How Autonomous Cyber AI Scaled to Protect Arrow McLaren SP
Darktrace's Cyber AI has seamlessly scaled, extended, and adapted to protect Arrow McLaren's Formula 1 and IndyCar teams from machine-speed cyberattacks.
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
Written by
Nick Snyder
Performance Director, Arrow McLaren SP
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25
May 2021
It’s been decades since a racing team has had the ambition to compete at the highest level simultaneously in Formula 1 and in the NTT INDYCAR Series. And why would they? With hectic schedules, tight timelines, and the finest margins between victory and defeat, one series alone may seem a daunting enough feat. But to compete across both requires cross-continent collaboration, creativity, and innovation at every turn.
Rather than being daunted by the challenge, McLaren has embraced the unique advantages of racing in both series simultaneously. Arrow McLaren SP, in a strategic partnership with McLaren Racing, communicates on a daily basis with the McLaren Technology Centre in the UK, gathering and sharing data including car telemetry, on-board video and audio files, timing and scoring information, car set-ups, and reporting.
The security of this critical and highly sensitive data is paramount to the performance of AMSP, and after the success of Darktrace’s AI in protecting the cloud, email, and network environments of McLaren F1, AMSP recently announced they would be seamlessly extending the coverage to the US.
How adaptive, scalable AI drives success
Darktrace’s autonomous Cyber AI has protected the McLaren F1 team since early 2020, shielding their workforce and critical systems during a time of fundamental digital change, with conditions arising from COVID-19 forcing many employees to work from home. During this time the organization had a heightened reliance on cloud collaboration platforms, including video conferencing and file sharing.
Cyber AI technology adapted to these unforeseen changes, protecting the McLaren F1 team from novel and advanced attacks targeting their dynamic workforce. While traditional tools bound by set rules and playbooks had to be reconfigured, a self-learning approach allowed continuous protection of McLaren’s email systems, cloud services, and network traffic, with little maintenance required from busy human teams.
Now, the technology is being put to the test again. McLaren has extended Darktrace’s AI technology to protect the large volumes of sensitive data that travels back and forth between Arrow McLaren SP and the MTC.
Responding to machine-speed ransomware with Autonomous Response
As a wave of ransomware attacks brings fresh concerns to the cyber security industry, AMSP is turning to a technology fundamental to stopping these machine-speed attacks. With Autonomous Response, Darktrace not only detects emerging threats, but responds in real time, stopping attackers in their tracks without human teams having to lift a finger.
The response is surgical and proportionate: only the malicious activity is contained, whilst normal operations are allowed to continue. This will be a crucial capability for the AMSP team, as any unnecessary downtime severely undermines their ability to get access to the right data at the right time – ultimately having an impact on performance on race day.
With Darktrace’s autonomous Cyber AI protecting both its F1 and INDYCAR teams, McLaren’s human IT resources are augmented with real-time protection and Autonomous Response working across different time zones and providing that 24/7 overwatch they need.
Indianapolis 500: The toughest test yet
The month of May is a busy and critical period of the season for AMSP, with three races culminating in the 105th Running of the Indianapolis 500, which will be held in front of a reduced crowd of 135,000 spectators. The IT team has been busy preparing a temporary trackside data centre for this event, and the sheer volume of data circulating between that and the MTC is ramping up.
All of this data must be gathered, organized, and transferred securely back and forth between the two hubs. The speed of that transfer is absolutely vital, as speed of analysis and real-time decision-making is critical to race performance. AMSP’s engineering team and McLaren’s engineering team operate as if they’re sitting next to each other, despite being thousands of miles away.
Moreover, some data files can be extremely large, and reliable connectivity is key in ensuring that all files, no matter the size, can be transferred and downloaded as quickly as possible. Lack or loss of any data gathered trackside would prevent AMSP’s abilities to accurately recap on-track sessions.
