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December 1, 2021

Darktrace AI Detects Egregor Ransomware On Day One

Discover how Darktrace AI detected the signs of an Egregor ransomware attack on day one of deployment. Stay informed on the latest cybersecurity threats!
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
Max Heinemeyer
Global Field CISO
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01
Dec 2021

It’s no secret that ransomware has shaped conversations in the SOC this year more than any other topic, as attackers use new malware variants and other sophisticated techniques, tools and procedures to bypass conventional security tools. Not only are these attacks becoming more advanced and difficult to stop, but the ransom demands are growing, with one source suggesting the average ransom demand has grown by over 500% since last year.

To stop novel ransomware attacks, security teams need to turn away from ‘rear-view mirror’ tools trained on previous attacks, and towards AI technology that learns the business from the ground up and autonomously responds with targeted action to contain the threat.

This blog showcases how defenders can fight back against even the most sophisticated attacks, dissecting a recent ransomware attack uncovered by Darktrace’s AI from its first day of deployment at a utility services company. This was a particularly devastating ransomware strain known as Egregor, which has likely been disrupted by a joint effort between law enforcement agencies in Ukraine, France and the US, but wreaked havoc in the winter of 2020/21, affecting 150 companies and demanding ransoms of up to $4 million.

Anatomy of an Egregor attack

Figure 1: A timeline of the attack.

The initial intrusion occurred prior to Darktrace’s deployment, via Emotet, a trojan malware typically spread via spam emails – that has also been disrupted since this attack happened. Had Antigena Email been installed, Darktrace’s AI would have picked up on subtle deviations within malicious emails and actioned a response, containing the ransomware attack in its earliest stages. In this case, Antigena Email was not installed, and so the attack was allowed to proceed.

On November 27, 2020, Darktrace’s AI was deployed and began learning the ‘patterns of life’ for every user and device in the organization. On the first day of learning the organization, the technology detected suspicious external connections on a laptop that was deviating from the ‘pattern of life’ of its peer group of similar devices, beaconing to unusual rare domains that were later associated with malware activity.

Lateral movement and privilege escalation indicators were then observed, as well as possible attempted email hijacking. Darktrace’s AI detected new and unusual svcctl requests, new remote procedure calls, and suspicious executable file writes over SMBv2, as well as new external connections over email-related ports.

Connecting the dots: Cyber AI Analyst investigates

Triggered by this unusual activity, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst launched an investigation into all observable stages of the kill chain including command and control connections, suspicious executable SMB writes and privilege escalation.

It then automatically generated an incident summary showcasing every stage of the attack, surfacing all the information the security team needed for a fast response.

Figure 2: Cyber AI Analyst triaged and reported on the malicious activity from the device, surfacing useful metrics and natural language summaries for each stage of the kill chain.

Figure 3: This graph from the Darktrace UI displays how Cyber AI Analyst detected the various stages of the kill chain and correlated the timeline of events.

Figure 4: Darktrace reveals the spike in external connections in blue for the device and the DCE-RPC requests in green. The dots represent model breaches triggered by the unusual suspicious activity originating from the device. The external connection spikes match the internal DC-RPC request spikes indicating the device is attempting to move laterally during the C2 connections.

In this case, real-time detections from Darktrace’s AI coupled with a high-confidence alert from Darktrace’s SOC team enabled the company’s security team to isolate the device from the network, successfully containing the attack before encryption began.

While having AI-powered detection was enough to stop the attack in this scenario, relying on detection alone is playing with fire. With the average dwell time of attacks shrinking – particularly in the case of ransomware – Autonomous Response is becoming critical in taking action on behalf of human teams. Attackers are increasingly striking out of hours, when these teams aren’t available to respond, and performing exfiltration and encryption rapidly. In these cases, detection without immediate response is futile.

