to know what tomorrow’s attack will look like; rather, Darktrace learns on the job to differentiate between normal and abnormal behavior. But while such adaptive security is the only approach that stands a chance in today’s fast-changing threat landscape, most retailers have yet to make the switch.

In this era of DNA forensics and near-ubiquitous surveillance, the criminal heist has not disappeared — it’s digitized. And while retail companies prepare themselves for the generic cyber-threats of the past, very few are in a position to counter a never-before-seen attack that, like a physical heist, has been planned for months to exploit their unique security blind spots. As we inch closer to zero hour, the industry must be willing to adapt its cyber defenses against an ever-evolving adversary, or it may end Black Friday firmly in the red.


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
Justin Fier
SVP, Red Team Operations

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May 1, 2025

Your Vendors, Your Risk: Rethinking Third-Party Security in the Age of Supply Chain Attacks

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When most people hear the term supply chain attack, they often imagine a simple scenario: one organization is compromised, and that compromise is used as a springboard to attack another. This kind of lateral movement is common, and often the entry vector is as mundane and as dangerous as email.

Take, for instance, a situation where a trusted third-party vendor is breached. An attacker who gains access to their systems can then send malicious emails to your organization, emails that appear to come from a known and reputable source. Because the relationship is trusted, traditional phishing defenses may not be triggered, and recipients may be more inclined to engage with malicious content. From there, the attacker can establish a foothold, move laterally, escalate privileges, and launch a broader campaign.

This is one dimension of a supply chain cyber-attack, and it’s well understood in many security circles. But the risk doesn’t end there. In fact, it goes deeper, and it often hits the most important asset of all: your customers' data.

The risk beyond the inbox

What happens when customer data is shared with a third party for legitimate processing purposes for example billing, analytics, or customer service and that third party is then compromised?

In that case, your customer data is breached, even if your own systems were never touched. That’s the uncomfortable truth about modern cybersecurity: your risk is no longer confined to your own infrastructure. Every entity you share data with becomes an extension of your attack surface. Thus, we should rethink how we perceive responsibility.

It’s tempting to think that securing our environment is our job, and securing their environment is theirs. But if a breach of their environment results in the exposure of our customers, the accountability and reputational damage fall squarely on our shoulders.

The illusion of boundaries

In an era where digital operations are inherently interconnected, the lines of responsibility can blur quickly. Legally and ethically, organizations are still responsible for the data they collect even if that data is processed, stored, or analyzed by a third party. A customer whose data is leaked because of a vendor breach will almost certainly hold the original brand responsible, not the third-party processor they never heard of.

This is particularly important for industries that rely on extensive outsourcing and platform integrations (SaaS platforms, marketing tools, CRMs, analytics platforms, payment processors). The list of third-party vendors with access to customer data grows year over year. Each integration adds convenience, but also risk.

Encryption isn’t a silver bullet

One of the most common safeguards used in these data flows is encryption. Encrypting customer data in transit is a smart and necessary step, but it’s far from enough. Once data reaches the destination system, it typically needs to be decrypted for use. And the moment it is decrypted, it becomes vulnerable to a variety of attacks like ransomware, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, and more.

In other words, the question isn’t just is the data secure in transit? The more important question is how is it protected once it arrives?

A checklist for organizations evaluating third-parties

Given these risks, what should responsible organizations do when they need to share customer data with third parties?

Start by treating third-party security as an extension of your own security program. Here are some foundational controls that can make a difference:

Due diligence before engagement: Evaluate third-party vendors based on their security posture before signing any contracts. What certifications do they hold? What frameworks do they follow? What is their incident response capability?

Contractual security clauses: Build in specific security requirements into vendor contracts. These can include requirements for encryption standards, access control policies, and data handling protocols.

Third-party security assessments: Require vendors to provide evidence of their security controls. Independent audits, penetration test results, and SOC 2 reports can all provide useful insights.

Ongoing monitoring and attestations: Security isn’t static. Make sure vendors provide regular security attestations and reports. Where possible, schedule periodic reviews or audits, especially for vendors handling sensitive data.

Minimization and segmentation: Don’t send more data than necessary. Data minimization limits the exposure in the event of a breach. Segmentation, both within your environment and within vendor access levels, can further reduce risk.

