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January 26, 2024

Post-Exploitation Activities of Ivanti CS/PS Appliances

Darktrace’s teams have observed a surge in malicious activities targeting Ivanti Connect Secure (CS) and Ivanti Policy Secure (PS) appliances. Learn more!
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
Sam Lister
SOC Analyst
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26
Jan 2024

Update:

Further investigation into the exploitation of Ivanti vulnerabilities CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 has uncovered an additional case within the Darktrace customer base, with the first signs of anomalous behavior on a device observed on December 21, 2023. The initial unusual activity involved SSL beaconing to a rare external IP address: 154.223.20[.]226. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) indicates that this IP was associated with the hostname api.d-n-s[.]name around January 2024 [10]. This hostname was also observed during Ivanti exploitation activities investigated by Mandiant [11]. A few days later, on December 28, 2023, the device began beaconing to a second rare IP address: 103.13.28[.]40, which has been directly linked to post-exploitation activity related to CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887. Beaconing to these IPs continued until December 28 and December 29, respectively.

What are 'Unknown Unknowns'?

When critical vulnerabilities in Internet-facing assets are not yet publicly disclosed, they can provide unfettered access to organizations’ networks. Threat actors’ exploitation of these vulnerabilities are prime examples of “unknown unknowns” – behaviors which security teams are not even aware that they are not aware of.  

Therefore, it is not surprising that zero-day vulnerabilities in Internet-facing assets are so attractive to state-linked actors and cybercriminals. These criminals will abuse the access these vulnerabilities afford them to progress towards harmful or disruptive objectives. This trend in threat actor activity was particularly salient in January 2024, following the disclosure of two critical vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure (CS) and Ivanti Policy Secure (PS) appliances. The widespread exploitation of these vulnerabilities was mirrored across Darktrace’s customer base in mid-January 2024, with Darktrace’s Security Operations Center (SOC) and Threat Research teams observing a surge in malicious activities targeting customers’ CS/PS appliances.

Vulnerabilities in Ivanti CS/PS

On January 10, 2024, Ivanti published a Security Advisory [1] and a Knowledge Base article [2] relating to the following two vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure (CS) and Ivanti Policy Secure (PS):

  • CVE-2023-46805 (CVSS: 8.2; Type: Authentication bypass vulnerability)
  • CVE-2024-21887 (CVSS: 9.1; Type: Command injection vulnerability)

Conjoined exploitation of these vulnerabilities allows for unauthenticated, remote code execution (RCE) on vulnerable Ivanti systems. Volexity [3] and Mandiant [4] reported clusters of CS/PS compromises, tracked as UTA0178 and UNC5221 respectively. UTA0178 and UNC5221 compromises involve exploitation of CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 to deliver web shells and JavaScript credential harvesters to targeted CS/PS appliances. Both Volexity and Mandiant linked these compromises to a likely espionage-motivated, state-linked actor. GreyNoise [5] and Volexity [6] also reported likely cybercriminal activities targeting CS/PS appliances to deliver cryptominers.

The scale of this recent Ivanti CS/PS exploitation is illustrated by research findings recently shared by Censys [7]. According to these findings, as of January 22, around 1.5% of 26,000 Internet-exposed Ivanti CS appliances have been compromised, with the majority of compromised hosts falling within the United States. As cybercriminal interest in these Ivanti CS/PS vulnerabilities continues to grow, it is likely that so too will the number of attacks targeting them.

Observed Malicious Activities

Since January 15, 2024, Darktrace’s SOC and Threat Research team have observed a significant volume of malicious activities targeting customers’ Ivanti CS/PS appliances. Amongst the string of activities that were observed, the following threads were identified as salient:

  • Exploit validation activity
  • Exfiltration of system information
  • Delivery of C2 implant from AWS
  • Delivery of JavaScript credential stealer
  • SimpleHelp usage
  • Encrypted C2 on port 53
  • Delivery of cryptominer

Exploit Validation Activity

Malicious actors were observed using the out-of-band application security testing (OAST) services, Interactsh and Burp Collaborator, to validate exploits for CS/PS vulnerabilities. Malicious use of OAST services for exploit validation is common and has been seen in the early stages of previous campaigns targeting Ivanti systems [8]. In this case, the Interact[.]sh exploit tests were evidenced by CS/PS appliances making GET requests with a cURL User-Agent header to subdomains of 'oast[.]live', 'oast[.]site', 'oast[.]fun', 'oast[.]me', 'oast[.]online' and 'oast[.]pro'.  Burp Collaborator exploit tests were evidenced by CS/PS appliances making GET requests with a cURL User-Agent header to subdomains of ‘collab.urmcyber[.]xyz’ and ‘dnslog[.]store’.

Figure 1: Event Log showing a CS/PS appliance contacting an 'oast[.]pro' endpoint.
Figure 2: Event Log showing a CS/PS appliance contacting a 'collab.urmcyber[.]xyz' endpoint.
Figure 3: Packet capture (PCAP) of an Interactsh GET request.
Figure 4: PCAP of a Burp Collaborator GET request.