Autonomous Response: Revolutionizing ransomware defense

Recent galvanizing attacks have propelled us into a new era of ransomware. 65% of C-suite and other executives say that ransomware will be a major issue they face over the next twelve months.

An over-reliance on security defenses that depend on rules, signatures, and historical data has proven to leave organizations vulnerable to novel ransomware. Failure to prepare for the unknown often forces businesses into a difficult dilemma when it comes to ransomware: either pull the plug to stop the encryption by taking everything offline, or face encrypted systems, and be confronted with a hefty ransom.

But there is a third way, one which uses Self-Learning AI to understand your organization from the ground up to spot subtle deviations indicative of a cyber-threat, regardless of whether it has been seen before. Moreover, Autonomous Response ensures that fast, precise action will be taken against attacks whenever they occur. While even the most attentive human teams cannot hope to match the machine speed of modern ransomware attacks, Autonomous Response halts these sophisticated threats the moment they emerge. It really is the only way to truly level the playing field against today’s ransomware attacks.

Thanks to Darktrace analyst Dylan Evans for his insights on the above threat find.

Darktrace model breaches:

  • Anomalous Connection / Anomalous SSL without SNI to New External
  • Anomalous Connection / Posting HTTP to IP Without Hostname
  • Experimental / Possible Emotet Callback URL
  • Device / Large Number of Model Breaches
  • Device / Lateral Movement and C2 Activity
  • Compromise / SSL or HTTP Beacon
  • Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Breaches
  • Compromise / Suspicious SSL Activity
  • Compromise / Unusual SMB Session and DRS
  • Compromise / Suspicious Spam Activity
  • Compromise / Unusual DRS Activity
  • Anomalous Connection / High Volume of New or Uncommon Service Control
  • Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare
  • Compliance / SMB Drive Write
  • Experimental / Anomalous GetNCChanges and Kerberos Ticket
  • Experimental / New or Uncommon SMB Named Pipe V4
  • Device / Large Number of Connections to New Endpoints
  • Anomalous Connection / New or Uncommon Service Control
  • User / New Admin Credentials on Client
  • Anomalous Connection / Possible Outbound Spam
  • Compromise / New or Repeated to Unusual SSL Port
  • Compromise / Slow Beaconing Activity To External Rare
  • Anomalous Connection / Anomalous SSL without SNI to New External
  • Experimental / New or Uncommon SMB Named Pipe V3
  • Experimental / Anomalous DRSGetNCChanges Operation
  • Anomalous Connection / Possible Callback URL
  • Compromise / Sustained SSL or HTTP Increase
  • Anomalous Connection / Multiple SMB Admin Session
  • Anomalous Connection / Rare External SSL Self-Signed
  • Anomalous Connection / Posting HTTP to IP Without Hostname
  • Device / New Failed External Connections
  • Anomalous Connection / Suspicious Self-Signed SSL
  • Compromise / SSL Beaconing to Rare Destination
  • Compromise / HTTP Beaconing to Rare Destination
  • Experimental / Rare Device TLS Agent

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
Max Heinemeyer
Global Field CISO

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May 21, 2025

Evaluating Email Security: How to Select the Best Solution for Your Organization

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When evaluating email security solutions, it’s crucial to move beyond marketing claims and focus on real-world performance. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through an A/B comparison approach – a side-by-side evaluation of vendors based on consistent, predefined criteria.

This method cuts through biases, reveals true capability differences, and ensures that all solutions are assessed on a level playing field. It’s not just about finding an objectively good solution – it’s about finding the best solution for your organization’s specific needs.

An A/B comparison approach is particularly effective for three main reasons:

  1. Eliminates bias: By comparing solutions under identical conditions, it’s easier to spot differences in performance without the fog of marketing jargon.
  2. Highlights real capabilities: Direct side-by-side testing exposes genuine strengths and weaknesses, making it easier to judge which features are impactful versus merely decorative.
  3. Encourages objective decision-making: This structured method reduces emotional or brand-driven decisions, focusing purely on metrics and performance.