Incident response planning: Ensure you have a playbook for handling third-party incidents, and that vendors do as well. Coordination in the event of a breach should be clear and rapid.

The human factor: Customers and communication

There’s another angle to supply chain cyber-attacks that’s easy to overlook: the post-breach exploitation of public knowledge. When a breach involving customer data hits the news, it doesn’t take long for cybercriminals to jump on the opportunity.

Attackers can craft phishing emails that appear to be follow-ups from the affected organization: “Click here to reset your password,” “Confirm your details due to the breach,” etc.

A breach doesn’t just put customer data at risk it also opens the door to further fraud, identity theft, and financial loss through social engineering. This is why post-breach communication and phishing mitigation strategies are valuable components of an incident response strategy.

Securing what matters most

Ultimately, protecting against supply chain cyber-attacks isn’t just about safeguarding your own perimeter. It’s about defending the integrity of your customers’ data, wherever it goes. When customer data is entrusted to you, the duty of care doesn’t end at your firewall.

Relying on vendors to “do their part” is not enough. True due diligence means verifying, validating, and continuously monitoring those extended attack surfaces. It means designing controls that assume failure is possible, and planning accordingly.

In today’s threat landscape, cybersecurity is no longer just a technical discipline. It’s a trust-building exercise. Your customers expect you to protect their information, and rightly so. And when a supply chain attack happens, whether the breach originated with you or your partner, the damage lands in the same place: your brand, your customers, your responsibility.

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About the author
Tony Jarvis
VP, Field CISO

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April 30, 2025

Boosting Security with Azure Virtual Network TAP Traffic Mirroring

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We are thrilled to announce that Darktrace is a launch partner for the Public Preview of Microsoft Azure Virtual Network Terminal Access Point (TAP). As Microsoft's 2024 UK Partner of the Year, we continue to innovate alongside Microsoft to deliver proactive cyber protection tailored to every organization.

Enhanced Defense Across the Modern Network

Modern networks are expanding far beyond on-premises into virtual environments, cloud and hybrid networks. More than 50% of incidents will come from cloud network activity by 2029, meaning defenders need a solution that can level the playing field against complex attacks that traverse multiple areas of a digital estate, including north-south and east-west traffic.

With Azure Virtual Network TAP, Darktrace’s self-learning AI gains seamless access to granular packet data in hybrid environments. This integration helps our Cyber AI platform build a comprehensive understanding of a customers’ Azure network. Microsoft's recent enhancement allows Virtual Network TAP to mirror the full throughput of VMs without impacting VM bandwidth, enabling agentless Cyber AI defense across these instances.

Darktrace's Cyber AI provides real-time visibility and adaptive, autonomous defense for your Microsoft security strategy. Our platform continuously learns the normal behavior of every user, device, and workload in your environment. This deep understanding of usual 'patterns of life' enables Darktrace to detect subtle deviations that indicate threats, from account takeovers to critical misconfigurations.

Our bespoke, real-time knowledge of usual activity allows Darktrace to identify unknown and unpredictable threats that bypass policy-based defenses—without relying on rules, signatures, or prior assumptions. This approach is a powerful compliment to Microsoft’s unprecedented threat intelligence.

Expanding Azure Virtual Network TAP

Azure Virtual Network TAP allows continuous streaming of virtual machine network traffic, which customers can leverage for Darktrace’s AI-driven threat detection and investigation. Darktrace / NETWORK passively ingests traffic from on-premises, virtual, cloud, hybrid environments, and remote devices, analyzing both encrypted and decrypted packets to uncover unusual activity in real-time. Unlike other NDR vendors that process data in the cloud, our industry-leading Self-Learning AI is deployed locally and trained solely on your data, ensuring tailored security outcomes without compromising privacy.

Benefits to Darktrace Customers

Darktrace customers will experience enhanced security through deeper insights into network traffic, enabling more accurate threat detection and response. The ability to mirror full VM throughput without affecting bandwidth ensures optimal performance, while agentless defense reduces barrier to entry and simplifies management. Customers benefit from proactive protection by continuously monitoring and analyzing traffic to identify and mitigate threats before they cause harm. Additionally, seamless integration with existing Azure environments leverages the power of Darktrace’s AI for enhanced security.

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About the author
Adam Stevens
Director of Product, Cloud Security
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