This clearly represents an incredibly busy time for the security personnel on the ground both at Indianapolis and in the UK. Leaning on AI to facilitate the secure and reliable movement of highly sensitive data empowers AMSP’s IT team to stay proactive, rather than being reactive and playing catch up in the case of a security incident.
Facing the future with Cyber AI
AMSP is in a unique position in the INDYCAR paddock – no other team transmits so much data, so often or over so far of a distance. Darktrace’s Cyber AI technology is helping to protect AMSP’s at-track engineering crews, remote engineering teams, data transfer processes and cloud infrastructure, from an increasingly hostile cyber-threat landscape.
Relying on Darktrace to safeguard and protect its sensitive data and digital assets will become critical in securing AMSP’s overall approach to race weekend activation. As the collaboration between McLaren Racing and Arrow McLaren SP continues to drive success on the track, the targeted actions of Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability ensures both sides of the technical partnership stay protected across different time zones, around the clock, no matter what threat is waiting round the corner.
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.
Boosting Security with Azure Virtual Network TAP Traffic Mirroring
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.
MFA Under Attack: AiTM Phishing Kits Abusing Legitimate Services
In late 2024 and early 2025, the Darktrace Security Operations Center (SOC) investigated alerts regarding separate cases of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) account compromises on two customer environments that presented several similarities, suggesting they were part of a wider phishing campaign.
This campaign was found to leverage the project collaboration and note-taking application, Milanote, and the Tycoon 2FA phishing kit.
Legitimate services abused
As highlighted in Darktrace's 2024 Annual Threat Report [1], threat actors are abusing legitimate services, like Milanote, in their phishing campaigns. By leveraging these trusted platforms and domains, malicious actors can bypass traditional security measures, making their phishing emails appear benign and increasing the likelihood of successful attacks.
Darktrace categorizes these senders and platforms as free content senders. These services allow users to send emails containing custom content (e.g., files) from fully validated, fixed service address belonging to legitimate corporations. Although some of these services permit full body and subject customization by attackers, the structure of these emails is generally consistent, making it challenging to differentiate between legitimate and malicious emails.
What is Tycoon 2FA?
Tycoon 2FA is an Adversary-in-the-Middle (AitM) phishing kit, first seen in August 2023 and distributed via the Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) model [2]. It targets multi-factor authentication (MFA) by intercepting credentials and MFA tokens during authentication on fake Microsoft or Google login pages. The attacker captures session cookies after MFA is completed, allowing them to replay the session and access the user account, even if credentials are reset. The rise in MFA use has increased the popularity of AitM phishing kits like Tycoon 2FA and Mamba 2FA, another AiTM phishing kit investigated by Darktrace.
Initial access via phishing email
At the beginning of 2025, Darktrace observed phishing emails leveraging Milanote being sent to multiple internal recipients in an organization. In this attack, the same email was sent to 19 different users, all of which were held by Darktrace.
The subject line of the emails mentioned both a legitimate internal user of the company, the company name, as well as a Milanote board regarding a “new agreement” in German. It is a common social engineering technique to mention urgent matters, such as unpaid invoices, expired passwords, or awaiting voicemails, in the subject line to prompt immediate action from the user. However, this tactic is now widely covered in phishing awareness training, making users more suspicious of such emails. In this case, while the subject mentioned a “new agreement,” likely raising the recipient’s curiosity, the tone remained professional and not overly alarming. Additionally, the mention of a colleague and the standardized language typical of free content sender emails further helped dispel concerns regarding the email.
These emails were sent by the legitimate address support@milanote[.]com and referenced "Milanote" in the personal field of the header but originated from the freemail address “ahnermatternk.ef.od.13@gmail[.]com”. Darktrace / EMAIL recognized that none of the recipients had previously received a file share email from Milanote, making this sender unfamiliar in the customer's email environment
The emails contained several benign links to legitimate Milanote endpoints (including an unsubscribe link) which were not flagged by Darktrace. However, they also included a malicious link designed to direct recipients to a pre-filled credential harvesting page hosted on Milanote, prompting them to register for an account. Despite not blocking the legitimate Milanote links in the same email, Darktrace locked the malicious link, preventing users from visiting the credential harvester.
