The State of Cybersecurity in the Finance Sector: Six Trends to Watch
Financial institutions are facing a threat landscape shaped by identity-led intrusion, pre-disclosure exploitation, data-first ransomware, and growing cloud and AI governance blind spots. This blog explores the key threats and trends redefining cyber risk across the finance sector and what defenders must adapt to next.
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
Nathaniel Jones
VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO
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28
Jan 2026
The evolving cybersecurity threat landscape in finance
The financial sector, encompassing commercial banks, credit unions, financial services providers, and cryptocurrency platforms, faces an increasingly complex and aggressive cyber threat landscape. The financial sector’s reliance on digital infrastructure and its role in managing high-value transactions make it a prime target for both financially motivated and state-sponsored threat actors.
Darktrace’s latest threat research, The State of Cybersecurity in the Finance Sector, draws on a combination of Darktrace telemetry data from real-world customer environments, open-source intelligence, and direct interviews with financial-sector CISOs to provide perspective on how attacks are unfolding and how defenders in the sector need to adapt.
Six cybersecurity trends in the finance sector for 2026
1. Credential-driven attacks are surging
Phishing continues to be a leading initial access vector for attacks targeting confidentiality. Financial institutions are frequently targeted with phishing emails designed to harvest login credentials. Techniques including Adversary-in-The-Middle (AiTM) to bypass Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) and QR code phishing (“quishing”) are surging and are capable of fooling even trained users. In the first half of 2025, Darktrace observed 2.4 million phishing emails within financial sector customer deployments, with almost 30% targeted towards VIP users.
2. Data Loss Prevention is an increasing challenge
Compliance issues – particularly data loss prevention -- remain a persistent risk. In October 2025 alone, Darktrace observed over 214,000 emails across financial sector customers that contained unfamiliar attachments and were sent to suspected personal email addresses highlighting clear concerns around data loss prevention. Across the same set of customers within the same time frame, more than 351,000 emails containing unfamiliar attachments were sent to freemail addresses (e.g. gmail, yahoo, icloud), highlighting clear concerns around DLP.
Confidentiality remains a primary concern for financial institutions as attackers increasingly target sensitive customer data, financial records, and internal communications.
3. Ransomware is evolving toward data theft and extortion
Ransomware is no longer just about locking systems, it’s about stealing data first and encrypting second. Groups such as Cl0p and RansomHub now prioritize exploiting trusted file-transfer platforms to exfiltrate sensitive data before encryption, maximizing regulatory and reputational fallout for victims.
Darktrace’s threat research identified routine scanning and malicious activity targeting internet-facing file-transfer systems used heavily by financial institutions. In one notable case involving Fortra GoAnywhere MFT, Darktrace detected malicious exploitation behavior six days before the CVE was publicly disclosed, demonstrating how attackers often operate ahead of patch cycles
This evolution underscores a critical reality: by the time a vulnerability is disclosed publicly, it may already be actively exploited.
4. Attackers are exploiting edge devices, often pre-disclosure.
VPNs, firewalls, and remote access gateways have become high-value targets, and attackers are increasingly exploiting them before vulnerabilities are publicly disclosed. Darktrace observed pre-CVE exploitation activity affecting edge technologies including Citrix, Palo Alto, and Ivanti, enabling session hijacking, credential harvesting, and privileged lateral movement into core banking systems.
Once compromised, these edge devices allow adversaries to blend into trusted network traffic, bypassing traditional perimeter defenses. CISOs interviewed for the report repeatedly described VPN infrastructure as a “concentrated focal point” for attackers, especially when patching and segmentation lag behind operational demands.
5. DPRK-linked activity is growing across crypto and fintech.
State-sponsored activity, particularly from DPRK-linked groups affiliated with Lazarus, continues to intensify across cryptocurrency and fintech organizations. Darktrace identified coordinated campaigns leveraging malicious npm packages, previously undocumented BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret malware, and exploitation of React2Shell (CVE-2025-55182) for credential theft and persistent backdoor access.
Targeting was observed across the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Chile, Nigeria, Kenya, and Qatar, highlighting the global scope of these operations.
6. Cloud complexity and AI governance gaps are now systemic risks.
Finally, CISOs consistently pointed to cloud complexity, insider risk from new hires, and ungoverned AI usage exposing sensitive data as systemic challenges. Leaders emphasized difficulty maintaining visibility across multi-cloud environments while managing sensitive data exposure through emerging AI tools.