Let’s look at the key factors to consider when setting up your evaluation to ensure a fair, accurate, and actionable comparison.

Deployment: Setting the stage for fair evaluation

To achieve a genuine comparison, deployment must be consistent across all evaluated solutions:

  • Establish the same scope: All solutions should be granted identical visibility across relevant tenants and domains to ensure parity.
  • Set a concrete timeline: Deploy and test each solution with the same dataset, at the same points in time. This allows you to observe differences in learning periods and adaptive capabilities.

Equal visibility and synchronized timelines prevent discrepancies that could skew your understanding of each vendor’s true capabilities. But remember – quicker results might not equal better learning or understanding!

Tuning and configurations: Optimizing for real-world conditions

Properly tuning and configuring each solution is critical for fair evaluation:

  • Compare on optimal performance: Consult with each vendor to understand what optimal deployment looks like for their solution, particularly if machine learning is involved.
  • Consider the long term: Configuration adjustments should be made with long-term usage in mind. Short-term fixes can mask long-term challenges.
  • Data visibility: Ensure each solution can retain and provide search capabilities on all data collected throughout the evaluation period.

These steps guarantee that you are comparing fully optimized versions of each platform, not underperforming or misconfigured ones.

Evaluation: Applying consistent metrics

Once deployment and configurations are aligned, the evaluation itself must be consistent, to prevent unfair scoring and help to identify true differences in threat detection and response capabilities.

  • Coordinate your decision criteria: Ensure all vendors are measured against the same set of criteria, established before testing begins.
  • Understand vendor threat classification: Each vendor may have different ways of classifying threats, so be sure to understand these nuances.
  • Maintain communication: If results seem inaccurate, engage with the vendors. Their response and remediation capabilities are part of the evaluation.

Making a decision: Look beyond the metrics

When it comes to reviewing the performance of each solution, it’s important to both consider and look beyond the raw data. This is about choosing the solution that best aligns with your specific business needs, which may include factors and features not captured in the results.

  • Evaluate based on results: Consider accuracy, threats detected, precision, and response effectiveness.
  • Evaluate beyond results: Assess the overall experience, including support, integrations, training, and long-term alignment with your security strategy.
  • Review and communicate: Internally review the findings and communicate them back to the vendors.

Choosing the right email security solution isn’t just about ticking boxes, it’s about strategic alignment with your organization’s goals and the evolving threat landscape. A structured, A/B comparison approach will help ensure that the solution you select is truly the best fit.

For a full checklist of the features and capabilities to compare, as well as how to perform a commercial and technical evaluation, check out the full Buyer’s Checklist for Evaluating Email Security.

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About the author
Carlos Gray
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email

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May 21, 2025

Adapting to new USCG cybersecurity mandates: Darktrace for ports and maritime systems

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What is the Marine Transportation System (MTS)?

Marine Transportation Systems (MTS) play a substantial roll in U.S. commerce, military readiness, and economic security. Defined as a critical national infrastructure, the MTS encompasses all aspects of maritime transportation from ships and ports to the inland waterways and the rail and roadways that connect them.

MTS interconnected systems include:

  • Waterways: Coastal and inland rivers, shipping channels, and harbors
  • Ports: Terminals, piers, and facilities where cargo and passengers are transferred
  • Vessels: Commercial ships, barges, ferries, and support craft
  • Intermodal Connections: Railroads, highways, and logistics hubs that tie maritime transport into national and global supply chains

The Coast Guard plays a central role in ensuring the safety, security, and efficiency of the MTS, handling over $5.4 trillion in annual economic activity. As digital systems increasingly support operations across the MTS, from crane control to cargo tracking, cybersecurity has become essential to protecting this lifeline of U.S. trade and infrastructure.

Maritime Transportation Systems also enable international trade, making them prime targets for cyber threats from ransomware gangs to nation-state actors.