Exfiltration of System Information

The majority of compromised CS/PS appliances identified by Darktrace were seen using cURL to transfer hundreds of MBs of data to the external endpoint, 139.180.194[.]132. This activity appeared to be related to a threat actor attempting to exfiltrate system-related information from CS/PS appliances. These data transfers were carried out via HTTP on ports 443 and 80, with the Target URIs ‘/hello’ and ‘/helloq’ being seen in the relevant HTTP POST requests. The files sent over these data transfers were ‘.dat’ and ‘.sys’ files with what seems to be the public IP address of the targeted appliance appearing in each file’s name.

Figure 5: Event Log shows a CS/PS appliance making a POST request to 139.180.194[.]132 whilst simultaneously receiving connections from suspicious external endpoints.
Figure 6: PCAP of a POST request to 139.180.194[.]132.

Delivery of Command-and-Control (C2) implant from Amazon Web Services (AWS)

In many of the compromises observed by Darktrace, the malicious actor in question was observed delivering likely Rust-based ELF payloads to the CS/PS appliance from the AWS endpoints, archivevalley-media.s3.amazonaws[.]com, abode-dashboard-media.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws[.]com, shapefiles.fews.net.s3.amazonaws[.]com, and blooming.s3.amazonaws[.]com. In one particular case, these downloads were immediately followed by the delivery of an 18 MB payload (likely a C2 implant) from the AWS endpoint, be-at-home.s3.ap-northeast-2.amazonaws[.]com, to the CS/PS appliance. Post-delivery, the implant seems to have initiated SSL beaconing connections to the external host, music.farstream[.]org. Around this time, Darktrace also observed the actor initiating port scanning and SMB enumeration activities from the CS/PS appliance, likely in preparation for moving laterally through the network.

Figure 7: Advanced Search logs showing a CS/PS appliance beaconing to music.farstream[.]org after downloading several payloads from AWS.

Delivery of JavaScript credential stealer

In a small number of observed cases, Darktrace observed malicious actors delivering what appeared to be a JavaScript credential harvester to targeted CS/PS appliances. The relevant JavaScript code contains instructions to send login credentials to likely compromised websites. In one case, the website, www.miltonhouse[.]nl, appeared in the code snippet, and in another, the website, cpanel.netbar[.]org, was observed. Following the delivery of this JavaScript code, HTTPS connections were observed to these websites.  This likely credential harvester appears to strongly resemble the credential stealer observed by Mandiant (dubbed ‘WARPWIRE’) in UNC5221 compromises and the credential stealer observed by Veloxity in UTA0178 compromises.

Figure 8: PCAP of ‘/3.js’ GET request for JavaScript credential harvester.
Figure 9: Snippet of response to '/3.js’ GET request.
Figure 10: PCAP of ‘/auth.js’ GET request for JavaScript credential harvester.
Figure 11: Snippet of response to '/auth.js’ GET request.
Figure 12: Advanced Search logs showing VPN-connected devices sending data to www.miltonhouse[.]nl after the Ivanti CS appliance received the JavaScript code.

The usage of this JavaScript credential harvester did not occur in isolation, but rather appears to have occurred as part of a chain of activity involving several further steps. The delivery of the ‘www.miltonhouse[.]nl’ JavaScript stealer seems to have occurred as a step in the following attack chain:  

1. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads a 8.38 MB ELF file over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/revsocks_linux_amd64’) from 188.116.20[.]38

2. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 8444 to 185.243.112[.]245, with several MBs of data being exchanged

3. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads a Perl script over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/login.txt’) from 188.116.20[.]38

4. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads a 1.53 ELF MB file over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/aparche2’) from 91.92.240[.]113

5. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads a 4.5 MB ELF file over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/agent’) from 91.92.240[.]113

6. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 11601 to 45.9.149[.]215, with several MBs of data being exchanged

7. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads Javascript credential harvester over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/auth.js’) from 91.92.240[.]113

8. Ivanti CS/PS appliance downloads a Perl script over HTTP (with Target URI ‘/login.cgi’) from 91.92.240[.]113

9. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 11601 to 91.92.240[.]71, with several MBs of data being exchanged

10. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 11601 to 45.9.149[.]215, with several MBs of data being exchanged

11. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 8080 to 91.92.240[.]113, with several MBs of data being exchanged

12. Ivanti CS/PS appliance makes a long SSL connection (JA3 client fingerprint: 19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e) over port 11601 to 45.9.149[.]112, with several MBs of data being exchanged  

These long SSL connections likely represent a malicious actor creating reverse shells from the targeted CS/PS appliance to their C2 infrastructure. Whilst it is not certain that these behaviors are part of the same attack chain, the similarities between them (such as the Target URIs, the JA3 client fingerprint and the use of port 11601) seem to suggest a link.  