Rapid AI adoption without clear guardrails has introduced new confidentiality and compliance risks, turning governance into a board-level concern rather than a purely technical one.
Building cyber resilience in a shifting threat landscape
The financial sector remains a prime target for both financially motivated and state-sponsored adversaries. What this research makes clear is that yesterday’s security assumptions no longer hold. Identity attacks, pre-disclosure exploitation, and data-first ransomware require adaptive, behavior-based defenses that can detect threats as they emerge, often ahead of public disclosure.
As financial institutions continue to digitize, resilience will depend on visibility across identity, edge, cloud, and data, combined with AI-driven defense that learns at machine speed.
Learn more about the threats facing the finance sector, and what your organization can do to keep up in The State of Cybersecurity in the Finance Sector report here.
Acknowledgements:
The State of Cybersecurity in the Finance sector report was authored by Calum Hall, Hugh Turnbull, Parvatha Ananthakannan, Tiana Kelly, and Vivek Rajan, with contributions from Emma Foulger, Nicole Wong, Ryan Traill, Tara Gould, and the Darktrace Threat Research and Incident Management teams.
[related-resource]
State of Finance Sector Threat Report
Access the full Darktrace threat research report to see how financial institutions are being targeted in real-world environments
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.
Hola VPN Abuse: From Proxy Traffic to Malware and Cryptomining
Darktrace’s analysis of Hola VPN-related activity across multiple environments reveals how peer-to-peer proxy functionality can enable malware delivery, command-and-control traffic, and cryptomining. Darktrace data highlights consistent patterns, suspicious downloads from rare endpoints, and post-compromise behavior, demonstrating how seemingly benign software can obscure threats and facilitate further malicious activity.
How Attackers Abuse the Chinese Nezha Monitoring Tool
This blog examines how attackers abuse the Chinese-developed Nezha monitoring tool, a legitimate open-source platform with remote access capabilities. Darktrace analysis of a honeypot intrusion highlights malicious deployment via containers, demonstrating how dual-use software enables stealthy operations, trust inversion, and detection challenges in dynamic cloud and enterprise environments modern.
Darktrace named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Network Detection and Response (NDR) For the Second Consecutive Year
Darktrace has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Network Detection and Response (NDR) for the second consecutive year. We believe this reflects continued execution in NDR, ongoing AI innovation, and strong outcomes delivered for customers globally.
Hola VPN Abuse: From Proxy Traffic to Malware and Cryptomining
Introduction
In enterprise environments, non-compliant software traffic can introduce unexpected exposure by creating unmanaged paths for outbound connectivity. Hola VPN is a notable example because of its peer-to-peer design, which can effectively turn user devices into routing or exit nodes for other parties’ traffic, shifting the risk profile from that of a traditional virtual private network (VPN) to something closer to a distributed proxy.
As a result, the appearance of Hola-related activity, whether from prior installation or unintended background connections, should be treated with caution. Such activity may provide a foothold for malicious behavior, including lateral movement or command-and-control communication.
This blog explores how Hola-associated activity appeared as part of broader patterns of suspicious behavior observed across the Darktrace customer base.
The campaign
In February and March 2026, Darktrace observed similar anomalous activity across multiple customer environments, with affected devices showing consistent behavioral patterns. These included connections to multiple *.hola[.]org endpoints using Hola-related user agents, suggesting interaction with Hola infrastructure rather than isolated or incidental traffic.
Following these connections, affected customer environments showed downloads of suspicious executable files from rare external endpoints 188.241.219[.]55 and 184.241.218[.]111. Both endpoints have been flagged as potentially malicious by open-source intelligence (OSINT) [1][2].
These downloads were conducted using consistent user agents across impacted customers, specifically ‘Hola svc_js_win32/1.249.408’ and ‘Hola svc_js_win32/1.251.389’, suggesting a possible association with Hola-related activity.
Notably, this pattern aligns with recent reporting that, in some cases, Hola distributed an undeclared executable component, me[.]exe, which was later assessed to be a likely Monero-mining binary introduced via a compromised delivery pipeline [3].
Case Study 1
Darktrace first observed a new device on January 19, 2026, within a customer environment based in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region. On the same day it appeared on the network, the device communicated with multiple pieces of Hola VPN-linked infrastructure before downloading a binary from a hola[.]org subdomain.
