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June 2, 2021

Understanding your organization's attack surface and why it poses a risk

As business infrastructures continue to increase in breadth and complexity, it's important to keep ahead of changes within your own organization's attack surface and stay ahead of attackers.
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
Vincent Thiele
Deputy CISO
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02
Jun 2021

What is the attack surface of an organization?

Your attack surface is the sum of the exposed and internet-facing assets, and the associated risks a hacker can exploit to carry out a cyber-attack. Over the past decade or so, that attack surface has changed dramatically. Long gone are the days when the only things exposed to the outside world were your website and your mail server.

Today, increased complexity means that many organization often have huge attack surfaces – in fact, we believe that the attack surface has grown by around 1000% in the past 10 years.

Definition and components of the attack surface

The attack surface of an organization refers to the sum of all points where an unauthorized user (the attacker) can try to enter data to or extract data from an environment. Reducing the attack surface is a fundamental aspect of cybersecurity. Here are some components of the attack surface:

Exposed Assets:

  • Endpoints: Devices like computers, smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices that connect to the network.
  • Servers: Including web servers, database servers, application servers, and cloud-based servers.
  • Applications: Software applications, including those running on the network, desktop applications, and cloud applications.
  • Network Infrastructure: Routers, switches, firewalls, and other network devices.

Internet-Facing Assets:some text

  • Websites and Web Applications: Publicly accessible websites and web services.
  • APIs: Application Programming Interfaces that can be accessed over the internet.
  • Email Servers: Servers responsible for handling incoming and outgoing emails.
  • Cloud Services: Services hosted on cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.

Evolution of the attack surface

If that wasn’t enough of a challenge in itself, the modern attack surface is constantly evolving. The explosion of connected technologies means there are a host of new threat points within organizations: from third-party SaaS and IaaS providers, to VPNs, and from marketing partners who run campaigns and build infrastructures for you to the challenges of BYOD and shadow IT.

On top of this, the agile development world of DevOps is an additional challenge with apps being central to most financial institutions’ business models. The use of bi-weekly sprints and continuous deployments means infrastructures are in an almost constant state of change.

Below is just a quick snapshot of some of the areas where different departments can make changes to your attack surface under the radar and that you need to be aware of when trying to protect your data:

  •    Cloud adoption, migrations – Exposed assets and storage buckets
  •    Development Team – New Assets and Testing
  •    Networks – New Netblocks and advertisements
  •    Marketing – New subdomains for landing pages hosted at design companies
  •    Sales – Campaigns and e-Commerce
  •    IT operations – Configuration Changes, Patching, New Assets, and services
  •    Security – Fixes, Agent deployments, new assets
  •    Mergers and Acquisitions – Risk associated with newly acquired assets
  •    Subsidiaries – Complexities of assets not controlled
  •    Supply Chain Risk – Hosting providers, third parties

And that’s without taking into account the effects of the Covid pandemic. Changing infrastructure due to new working practices alongside the turbo-boost that digital transformation has been given resulting in a rapid shift to the cloud of everything from HR services to core business applications, have added a whole new layer of possible weak points and attack vectors for organisations. Every one of these factors increases the risk of your business’s data being compromised in some way.

Attackers are changing too

But it’s not just the proper indexing and management of new assets that you need to be concerned about. Attackers are getting more and more sophisticated in the techniques and technologies they use to locate and exploit vulnerabilities, and different areas of exploitation are appearing all the time.

Many companies already deploy a range of both defensive and offensive techniques to defend their networks from cyber attacks, including advanced, complex and expensive Threat Intelligence teams that track campaigns run by cyber criminals.

However, even if you do have the money and resources to create skilled teams like this, something as simple as a web server with an exploitable vulnerability can easily go unnoticed, leaving it open for a threat actor to exploit that asset. And in the end, manually checking and fixing every little misconfiguration is not the kind of repetitive work you employ an expert team for.

Don't be undone by simple mistakes

Malicious or just simple mistakes are almost impossible to track and control, and they can result in the most extensive exposures to a business. There are constant examples of configuration changes implemented that resulted in regulatory breaches or opening vulnerabilities that have been exploited. Security teams will focus on external and internal actors, but monitoring resulting changes requires an external view.

With your attack surface moving and changing all the time, it is crucial to be in control of this on a day-to-day basis, and to understand the risks posed to your organization. Yet, having the comprehensive overview that allows you to be in control and to protect against threat actors has seemingly never been more difficult to achieve.

Attack surface management

If your organization continues to take an inside-out approach to your security, you will not be able to see the blind spots that will ultimately introduce the brand's biggest risk. Instead, you can see how a threat actor sees your business and your brand by deploying an effective attack surface solution that gives you a comprehensive view of where your possible threats are.