Figure 13: Advanced Search logs showing a chain of malicious behaviours from a CS/PS appliance.
Figure 14: Advanced Search data showing the JA3 client fingerprint ‘19e29534fd49dd27d09234e639c4057e’ exclusively appearing in the aforementioned, long SSL connections from the targeted CS/PS appliance.
Figure 15: PCAP of ‘/login.txt’ GET request for a Perl script.
Figure 16: PCAP of ‘/login.cgi’ GET request for a Pearl script.

SimpleHelp Usage

After gaining a foothold on vulnerable CS/PS appliances, certain actors attempted to deepen their foothold within targeted networks. In several cases, actors were seen using valid account credentials to pivot over RDP from the vulnerable CS/PS appliance to other internal systems. Over these RDP connections, the actors appear to have installed the remote support tool, SimpleHelp, onto targeted internal systems, as evidenced by these systems’ subsequent HTTP requests. In one of the observed cases, a lateral movement target downloaded a 7.33 MB executable file over HTTP (Target URI: /ta.dat; User-Agent header: Microsoft BITS/7.8) from 45.9.149[.]215 just before showing signs of SimpleHelp usage. The apparent involvement of 45.9.149[.]215 in these SimpleHelp threads may indicate a connection between them and the credential harvesting thread outlined above.

Figure 17: Advanced Search logs showing an internal system making SimpleHelp-indicating HTTP requests immediately after receiving large volumes of data over RDP from an CS/PS appliance.
Figure 18: PCAP of a SimpleHelp-related GET request.

Encrypted C2 over port 53

In a handful of the recently observed CS/PS compromises, Darktrace identified malicious actors dropping a 16 MB payload which appears to use SSL-based C2 communication on port 53. C2 communication on port 53 is a commonly used attack method, with various malicious payloads, including Cobalt Strike DNS, being known to tunnel C2 communications via DNS requests on port 53. Encrypted C2 communication on port 53, however, is less common. In the cases observed by Darktrace, payloads were downloaded from 103.13.28[.]40 and subsequently reached back out to 103.13.28[.]40 over SSL on port 53.

Figure 19: PCAP of a ‘/linb64.png’ GET request.
Figure 20: Advanced Search logs showing a CS/PS appliance making SSL conns over port 53 to 103.13.28[.]40 immediately after downloading a 16 MB payload from 103.13.28[.]40.

Delivery of cryptominer

As is often the case, financially motivated actors also appeared to have sought to exploit the Ivanti appliances, with actors observed exploiting CS/PS appliances to deliver cryptomining malware. In one case, Darktrace observed an actor installing a Monero cryptominer onto a vulnerable CS/PS appliance, with the miner being downloaded via HTTP on port 8089 from 192.252.183[.]116.

Figure 21: PCAP of GET request for a Bash script which appeared to kill existing cryptominers.
Figure 22: PCAP of a GET request for a JSON config file – returned config file contains mining details such as ‘auto.3pool[.]org:19999’.
Figure 23: PCAP of a GET request for an ELF payload

Potential Pre-Ransomware Post-Compromise Activity

In one observed case, a compromise of a customer’s CS appliance was followed by an attacker using valid account credentials to connect to the customer’s CS VPN subnet. The attacker used these credentials to pivot to other parts of the customer’s network, with tools and services such as PsExec, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service, and Service Control being abused to facilitate the lateral movement. Other Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools, such as AnyDesk and ConnectWise Control (previously known as ScreenConnect), along with certain reconnaissance tools such as Netscan, Nmap, and PDQ, also appear to have been used. The attacker subsequently exfiltrated data (likely via Rclone) to the file storage service, put[.]io, potentially in preparation for a double extortion ransomware attack. However, at the time of writing, it was not clear what the relation was between this activity and the CS compromise which preceded it.

Darktrace Coverage

Darktrace has observed malicious actors carrying out a variety of post-exploitation activities on Internet-exposed CS/PS appliances, ranging from data exfiltration to the delivery of C2 implants and crypto-miners. These activities inevitably resulted in CS/PS appliances displaying patterns of network traffic greatly deviating from their typical “patterns of life”.

Darktrace DETECT™ identified these deviations and generated a variety of model breaches (i.e, alerts) highlighting the suspicious activity. Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst™ autonomously investigated the ongoing compromises and connected the individual model breaches, viewing them as related incidents rather than isolated events. When active and configured in autonomous response mode, Darktrace RESPOND™ containted attackers’ operations by autonomously blocking suspicious patterns of network traffic as soon as they were identified by Darktrace DETECT.

The exploit validation activities carried out by malicious actors resulted in CS/PS servers making HTTP connections with cURL User-Agent headers to endpoints associated with OAST services such as Interactsh and Burp Collaborator. Darktrace DETECT recognized that this HTTP activity was suspicious for affected devices, causing the following models to breach:

  • Compromise / Possible Tunnelling to Bin Services
  • Device / Suspicious Domain
  • Anomalous Server Activity / New User Agent from Internet Facing System
  • Device / New User Agent
Figure 24: Event Log showing a CS/PS appliance breaching models due to its Interactsh HTTP requests.
Figure 25: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting a CS/PS appliance's Interactsh connections.