Figure 1: Cyber AI Analyst investigation highlighting Hola VPN service activity potentially associated with subsequent HTTP command-and-control (C2) connections.
Subsequent Darktrace telemetry revealed a recurring pattern of activity from the day the device was first observed through to March 4, 2026. During this period, the device repeatedly issued HTTP GET requests to the URI /bwfile?size=1048576, each returning a 200 OK response, indicating successful file retrieval.
This behavior was accompanied by a POST request to /bwfile, followed by an additional GET request for a significantly larger file at /bwfile?size=26214400, suggesting a deliberate and structured file transfer pattern.
Notably, the binary download activity was not tied to a single static host. Instead, it was observed across multiple URLs that changed over time while remaining within the same hola[.]org domain. This pattern suggests the use of rotating or distributed delivery infrastructure rather than a fixed endpoint.
Figure 2: Variation in URLs over time within the same hola[.]org domain, indicating the use of dynamically changing endpoints.
Across these events, the activity was consistently associated with the user agent Hola svc_js_win32/1.249.408, further linking the traffic to Hola-related service components. Amid these persistent and unusual connections, on February 22, Darktrace observed the device connecting to 188.241.219[.]55/proxy-peer-windows-amd64[.]exe, resulting in the download of an executable file.
Figure 3: File transfer event showing the download of an executable from the rare external endpoint 188.241.219[.]55.
Based on its file hash, the downloaded file was assessed as a likely Trojan downloader [4], with import hash (imphash) values showing similarities to samples linked to Vidar, Rhadamanthys, and Stealc according to OSINT [5]. Overall, this sequence of activity suggests that Hola-related connectivity may have been leveraged as part of a broader malware delivery chain.
Darktrace’s Autonomous Response
Due to the highly unusual activity observed, Darktrace Autonomous Response was triggered by the device’s behavior. However, as the customer deployment was configured in “Human Confirmation” mode, manual approval was required before any action could be taken.
Had the deployment been set to “Fully Autonomous” mode, Darktrace would have automatically:
Blocked connections to the associated ports and external endpoints
Prevented all outgoing network connections from the device
Enforced the device’s established ‘pattern of life’, allowing normal activity to continue while restricting any anomalous behavior
Figure 4: Example of a Darktrace Autonomous Response model highlighting the action that would have been taken, demonstrating how the system identifies anomalous behavior and applies targeted containment measures to restrict suspicious network activity.
Case Study 2
While the first case focused on anomalous activity from a newly observed device, Darktrace also identified cases in which devices had already been communicating with Hola-related endpoints prior to the suspected campaign. This may suggest pre-existing Hola usage within the environment, potentially increasing exposure and creating an avenue for subsequent suspicious activity.
One case involved three devices within a customer network based in the Americas (AMS). In this instance, a different payload was identified: me[.]exe, a potentially malicious cryptocurrency miner also referred to as HolaMonitorService[.]exe [6][7]. The downloads were observed from infrastructure similar to that seen in Case 1, including an IP address within the same 188.241.0.0/16 subnet.
Connections to *.hola[.]org, alongside the use of potential Hola-related user agents consistent with those in Case 1, were also identified, further suggesting a link between the observed activity and Hola-associated infrastructure.
Darktrace observed activity indicative of unusual VPN usage on the first affected device on February 2, followed by telemetry suggesting potential Tor usage. This was later followed by the download of me[.]exe on March 10 from 188.241.218[.]111. Notably, this device was the earliest among the three within the deployment to exhibit the presence of the suspicious executable.
Figure 5: Cyber AI Analyst detection highlighting the download of a suspicious executable from a similar external endpoint in a separate deployment.
On March 5, 2026, the second affected device exhibited a slightly different progression, initiating connections to http-test1[.]hola[.]org using the user agent ‘hola_get’. This activity was followed by the download of me[.]exe from the same endpoint on March 13, consistent with the broader pattern of Hola-related downloads observed across the environment.
Figure 6: Example of Hola VPN-related connectivity observed on the network prior to the suspected campaign, indicating pre-existing usage that may have contributed to subsequent activity.
The final affected device within this customer’s network demonstrated a more limited but related pattern, also downloading me[.]exe on March 17 using the same ‘hola_get’ user agent.