To defend against growing threats, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) has moved from encouraging cybersecurity best practices to enforcing them, culminating in a new mandate that goes into effect on July 16, 2025. These regulations aim to secure the digital backbone of the maritime industry.

Why maritime ports are at risk

Modern ports are a blend of legacy and modern OT, IoT, and IT digitally connected technologies that enable crane operations, container tracking, terminal storage, logistics, and remote maintenance.

Many of these systems were never designed with cybersecurity in mind, making them vulnerable to lateral movement and disruptive ransomware attack spillover.

The convergence of business IT networks and operational infrastructure further expands the attack surface, especially with the rise of cloud adoption and unmanaged IoT and IIoT devices.

Cyber incidents in recent years have demonstrated how ransomware or malicious activity can halt crane operations, disrupt logistics, and compromise safety at scale threatening not only port operations, but national security and economic stability.

Relevant cyber-attacks on maritime ports

Maersk & Port of Los Angeles (2017 – NotPetya):
A ransomware attack crippled A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company. Operations at 17 ports, including the Port of Los Angeles, were halted due to system outages, causing weeks of logistical chaos.

Port of San Diego (2018 – Ransomware Attack):
A ransomware attack targeted the Port of San Diego, disrupting internal IT systems including public records, business services, and dockside cargo operations. While marine traffic was unaffected, commercial activity slowed significantly during recovery.

Port of Houston (2021 – Nation-State Intrusion):
A suspected nation-state actor exploited a known vulnerability in a Port of Houston web application to gain access to its network. While the attack was reportedly thwarted, it triggered a federal investigation and highlighted the vulnerability of maritime systems.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, India (2022 – Ransomware Incident):
India’s largest container port experienced disruptions due to a ransomware attack affecting operations and logistics systems. Container handling and cargo movement slowed as IT systems were taken offline during recovery efforts.

A regulatory shift: From guidance to enforcement

Since the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) of 2002, ports have been required to develop and maintain security plans. Cybersecurity formally entered the regulatory fold in 2020 with revisions to 33 CFR Part 105 and 106, requiring port authorities to assess and address computer system vulnerabilities.

In January 2025, the USCG finalized new rules to enforce cybersecurity practices across the MTS. Key elements include (but are not limited to):

  • A dedicated cyber incident response plan (PR.IP-9)
  • Routine cybersecurity risk assessments and exercises (ID.RA)
  • Designation of a cybersecurity officer and regular workforce training (section 3.1)
  • Controls for access management, segmentation, logging, and encryption (PR.AC-1:7)
  • Supply chain risk management (ID.SC)
  • Incident reporting to the National Response Center

Port operators are encouraged to align their programs with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF 2.0) and NIST SP 800-82r3, which provide comprehensive guidance for IT and OT security in industrial environments.

How Darktrace can support maritime & ports

Unified IT + OT + Cloud coverage

Maritime ports operate in hybrid environments spanning business IT systems (finance, HR, ERP), industrial OT (cranes, gates, pumps, sensors), and an increasing array of cloud and SaaS platforms.

Darktrace is the only vendor that provides native visibility and threat detection across OT/IoT, IT, cloud, and SaaS environments — all in a single platform. This means:

  • Cranes and other physical process control networks are monitored in the same dashboard as Active Directory and Office 365.
  • Threats that start in the cloud (e.g., phishing, SaaS token theft) and pivot or attempt to pivot into OT are caught early — eliminating blind spots that siloed tools miss.

This unification is critical to meeting USCG requirements for network-wide monitoring, risk identification, and incident response.

AI that understands your environment. Not just known threats

Darktrace’s AI doesn’t rely on rules or signatures. Instead, it uses Self-Learning AI TM that builds a unique “pattern of life” for every device, protocol, user, and network segment, whether it’s a crane router or PLC, SCADA server, Workstation, or Linux file server.