Malicious actors’ uploads of system information to 139.180.194[.]132 resulted in cURL POST requests being sent from the targeted CS/PS appliances. Darktrace DETECT judged these HTTP POST requests to be anomalous, resulting in combinations of the following model breaches:

  • Anomalous Connection / Posting HTTP to IP Without Hostname
  • Anomalous Server Activity / Outgoing from Server
  • Anomalous Server Activity / New User Agent from Internet Facing System
  • Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data Transfer
  • Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data to New Endpoint
  • Anomalous Connection / Data Sent to Rare Domain
Figure 26: Event Log showing the creation of a model breach due to a CS/PS appliance’s POST request to 139.180.194[.]132.
Figure 27: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting POST requests from a CS/PS appliance to 139.180.194[.]132.

The installation of AWS-hosted C2 implants onto vulnerable CS/PS appliances resulted in beaconing connections which Darktrace DETECT recognized as anomalous, leading to the following model breaches:

  • Compromise / Beacon to Young Endpoint
  • Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare
  • Compromise / High Volume of Connections with Beacon Score

When enabled in autonomous response mode, Darktrace RESPOND was able to follow up these detections by blocking affected devices from connecting externally over port 80, 443, 445 or 8081, effectively shutting down the attacker’s beaconing activity.

Figure 28: Event Log showing the creation of a model breach and the triggering of an autonomous RESPOND action due to a CS/PS appliance's beaconing connections.

The use of encrypted C2 on port 53 by malicious actors resulted in CS/PS appliances making SSL connections over port 53. Darktrace DETECT judged this port to be uncommon for SSL traffic and consequently generated the following model breach:

  • Anomalous Connection / Application Protocol on Uncommon Port
Figure 29: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting a ‘/linb64.png’ GET request from a CS/PS appliance to 103.13.28[.]40.
Figure 30: Event Log showing the creation of a model breach due to CS/PS appliance’s external SSL connection on port 53.
Figure 31: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting a CS/PS appliance’s SSL connections over port 53 to 103.13.28[.]40.

Malicious actors’ attempts to run cryptominers on vulnerable CS/PS appliances resulted in downloads of Bash scripts and JSON files from external endpoints rarely visited by the CS/PS appliances themselves or by neighboring systems. Darktrace DETECT identified these deviations in device behavior and generated the following model breaches:

  • Anomalous File / Script from Rare External Location
  • Anomalous File / Internet Facing System File Download

Darktrace RESPOND, when configured to respond autonomously, was subsequently able to carry out a number of actions to contain the attacker’s activity. This included blocking all outgoing traffic on offending devices and enforcing a “pattern of life” on devices ensuring they had to adhere to expected network behavior.

Figure 32: Event Log showing the creation of model breaches and the triggering of autonomous RESPOND actions in response to a CS/PS appliance’s cryptominer download.
Figure 33: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting a CS/PS appliance’s cryptominer download.

The use of RDP to move laterally and spread SimpleHelp to other systems resulted in CS/PS appliances using privileged credentials to initiate RDP sessions. These RDP sessions, and the subsequent traffic resulting from usage of SimpleHelp, were recognized by Darktrace DETECT as being highly out of character, prompting the following model breaches:

  • Anomalous Connection / Unusual Admin RDP Session
  • Device / New User Agent
  • Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname
  • Compromise / Suspicious HTTP Beacons to Dotted Quad
  • Anomalous File / Anomalous Octet Stream (No User Agent)
  • Anomalous Server Activity / Rare External from Server
Figure 34: Event Log showing the creation of a model breach due to a CS/PS appliance’s usage of an admin credential to RDP to another internal system.
Figure 35: Event Log showing the creation of model breaches due to SimpleHelp-HTTP requests from a device targeted for lateral movement.
Figure 36: Cyber AI Analyst Incident Event highlighting the SimpleHelp-indicating HTTP requests made by an internal system.

Conclusion

The recent widespread exploitation of Ivanti CS/PS is a stark reminder of the threat posed by malicious actors armed with exploits for Internet-facing assets.

Based on the telemetry available to Darktrace, a wide range of malicious activities were carried out against CS/PS appliances, likely via exploitation of the recently disclosed CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 vulnerabilities.

These activities include the usage of OAST services for exploit validation, the exfiltration of system information to 139.180.194[.]132, the delivery of AWS-hosted C2 implants, the delivery of JavaScript credential stealers, the usage of SimpleHelp, the usage of SSL-based C2 on port 53, and the delivery of crypto-miners. These activities are far from exhaustive, and many more activities will undoubtedly be uncovered as the situation develops and our understanding grows.

While there were no patches available at the time of writing, Ivanti stated that they were expected to be released shortly, with the “first version targeted to be available to customers the week of 22 January 2023 and the final version targeted to be available the week of 19 February” [9].