Figure 1: Credential harvesting page sent to recipients, as seen in. sandbox environment.
Around one minute later, one recipient received a legitimate email from Milanote confirming their successful account registration, indicating they had accessed the phishing page. This email had a lower anomaly score and was not flagged by Darktrace / EMAIL because, unlike the first email, it did not contain any suspicious links and was a genuine account registration notification. Similarly, in the malicious Milanote email, only the link leading to the phishing page was blocked, while the benign and legitimate Milanote links remained accessible, demonstrating Darktrace’s precise and targeted actioning.
Figure 2: A legitimate and a malicious Milanote email received by one recipient.
Around the same time, Darktrace / NETWORK observed the same user’s device making DNS query for the domain name “lrn.ialeahed[.]com” , which has been flagged as a Tycoon 2FA domain [2], suggesting the use of this phishing platform.
Once the user had entered their details in the credential harvester, it is likely that they were presented a document hosted on Milanote that contained the final payload link – likely hidden behind text instructing users to access a “new agreement” document.
External research indicates that the user was likely directed to a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge meant to reroute unwanted traffic, such as automated security scripts and penetration testing tools [2] [3]. After these checks and other background processes are completed, the user is directed to the final landing page. In this case, it was likely a fake login prompt hosted on the attacker’s server, where the user is asked to authenticate to their account using MFA. By burrowing malicious links and files in this manner, threat actors can evade analysis by traditional security email gateways, effectively bypassing their protection.
Darktrace’s analysis of the structure and word content of the phishing emails resulted in an 82% probability score that the email was malicious, and the email further received a 67% phishing inducement score, representing how closely the structure and word content of the emails compared to typical phishing emails.
All these unusual elements triggered multiple alerts in Darktrace / EMAIL, focusing on two main suspicious aspects: a new, unknown sender with no prior correspondence with the recipients or the environment, and the inclusion of a link to a previously unseen file storage solution.
Figure 3: Milanote phishing email as seen within Darktrace / EMAIL.
After detecting the fifth email, the “Sender Surge” model alert was triggered in Darktrace / EMAIL due to a significant number of recipients being emailed by this new suspicious sender in a short period. These recipients were from various departments across the customer’s organization, including sales, marketing, purchasing, and production. Darktrace / EMAIL determined that the emails were sent to a highly unusual group of internal recipients, further raising doubts about the business legitimacy.
Darktrace / EMAIL suggested actions to contain the attack by holding all Milanote phishing emails back from recipient’s inboxes, except for the detailed email with locked links. However, autonomous actions were not enabled at the time, allowing the initial email to reach recipients' inboxes, providing a brief window for interaction. Unfortunately, during this window, one recipient clicked on the Milanote payload link, leading to the compromise of their account.
SaaS account takeover
About three minutes after the malicious Milanote email was received, Darktrace / IDENTITY detected an unusual login to the email recipient’s SaaS account. The SaaS actor was observed accessing files from their usual location in Germany, while simultaneously, a 100% rare login occurred from a location in the US that had never been seen in the customer’s environment before. This login was also flagged as suspicious by Microsoft 365, triggering a 'Conditional Access Policy' that required MFA authentication, which was successfully completed.
Figure 4: Tycoon 2FA adnimistration panel login page dated from October 2023 [3].
Despite the successful authentication, Darktrace / IDENTITY recognized that the login from this unusual location, coupled with simultaneous activity in another geographically distant location, were highly suspicious. Darktrace went on to observe MFA-validated logins from three separate US-based IP addresses: 89.185.80[.]19, 5.181.3[.]68, and 38.242.7[.]252. Most of the malicious activity was performed from the latter, which is associated with the Hide My Ass (HMA) VPN network [5].
Figure 5: Darktrace’s detection of the suspicious login from the US while the legitimate user was logged in from Germany.