Ultimately, this allows you to take back control of your attack surface by monitoring risk, confirming changes have been made, and monitoring security policy governance. Such an automated solution will not only help detect the biggest security threats, but will also provide the insights into your overall attack surface, giving you all the data needed to take your security to the next level.

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
Vincent Thiele
Deputy CISO

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September 9, 2025

The benefits of bringing together network and email security

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In many organizations, network and email security operate in isolation. Each solution is tasked with defending its respective environment, even though both are facing the same advanced, multi-domain threats.  

This siloed approach overlooks a critical reality: email remains the most common vector for initiating cyber-attacks, while the network is the primary stage on which those attacks progress. Without direct integration between these two domains, organizations risk leaving blind spots that adversaries can exploit.  

A modern security strategy needs to unify email and network defenses, not just in name, but in how they share intelligence, conduct investigations, and coordinate response actions. Let’s take a look at how this joined-up approach delivers measurable technical, operational, and commercial benefits.

Technical advantages

Pre-alert intelligence: Gathering data before the threat strikes

Most security tools start working when something goes wrong – an unusual login, a flagged attachment, a confirmed compromise. But by then, attackers may already be a step ahead.

By unifying network and email security under a single AI platform (like the Darktrace Active AI Security Platform), you can analyze patterns across both environments in real time, even when there are no alerts. This ongoing monitoring builds a behavioral understanding of every user, device, and domain in your ecosystem.

That means when an email arrives from a suspicious domain, the system already knows whether that domain has appeared on your network before – and whether its behavior has been unusual. Likewise, when new network activity involves a domain first spotted in an email, it’s instantly placed in the right context.

This intelligence isn’t built on signatures or after-the-fact compromise indicators – it’s built on live behavioral baselines, giving your defenses the ability to flag threats before damage is done.

Alert-related intelligence: Connecting the dots in real time

Once an alert does fire, speed and context matter. The Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst can automatically investigate across both environments, piecing together network and email evidence into a single, cohesive incident.

Instead of leaving analysts to sift through fragmented logs, the AI links events like a phishing email to suspicious lateral movement on the recipient’s device, keeping the full attack chain intact. Investigations that might take hours – or even days – can be completed in minutes, with far fewer false positives to wade through.

This is more than a time-saver. It ensures defenders maintain visibility after the first sign of compromise, following the attacker as they pivot into network infrastructure, cloud services, or other targets. That cross-environment continuity is impossible to achieve with disconnected point solutions or siloed workflows.

Operational advantages

Streamlining SecOps across teams

In many organizations, email security is managed by IT, while network defense belongs to the SOC. The result? Critical information is scattered between tools and teams, creating blind spots just when you need clarity.

When email and network data flow into a single platform, everyone is working from the same source of truth. SOC analysts gain immediate visibility into email threats without opening another console or sending a request to another department. The IT team benefits from the SOC’s deeper investigative context.

The outcome is more than convenience: it’s faster, more informed decision-making across the board.

Reducing time-to-meaning and enabling faster response

A unified platform removes the need to manually correlate alerts between tools, reducing time-to-meaning for every incident. Built-in AI correlation instantly ties together related events, guiding analysts toward coordinated responses with higher confidence.

Instead of relying on manual SIEM rules or pre-built SOAR playbooks, the platform connects the dots in real time, and can even trigger autonomous response actions across both environments simultaneously. This ensures attacks are stopped before they can escalate, regardless of where they begin.

Commercial advantages

While purchasing “best-of-breed" for all your different tools might sound appealing, it often leads to a patchwork of solutions with overlapping costs and gaps in coverage. However good a “best-in-breed" email security solution might be in the email realm, it won't be truly effective without visibility across domains and an AI analyst piecing intelligence together. That’s why we think “best-in-suite" is the only “best-in-breed" approach that works – choosing a high-quality platform ensures that every new capability strengthens the whole system.  

On top of that, security budgets are under constant pressure. Managing separate vendors for email and network defense means juggling multiple contracts, negotiating different SLAs, and stitching together different support models.

With a single provider for both, procurement and vendor management become far simpler. You deal with one account team, one support channel, and one unified strategy for both environments. If you choose to layer on managed services, you get consistent expertise across your whole security footprint.

Even more importantly, an integrated AI platform sets the stage for growth. Once email and network are under the same roof, adding coverage for other attack surfaces – like cloud or identity – is straightforward. You’re building on the same architecture, not bolting on new point solutions that create more complexity.

Check out the white paper, The Modern Security Stack: Why Your NDR and Email Security Solutions Need to Work Together, to explore these benefits in more depth, with real-world examples and practical steps for unifying your defenses.