Fortunately for vulnerable customers, in their absence of patches Darktrace DETECT was able to identify and alert for anomalous network activity that was carried out by malicious actors who had been able to successfully exploit the Ivanti CS and PS vulnerabilities. While the activity that followed these zero-day vulnerabilities may been able to have bypass traditional security tools reliant upon existing threat intelligence and indicators of compromise (IoCs), Darktrace’s anomaly-based approach allows it to identify such activity based on the subtle deviations in a devices behavior that typically emerge as threat actors begin to work towards their goals post-compromise.

In addition to Darktrace’s ability to identify this type of suspicious behavior, its autonomous response technology, Darktrace RESPOND is able to provide immediate follow-up with targeted mitigative actions to shut down malicious activity on affected customer environments as soon as it is detected.

Credit to: Nahisha Nobregas, SOC Analyst, Emma Foulger, Principle Cyber Analyst, and the Darktrace Threat Research Team

Appendices

List of IoCs Possible IoCs:

-       curl/7.19.7 (i686-redhat-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.63.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2n zlib/1.2.3

-       curl/7.19.7 (i686-redhat-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.63.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2n zlib/1.2.7

Mid-high confidence IoCs:

-       http://139.180.194[.]132:443/hello

-       http://139.180.194[.]132:443/helloq

-       http://blooming.s3.amazonaws[.]com/Ea7fbW98CyM5O (SHA256 hash: 816754f6eaf72d2e9c69fe09dcbe50576f7a052a1a450c2a19f01f57a6e13c17)

-       http://abode-dashboard-media.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws[.]com/kaffMm40RNtkg (SHA256 hash: 47ff0ae9220a09bfad2a2fb1e2fa2c8ffe5e9cb0466646e2a940ac2e0cf55d04)

-       http://archivevalley-media.s3.amazonaws[.]com/bbU5Yn3yayTtV (SHA256 hash: c7ddd58dcb7d9e752157302d516de5492a70be30099c2f806cb15db49d466026)

-       http://shapefiles.fews.net.s3.amazonaws[.]com/g6cYGAxHt4JC1 (SHA256 hash: c26da19e17423ce4cb4c8c47ebc61d009e77fc1ac4e87ce548cf25b8e4f4dc28)

-       http://be-at-home.s3.ap-northeast-2.amazonaws[.]com/2ekjMjslSG9uI

-       music.farstream[.]org  • 104.21.86[.]153 / 172.67.221[.]78

-       http://197.243.22[.]27/3.js

-       http://91.92.240[.]113/auth.js

-       www.miltonhouse[.]nl • 88.240.53[.]22

-       cpanel.netbar[.]org • 146.19.212[.]12

-       http://188.116.20[.]38/revsocks_linux_amd64

-       185.243.112[.]245:8444

-        http://188.116.20[.]38/login.txt

-       http://91.92.240[.]113/aparche2 (SHA256 hash: 9d11c3cf10b20ff5b3e541147f9a965a4e66ed863803c54d93ba8a07c4aa7e50)

-       http://91.92.240[.]113/agent (SHA256 hash: 7967def86776f36ab6a663850120c5c70f397dd3834f11ba7a077205d37b117f)

-       45.9.149[.]215:11601

-       45.9.149[.]112:11601

-       http://91.92.240[.]113/login.cgi

-       91.92.240[.]71:11601

-       91.92.240[.]113:8080

-       http://45.9.149[.]215/ta.dat (SHA256 hash: 4bcf1333b3ad1252d067014c606fb3a5b6f675f85c59b69ca45669d45468e923)

-       91.92.241[.]18

-       94.156.64[.]252

-       http://144.172.76[.]76/lin86

-       144.172.122[.]14:443

-       http://185.243.115[.]58:37586/

-       http://103.13.28[.]40/linb64.png

-       103.13.28[.]40:53

-       159.89.82[.]235:8081

-       http://192.252.183[.]116:8089/u/123/100123/202401/d9a10f4568b649acae7bc2fe51fb5a98.sh

-       http://192.252.183[.]116:8089/u/123/100123/202401/sshd

-       http://192.252.183[.]116:8089/u/123/100123/202401/31a5f4ceae1e45e1a3cd30f5d7604d89.json

-       http://103.27.110[.]83/module/client_amd64

-       http://103.27.110[.]83/js/bootstrap.min.js?UUID=...

-       http://103.27.110[.]83/js/jquery.min.js

-       http://95.179.238[.]3/bak

-       http://91.92.244[.]59:8080/mbPHenSdr6Cf79XDAcKEVA

-       31.220.30[.]244

-       http://172.245.60[.]61:8443/SMUkbpX-0qNtLGsuCIuffAOLk9ZEBCG7bIcB2JT6GA/

-       http://172.245.60[.]61/ivanti

-       http://89.23.107[.]155:8080/l-5CzlHWjkp23gZiVLzvUg

-       http://185.156.72[.]51:8080/h7JpYIZZ1-rrk98v3YEy6w

-       http://185.156.72[.]51:8080/8uSQsOTwFyEAsXVwbAJ2mA

-       http://185.156.72[.]51:8080/vuln

-       185.156.72[.]51:4440

-       185.156.72[.]51:8080

-       185.156.72[.]51:4433

-       185.156.72[.]51:4446

-       185.156.72[.]51:4445

-       http://185.156.72[.]51/set.py

-       185.156.72[.]51:7777

-       45.9.151[.]107:7070

-       185.195.59[.]74:7070

-       185.195.59[.]74:20958

-       185.195.59[.]74:34436

-       185.195.59[.]74:37464

-       185.195.59[.]74:41468    

References

[1] https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/CVE-2023-46805-Authentication-Bypass-CVE-2024-21887-Command-Injection-for-Ivanti-Connect-Secure-and-Ivanti-Policy-Secure-Gateways?language=en_US