  • No predefined baselines or manual training
  • Real-time anomaly detection for zero-days, ransomware, and supply chain compromise
  • Continuous adaptation to new devices, configurations, and operations

This approach is critical in diverse distributed OT environments where change and anomalous activity on the network are more frequent. It also dramatically reduces the time and expertise needed to classify and inventory assets, even for unknown or custom-built systems.

Supporting incident response requirements

A key USCG requirement is that cybersecurity plans must support effective incident response.

Key expectations include:

  • Defined response roles and procedures: Personnel must know what to do and when (RS.CO-1).
  • Timely reporting: Incidents must be reported and categorized according to established criteria (RS.CO-2, RS.AN-4).
  • Effective communication: Information must be shared internally and externally, including voluntary collaboration with law enforcement and industry peers (RS.CO-3 through RS.CO-5).
  • Thorough analysis: Alerts must be investigated, impacts understood, and forensic evidence gathered to support decision-making and recovery (RS.AN-1 through RS.AN-5).
  • Swift mitigation: Incidents must be contained and resolved efficiently, with newly discovered vulnerabilities addressed or documented (RS.MI-1 through RS.MI-3).
  • Ongoing improvement: Organizations must refine their response plans using lessons learned from past incidents (RS.IM-1 and RS.IM-2).

That means detections need to be clear, accurate, and actionable.

Darktrace cuts through the noise using AI that prioritizes only high-confidence incidents and provides natural-language narratives and investigative reports that explain:

  • What’s happening, where it’s happening, when it’s happening
  • Why it’s unusual
  • How to respond

Result: Port security teams often lean and multi-tasked can meet USCG response-time expectations and reporting needs without needing to scale headcount or triage hundreds of alerts.

Built-for-edge deployment

Maritime environments are constrained. Many traditional SaaS deployment types often are unsuitable for tugboats, cranes, or air-gapped terminal systems.

Darktrace builds and maintains its own ruggedized, purpose-built appliances and unique virtual deployment options that:

  • Deploy directly into crane networks or terminal enclosures
  • Require no configuration or tuning, drop-in ready
  • Support secure over-the-air updates and fleet management
  • Operate without cloud dependency, supporting isolated and air-gapped systems

Use case: Multiple ports have been able to deploy Darktrace directly into the crane’s switch enclosure, securing lateral movement paths without interfering with the crane control software itself.

Segmentation enforcement & real-time threat containment

Darktrace visualizes real-time connectivity and attack pathways across IT, OT, and IoT it and integrates with firewalls (e.g., Fortinet, Cisco, Palo Alto) to enforce segmentation using AI insights alongside Darktrace’s own native autonomous and human confirmed response capabilities.

Benefits of autonomous and human confirmed response:

  • Auto-isolate rogue devices before the threat can escalate
  • Quarantine a suspicious connectivity with confidence operations won’t be halted
  • Autonomously buy time for human responders during off-hours or holidays
  • This ensures segmentation isn't just documented but that in the case of its failure or exploitation responses are performed as a compensating control

No reliance on 3rd parties or external connectivity

Darktrace’s supply chain integrity is a core part of its value to critical infrastructure customers. Unlike solutions that rely on indirect data collection or third-party appliances, Darktrace:

  • Uses in-house engineered sensors and appliances
  • Does not require transmission of data to or from the cloud

This ensures confidence in both your cyber visibility and the security of the tools you deploy.

See examples here of how Darktrace stopped supply chain attacks:

Readiness for USCG and Beyond

With a self-learning system that adapts to each unique port environment, Darktrace helps maritime operators not just comply but build lasting cyber resilience in a high-threat landscape.

Cybersecurity is no longer optional for U.S. ports its operationally and nationally critical. Darktrace delivers the intelligence, automation, and precision needed to meet USCG requirements and protect the digital lifeblood of the modern port.

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About the author
Daniel Simonds
Director of Operational Technology
Your data. Our AI.
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