While the earlier Hola VPN usage observed across the deployment may not have been directly related to the suspected malware campaign, it may nonetheless have contributed to reduced visibility. The presence of pre-existing Hola-related traffic could have obscured malicious activity, making it more difficult to distinguish legitimate usage from attacker-driven behavior and, in turn, hindering the timely identification of the emerging compromise.
Darktrace’s Autonomous Response
For this deployment, the customer had their Autonomous Response capability configured in “Fully Autonomous” mode, allowing Darktrace to take action without human intervention. As a result, the system was able to autonomously disrupt the activity as soon as relevant events were identified through model detections.
Figure 7: Darktrace Autonomous Response actions taken against suspicious activity linked to Hola VPN.
Suspected cryptomining activity
As previously noted, some of the observed executable payloads appear to be linked to cryptomining malware. Across a subset of affected customer environments, this assessment was further supported by subsequent device activity consistent with Monero mining. Affected devices established follow-on connections to multiple external endpoints aligned with known mining infrastructure, indicating post-download execution.
Considering the broader sequence of activity, this pattern may point to a wider form of abuse in which legitimate VPN-related traffic is used to mask or facilitate malicious behavior following compromise.
On several devices, the download of executable files, including a newly observed peer[.]exe, was followed by alerts indicative of cryptocurrency mining activity. Mining-related credentials such as ‘x’ were observed using the Minergate protocol to communicate with endpoints within the 89.125.255.0/24 subnet and 188.241.218[.]111, the same endpoint involved in earlier download activity. Additional credentials appeared to reflect device-specific CPU identifiers, for example ‘12th Gen Intel(R) Core (TM) i5-1235U’.
Observed mining methods included login, submit, and job, consistent with active participation in a pool-based mining workflow rather than passive or incidental contact. The login method indicates that the host authenticated to the mining service as a worker, job reflects the assignment of computational tasks, and submit shows completed work being returned to the pool [8]. This sequence suggests that affected devices were actively contributing processing resources as part of an unauthorized distributed mining operation.
The presence of unauthorized cryptominers can lead to degraded system performance and reduced device stability. Beyond the immediate resource impact, such activity often serves as an indicator of a broader compromise rather than an isolated issue. This may increase the risk of further malware deployment, persistence mechanisms, and lateral movement, particularly in environments where the initial intrusion has not been fully contained.
Conclusion
Across affected environments, detections such as unusual VPN usage, connections to Hola infrastructure, anomalous HTTP activity, suspicious file downloads, and subsequent cryptomining behavior were linked into a single, evolving incident narrative. This aggregation provided a clearer view of attack progression, enabling security teams to understand not just isolated alerts, but the full sequence of compromise from initial contact through to post-exploitation.
Ultimately, these activities show that the risk posed by non-compliant software such as Hola VPN can extend far beyond simple policy violations. What began as traffic to Hola-related infrastructure was, in multiple cases, followed by behavior suggesting deliberate misuse, including suspicious executable downloads using Hola-related user agents and, in some instances, evidence of active cryptomining. These were not isolated anomalies, but elements of a broader pattern in which seemingly benign proxy or VPN-related communications may have created a pathway for malicious delivery and unauthorized resource exploitation.
The significance of this activity lies not only in the downloads or mining, but in what it reveals about an attacker’s ability to blend malicious operations into traffic associated with software that may already have a foothold in the environment. When unapproved software operates within an enterprise, it can reduce visibility, blur the distinction between legitimate and malicious traffic, and create opportunities to extend compromise in ways that are persistent and difficult to detect. Darktrace’s anomaly-based approach enables these behavioral distinctions to be identified, regardless of whether the device is new or long established within the network.
Credit to Min Kim (Associate Principal Analyst), Priya Thapa (Senior Cyber Analyst) Edited by Ryan Traill (Content Manager)
Cybersecurity for the Sports Sector: The Threats Facing a Digitized Industry in 2026
Securing sporting events in 2026
When you walk into a stadium on game day, you are entering a small smart city. Ticketing, turnstiles, payments, public Wi-Fi for tens of thousands of fans, CCTV, lighting, even the HVAC all run on connected systems. The experience for fans has become unmatched, but that dependency has created a much larger attack surface than people may realize.
Our latest threat research backs that up. In the past year, a survey that Darktrace commissioned found that 84% of respondents from professional sports organizations had at least one cyber incident, and 57% were hit more than once. For a sector that relies on the impact of the live moment, those numbers translate directly into operational risk.