[2] https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/KB-CVE-2023-46805-Authentication-Bypass-CVE-2024-21887-Command-Injection-for-Ivanti-Connect-Secure-and-Ivanti-Policy-Secure-Gateways?language=en_US

[3] https://www.volexity.com/blog/2024/01/10/active-exploitation-of-two-zero-day-vulnerabilities-in-ivanti-connect-secure-vpn/

[4] https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/suspected-apt-targets-ivanti-zero-day

[5] https://www.greynoise.io/blog/ivanti-connect-secure-exploited-to-install-cryptominers

[6] https://www.volexity.com/blog/2024/01/18/ivanti-connect-secure-vpn-exploitation-new-observations/

[7] https://censys.com/the-mass-exploitation-of-ivanti-connect-secure/

[8] https://darktrace.com/blog/entry-via-sentry-analyzing-the-exploitation-of-a-critical-vulnerability-in-ivanti-sentry

[9] https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/CVE-2023-46805-Authentication-Bypass-CVE-2024-21887-Command-Injection-for-Ivanti-Connect-Secure-and-Ivanti-Policy-Secure-Gateways?language=en_US  

[10] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/154.223.20.226/relations

[11] https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/investigating-ivanti-zero-day-exploitation/

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.
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Sam Lister
SOC Analyst

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July 17, 2025

Introducing the AI Maturity Model for Cybersecurity

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AI adoption in cybersecurity: Beyond the hype

Security operations today face a paradox. On one hand, artificial intelligence (AI) promises sweeping transformation from automating routine tasks to augmenting threat detection and response. On the other hand, security leaders are under immense pressure to separate meaningful innovation from vendor hype.

To help CISOs and security teams navigate this landscape, we’ve developed the most in-depth and actionable AI Maturity Model in the industry. Built in collaboration with AI and cybersecurity experts, this framework provides a structured path to understanding, measuring, and advancing AI adoption across the security lifecycle.

Overview of AI maturity levels in cybersecurity

Why a maturity model? And why now?

In our conversations and research with security leaders, a recurring theme has emerged:

There’s no shortage of AI solutions, but there is a shortage of clarity and understanding of AI uses cases.

In fact, Gartner estimates that “by 2027, over 40% of Agentic AI projects will be canceled due to escalating costs, unclear business value, or inadequate risk controls. Teams are experimenting, but many aren’t seeing meaningful outcomes. The need for a standardized way to evaluate progress and make informed investments has never been greater.

That’s why we created the AI Security Maturity Model, a strategic framework that:

  • Defines five clear levels of AI maturity, from manual processes (L0) to full AI Delegation (L4)
  • Delineating the outcomes derived between Agentic GenAI and Specialized AI Agent Systems
  • Applies across core functions such as risk management, threat detection, alert triage, and incident response
  • Links AI maturity to real-world outcomes like reduced risk, improved efficiency, and scalable operations

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How is maturity assessed in this model?

The AI Maturity Model for Cybersecurity is grounded in operational insights from nearly 10,000 global deployments of Darktrace's Self-Learning AI and Cyber AI Analyst. Rather than relying on abstract theory or vendor benchmarks, the model reflects what security teams are actually doing, where AI is being adopted, how it's being used, and what outcomes it’s delivering.

This real-world foundation allows the model to offer a practical, experience-based view of AI maturity. It helps teams assess their current state and identify realistic next steps based on how organizations like theirs are evolving.

Why Darktrace?

AI has been central to Darktrace’s mission since its inception in 2013, not just as a feature, but the foundation. With over a decade of experience building and deploying AI in real-world security environments, we’ve learned where it works, where it doesn’t, and how to get the most value from it. This model reflects that insight, helping security leaders find the right path forward for their people, processes, and tools

Security teams today are asking big, important questions:

  • What should we actually use AI for?
  • How are other teams using it — and what’s working?
  • What are vendors offering, and what’s just hype?
  • Will AI ever replace people in the SOC?

These questions are valid, and they’re not always easy to answer. That’s why we created this model: to help security leaders move past buzzwords and build a clear, realistic plan for applying AI across the SOC.

The structure: From experimentation to autonomy

The model outlines five levels of maturity :

L0 – Manual Operations: Processes are mostly manual with limited automation of some tasks.

L1 – Automation Rules: Manually maintained or externally-sourced automation rules and logic are used wherever possible.