Figure 6: Darktrace’s detection of the suspicious login following successful MFA authentication.
Following this, the malicious actor accessed the user’s inbox and created a new mailbox rule named “GTH” that deleted any incoming email containing the string “milanote” in the subject line or body. Rules like this are a common technique used by attackers to leverage compromised accounts for launching phishing campaigns and concealing replies to phishing emails that might raise suspicions among legitimate account holders. Using legitimate, albeit compromised, accounts to send additional phishing emails enhances the apparent legitimacy of the malicious emails. This tactic has been reported as being used by Tycoon 2FA attackers [4].
The attacker accessed over 140 emails within the legitimate user’s inbox, including both the inbox and the “Sent Items” folder. Notably, the attacker accessed five emails in the “Sent Items” folder and modified their attachments. These emails were mainly related to invoices, suggesting the threat actor may have been looking to hijack those email threads to send fake invoices or replicate previous invoice emails.
Darktrace’s Cyber AI AnalystTM launched autonomous investigations into the individual events surrounding this suspicious activity. It connected these separate events into a single, broad account takeover incident, providing the customer with a clearer view of the ongoing compromise.
Figure 7: Cyber AI Analyst’s detection of unusual SaaS account activities in a single incident.
Figure 8: Cyber AI Analyst investigation of suspicious activities performed by the attacker.
Darktrace's response
Within three minutes of the first unusual login alert, Darktrace’s Autonomous Response intervened, disabling the compromised user account for two hours.
As the impacted customer was subscribed to the Managed Threat Detection Service, Darktrace’s SOC team investigated the activity further and promptly alerted the customer’s security team. With the user’s account still disabled by Autonomous Response, the attack was contained, allowing the customer’s security team valuable time to investigate and remediate. Within ten minutes of receiving the alert from Darktrace’s SOC, they reset the user’s password, closed all active SaaS sessions, and deleted the malicious email rule. Darktrace’s SOC further supported the customer through the Security Operations Service Support service by providing information about the data accessed and identifying any other affected users.
Figure 9: Autonomous Response actions carried out by Darktrace / IDENTITY to contain the malicious activity.
A wider Milanote phishing campaign?
Around a month before this compromise activity, Darktrace alerted another customer to similar activities involving two compromised user accounts. These accounts created new inbox rules named “GFH” and “GVB” to delete all incoming emails containing the string “milanote” in their subject line and/or body.
The phishing emails that led to the compromise of these user accounts were similar to the ones discussed above. Specifically, these emails were sent via the Milanote platform and referenced a “new agreement” (in Spanish) being shared by a colleague. Additionally, the payload link included in the phishing emails showed the same UserPrincipalName (UPN) attribute (i.e., click?upn=u001.qLX9yCzR), which has been seen in other Milanote phishing emails leveraging Tycoon 2FA reported by OSINT sources [6]. Interestingly, in some cases, the email also referenced a “new agreement” in Portuguese, indicating a global campaign.
Based on the similarities in the rule’s naming convention and action, as well as the similarities in the phishing email subjects, it is likely that these were part of the same campaign leveraging Milanote and Tycoon 2FA to compromise user accounts. Since its introduction, the Tycoon 2FA phishing kit has undergone several enhancements to increase its stealth and obfuscation methods, making it harder for security tools to detect. For example, the latest versions contain special source code to obstruct web page analysis by defenders, prevent users from copying meaningful text from the phishing webpages, and disable the right-click menu to prevent offline analysis [4].
Conclusion
Threat actors are continually employing new methods to bypass security detection tools and measures. As highlighted in this blog, even robust security mechanisms like MFA can be compromised using AitM phishing kits. The misuse of legitimate services such as Milanote for malicious purposes can help attackers evade traditional email security solutions by blurring the distinction between legitimate and malicious content.
This is why security tools based on anomaly detection are crucial for defending against such attacks. However, user awareness is equally important. Delays in processing can impact the speed of response, making it essential for users to be informed about these threats.
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