Why sports is a target for cyber attacks
Sport is a highly visible target with fixed timelines, so attackers know exactly when disruption will have the most impact. It also holds valuable data, athlete medical records, contracts, sponsorship deals, which carry financial, reputational, and regulatory risk if exposed. At the same time, delivery depends on a wide set of third parties: ticketing providers, broadcasters, cloud services, stadium technology. Any of those connections can become an entry point. Put visibility, timing, data, and dependency together, and you get an environment where even a small foothold can turn into a visible, time-critical incident.
How attackers target email and identity
Email and identity remain the front door. From October 2025 through March 2026, Darktrace / EMAIL™ detected more than 116,000 phishing emails aimed at sports organizations across our customer base, and our sports customers received 19% more phishing emails than organizations in other sectors. The numbers tell the story:
BY THE NUMBERS
21% of phishing emails were aimed at VIPs.
37% used novel social engineering.
84% of malicious emails passed DMARC authentication
A large proportion of these emails passed authentication checks, which means traditional security controls are no longer a reliable barrier. Attackers are not relying on spoofed domains – they're using legitimate infrastructure and trusted platforms. Behavior matters. Once an account is compromised, the behavior shifts quickly. Login patterns change, inbox rules are created to hide responses, and accounts start being used for internal discovery or further phishing. These aren’t high-noise events. They sit in normal workflows, which is why they’re often missed.
Ransomware tells a similar story. In one case inside a sports deployment, attackers had quietly been moving data to an outside server for a full two weeks before they triggered encryption. By the time the ransom note appeared, the outcome was already set. That sequence shows up consistently is access first, movement next, disruption last. If detection starts at encryption, it’s already too late.
Why AI is an emerging blind spot in sports
The increasing adoption of AI is expanding the potential attack surface. 72% of the security professionals we surveyed expect AI to increase their cyber risk over the next year, and yet 35% are already using or planning to use it in stadium operations, the most critical functions to protect. In addition to prompt injection and AI build risks, shadow AI is becoming a more immediate issue. Staff are already putting sensitive data—performance metrics, scouting reports, contracts, health data—into tools with little or no governance. The upside is clear, but so is the exposure—and it is happening before most organizations have any visibility or control. At the same time, attackers are using the same technology to scale phishing and social engineering. The net effect is simple: more exposure, at higher speed.
How can cybersecurity professionals prepare
Across high profile events, Darktrace’s experience shows that effective cyber defense includes preparation, real‑time visibility, and the ability to respond dynamically and decisively when timing, complexity, and public exposure converge.
There are a few strategic implications for cybersecurity teams:
Get behavioral visibility across IT and OT, not just corporate systems.
Treat identity as your control plane. Most attacks in this sector start with credentials, not malware. MFA with behavioral detection helps solve that challenge.
Control third party and AI access the same way you control your own environment.
Rehearse response for live conditions, where decisions happen in minutes. Detection and response need to account for non-ideal conditions when engineers are under pressure and time constrained. In sport, timing is what turns small issues into major incidents. The same activity that would be manageable midweek becomes critical during a live event.
Why 2026 raises the cybersecurity stakes for sports
With the 2026 World Cup about to stretch across three countries and dozens of host cities, the attack surface is wide and the schedule is unforgiving.
Geopolitical signaling is raising the threat profile further. Previous international sporting events have demonstrated that nation‑state actors use the cyber domain to signal intent, influence narratives, or retaliate symbolically. In the context of the 2026 World Cup, Russia’s continued exclusion from international sport, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, US defensive support to Ukraine, and Iran’s likely participation in the tournament introduce additional motivations for state‑aligned and non‑traditional affiliated actors to operate below the threshold of armed conflict. This doesn’t require new techniques—just the right timing and visibility.
In practice, this comes down to preparation: knowing what normal looks like across IT and OT, controlling third-party access, and spotting when behavior shifts.
In sport, disruption does not build slowly—it happens in real time and in public. By that point, the groundwork has already been set, long before the whistle goes.
About this research
Findings are based on Darktrace threat-research telemetry across sports-sector customer deployments (Q4 2025–Q1 2026) and a survey of 875 IT cybersecurity professionals in the US, UK, Australia, and Germany, fielded by Opinion Matters between May 28 and June 3, 2026. Read the full report for complete methodology, incident analysis, and strategic recommendations.
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