L2 – AI Assistance: AI assists research but is not trusted to make good decisions. This includes GenAI agents requiring manual oversight for errors.

L3 – AI Collaboration: Specialized cybersecurity AI agent systems  with business technology context are trusted with specific tasks and decisions. GenAI has limited uses where errors are acceptable.

L4 – AI Delegation: Specialized AI agent systems with far wider business operations and impact context perform most cybersecurity tasks and decisions independently, with only high-level oversight needed.

Each level reflects a shift, not only in technology, but in people and processes. As AI matures, analysts evolve from executors to strategic overseers.

Strategic benefits for security leaders

The maturity model isn’t just about technology adoption it’s about aligning AI investments with measurable operational outcomes. Here’s what it enables:

SOC fatigue is real, and AI can help

Most teams still struggle with alert volume, investigation delays, and reactive processes. AI adoption is inconsistent and often siloed. When integrated well, AI can make a meaningful difference in making security teams more effective

GenAI is error prone, requiring strong human oversight

While there is a lot of hype around GenAI agentic systems, teams will need to account for inaccuracy and hallucination in Agentic GenAI systems.

AI’s real value lies in progression

The biggest gains don’t come from isolated use cases, but from integrating AI across the lifecycle, from preparation through detection to containment and recovery.

Trust and oversight are key initially but evolves in later levels

Early-stage adoption keeps humans fully in control. By L3 and L4, AI systems act independently within defined bounds, freeing humans for strategic oversight.

People’s roles shift meaningfully

As AI matures, analyst roles consolidate and elevate from labor intensive task execution to high-value decision-making, focusing on critical, high business impact activities, improving processes and AI governance.

Outcome, not hype, defines maturity

AI maturity isn’t about tech presence, it’s about measurable impact on risk reduction, response time, and operational resilience.

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Outcomes across the AI Security Maturity Model

The Security Organization experiences an evolution of cybersecurity outcomes as teams progress from manual operations to AI delegation. Each level represents a step-change in efficiency, accuracy, and strategic value.

L0 – Manual Operations

At this stage, analysts manually handle triage, investigation, patching, and reporting manually using basic, non-automated tools. The result is reactive, labor-intensive operations where most alerts go uninvestigated and risk management remains inconsistent.

L1 – Automation Rules

At this stage, analysts manage rule-based automation tools like SOAR and XDR, which offer some efficiency gains but still require constant tuning. Operations remain constrained by human bandwidth and predefined workflows.

L2 – AI Assistance

At this stage, AI assists with research, summarization, and triage, reducing analyst workload but requiring close oversight due to potential errors. Detection improves, but trust in autonomous decision-making remains limited.

L3 – AI Collaboration

At this stage, AI performs full investigations and recommends actions, while analysts focus on high-risk decisions and refining detection strategies. Purpose-built agentic AI systems with business context are trusted with specific tasks, improving precision and prioritization.

L4 – AI Delegation

At this stage, Specialized AI Agent Systems performs most security tasks independently at machine speed, while human teams provide high-level strategic oversight. This means the highest time and effort commitment activities by the human security team is focused on proactive activities while AI handles routine cybersecurity tasks

Specialized AI Agent Systems operate with deep business context including impact context to drive fast, effective decisions.

Join the webinar

Get a look at the minds shaping this model by joining our upcoming webinar using this link. We’ll walk through real use cases, share lessons learned from the field, and show how security teams are navigating the path to operational AI safely, strategically, and successfully.

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Ashanka Iddya
Senior Director, Product Marketing

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Cloud

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July 17, 2025

Forensics or Fauxrensics: Five Core Capabilities for Cloud Forensics and Incident Response

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The speed and scale at which new cloud resources can be spun up has resulted in uncontrolled deployments, misconfigurations, and security risks. It has had security teams racing to secure their business’ rapid migration from traditional on-premises environments to the cloud.

While many organizations have successfully extended their prevention and detection capabilities to the cloud, they are now experiencing another major gap: forensics and incident response.

Once something bad has been identified, understanding its true scope and impact is nearly impossible at times. The proliferation of cloud resources across a multitude of cloud providers, and the addition of container and serverless capabilities all add to the complexities. It’s clear that organizations need a better way to manage cloud incident response.

Security teams are looking to move past their homegrown solutions and open-source tools to incorporate real cloud forensics capabilities. However, with the increased buzz around cloud forensics, it can be challenging to decipher what is real cloud forensics, and what is “fauxrensics.”

This blog covers the five core capabilities that security teams should consider when evaluating a cloud forensics and incident response solution.

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1. Depth of data

There have been many conversations among the security community about whether cloud forensics is just log analysis. The reality, however, is that cloud forensics necessitates access to a robust dataset that extends far beyond traditional log data sources.

While logs provide valuable insights, a forensics investigation demands a deeper understanding derived from multiple data sources, including disk, network, and memory, within the cloud infrastructure. Full disk analysis complements log analysis, offering crucial context for identifying the root cause and scope of an incident.

For instance, when investigating an incident involving a Kubernetes cluster running on an EC2 instance, access to bash history can provide insights into the commands executed by attackers on the affected instance, which would not be available through cloud logs alone.

Having all of the evidence in one place is also a capability that can significantly streamline investigations, unifying your evidence be it disk images, memory captures or cloud logs, into a single timeline allowing security teams to reconstruct an attacks origin, path and impact far more easily. Multi–cloud environments also require platforms that can support aggregating data from many providers and services into one place. Doing this enables more holistic investigations and reduces security blind spots.

There is also the importance of collecting data from ephemeral resources in modern cloud and containerized environments. Critical evidence can be lost in seconds as resources are constantly spinning up and down, so having the ability to capture this data before its gone can be a huge advantage to security teams, rather than having to figure out what happened after the affected service is long gone.

darktrace / cloud, cado, cloud logs, ost, and memory information. value of cloud combined analysis

2. Chain of custody

Chain of custody is extremely critical in the context of legal proceedings and is an essential component of forensics and incident response. However, chain of custody in the cloud can be extremely complex with the number of people who have access and the rise of multi-cloud environments.

In the cloud, maintaining a reliable chain of custody becomes even more complex than it already is, due to having to account for multiple access points, service providers and third parties. Having automated evidence tracking is a must. It means that all actions are logged, from collection to storage to access. Automation also minimizes the chance of human error, reducing the risk of mistakes or gaps in evidence handling, especially in high pressure fast moving investigations.

The ability to preserve unaltered copies of forensic evidence in a secure manner is required to ensure integrity throughout an investigation. It is not just a technical concern, its a legal one, ensuring that your evidence handling is documented and time stamped allows it to stand up to court or regulatory review.

Real cloud forensics platforms should autonomously handle chain of custody in the background, recording and safeguarding evidence without human intervention.

3. Automated collection and isolation

When malicious activity is detected, the speed at which security teams can determine root cause and scope is essential to reducing Mean Time to Response (MTTR).

Automated forensic data collection and system isolation ensures that evidence is collected and compromised resources are isolated at the first sign of malicious activity. This can often be before an attacker has had the change to move latterly or cover their tracks. This enables security teams to prevent potential damage and spread while a deeper-dive forensics investigation takes place. This method also ensures critical incident evidence residing in ephemeral environments is preserved in the event it is needed for an investigation. This evidence may only exist for minutes, leaving no time for a human analyst to capture it.

Cloud forensics and incident response platforms should offer the ability to natively integrate with incident detection and alerting systems and/or built-in product automation rules to trigger evidence capture and resource isolation.

4. Ease of use

Security teams shouldn’t require deep cloud or incident response knowledge to perform forensic investigations of cloud resources. They already have enough on their plates.

While traditional forensics tools and approaches have made investigation and response extremely tedious and complex, modern forensics platforms prioritize usability at their core, and leverage automation to drastically simplify the end-to-end incident response process, even when an incident spans multiple Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).

Useability is a core requirement for any modern forensics platform. Security teams should not need to have indepth knowledge of every system and resource in a given estate. Workflows, automation and guidance should make it possible for an analyst to investigate whatever resource they need to.

Unifying the workflow across multiple clouds can also save security teams a huge amount of time and resources. Investigations can often span multiple CSP’s. A good security platform should provide a single place to search, correlate and analyze evidence across all environments.

Offering features such as cross cloud support, data enrichment, a single timeline view, saved search, and faceted search can help advanced analysts achieve greater efficiency, and novice analysts are able to participate in more complex investigations.

5. Incident preparedness

Incident response shouldn't just be reactive. Modern security teams need to regularly test their ability to acquire new evidence, triage assets and respond to threats across both new and existing resources, ensuring readiness even in the rapidly changing environments of the cloud.  Having the ability to continuously assess your incident response and forensics workflows enables you to rapidly improve your processes and identify and mitigate any gaps identified that could prevent the organization from being able to effectively respond to potential threats.

Real forensics platforms deliver features that enable security teams to prepare extensively and understand their shortcomings before they are in the heat of an incident. For example, cloud forensics platforms can provide the ability to:

  • Run readiness checks and see readiness trends over time
  • Identify and mitigate issues that could prevent rapid investigation and response
  • Ensure the correct logging, management agents, and other cloud-native tools are appropriately configured and operational
  • Ensure that data gathered during an investigation can be decrypted
  • Verify that permissions are aligned with best practices and are capable of supporting incident response efforts

Cloud forensics with Darktrace

Darktrace delivers a proactive approach to cyber resilience in a single cybersecurity platform, including cloud coverage. Darktrace / CLOUD is a real time Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) solution built with advanced AI to make cloud security accessible to all security teams and SOCs. By using multiple machine learning techniques, Darktrace brings unprecedented visibility, threat detection, investigation, and incident response to hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Darktrace’s cloud offerings have been bolstered with the acquisition of Cado Security Ltd., which enables security teams to gain immediate access to forensic-level data in multi-cloud, container, serverless, SaaS, and on-premises environments.

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About the author
Calum Hall
Technical Content Researcher
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