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About the author
Mikey Anderson
Product Marketing Manager, Network Detection & Response

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Cloud

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September 9, 2025

Unpacking the Salesloft Incident: Insights from Darktrace Observations

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Introduction

On August 26, 2025, Google Threat intelligence Group released a report detailing a widespread data theft campaign targeting the sales automation platform Salesloft, via compromised OAuth tokens used by the third-party Drift AI chat agent [1][2].  The attack has been attributed to the threat actor UNC6395 by Google Threat Intelligence and Mandiant [1].

The attack is believed to have begun in early August 2025 and continued through until mid-August 2025 [1], with the threat actor exporting significant volumes of data from multiple Salesforce instances [1]. Then sifting through this data for anything that could be used to compromise the victim’s environments such as access keys, tokens or passwords. This had led to Google Threat Intelligence Group assessing that the primary intent of the threat actor is credential harvesting, and later reporting that it was aware of in excess of 700 potentially impacted organizations [3].

Salesloft previously stated that, based on currently available data, customers that do not integrate with Salesforce are unaffected by this campaign [2]. However, on August 28, Google Threat Intelligence Group announced that “Based on new information identified by GTIG, the scope of this compromise is not exclusive to the Salesforce integration with Salesloft Drift and impacts other integrations” [2]. Google Threat Intelligence has since advised that any and all authentication tokens stored in or connected to the Drift platform be treated as potentially compromised [1].

This campaign demonstrates how attackers are increasingly exploiting trusted Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) integrations as a pathway into enterprise environment.

By abusing these integrations, threat actors were able to exfiltrate sensitive business data at scale, bypassing traditional security controls. Rather than relying on malware or obvious intrusion techniques, the adversaries leveraged legitimate credentials and API traffic that resembled legitimate Salesforce activity to achieve their goals. This type of activity is far harder to detect with conventional security tools, since it blends in with the daily noise of business operations.

The incident underscores the escalating significance of autonomous coverage within SaaS and third-party ecosystems. As businesses increasingly depend on interconnected platforms, visibility gaps become evident that cannot be managed by conventional perimeter and endpoint defenses.

By developing a behavioral comprehension of each organization's distinct use of cloud services, anomalies can be detected, such as logins from unexpected locations, unusually high volumes of API requests, or unusual document activity. These indications serve as an early alert system, even when intruders use legitimate tokens or accounts, enabling security teams to step in before extensive data exfiltration takes place

What happened?

The campaign is believed to have started on August 8, 2025, with malicious activity continuing until at least August 18. The threat actor, tracked as UNC6395, gained access via compromised OAuth tokens associated with Salesloft Drift integrations into Salesforce [1]. Once tokens were obtained, the attackers were able to issue large volumes of Salesforce API requests, exfiltrating sensitive customer and business data.

Initial Intrusion

The attackers first established access by abusing OAuth and refresh tokens from the Drift integration. These tokens gave them persistent access into Salesforce environments without requiring further authentication [1]. To expand their foothold, the threat actor also made use of TruffleHog [4], an open-source secrets scanner, to hunt for additional exposed credentials. Logs later revealed anomalous IAM updates, including unusual UpdateAccessKey activity, which suggested attempts to ensure long-term persistence and control within compromised accounts.

Internal Reconnaissance & Data Exfiltration

Once inside, the adversaries began exploring the Salesforce environments. They ran queries designed to pull sensitive data fields, focusing on objects such as Cases, Accounts, Users, and Opportunities [1]. At the same time, the attackers sifted through this information to identify secrets that could enable access to other systems, including AWS keys and Snowflake credentials [4]. This phase demonstrated the opportunistic nature of the campaign, with the actors looking for any data that could be repurposed for further compromise.

Lateral Movement

Salesloft and Mandiant investigations revealed that the threat actor also created at least one new user account in early September. Although follow-up activity linked to this account was limited, the creation itself suggested a persistence mechanism designed to survive remediation efforts. By maintaining a separate identity, the attackers ensured they could regain access even if their stolen OAuth tokens were revoked.

Accomplishing the mission

The data taken from Salesforce environments included valuable business records, which attackers used to harvest credentials and identify high-value targets. According to Mandiant, once the data was exfiltrated, the actors actively sifted through it to locate sensitive information that could be leveraged in future intrusions [1]. In response, Salesforce and Salesloft revoked OAuth tokens associated with Drift integrations on August 20 [1], a containment measure aimed at cutting off the attackers’ primary access channel and preventing further abuse.

How did the attack bypass the rest of the security stack?

The campaign effectively bypassed security measures by using legitimate credentials and OAuth tokens through the Salesloft Drift integration. This rendered traditional security defenses like endpoint protection and firewalls ineffective, as the activity appeared non-malicious [1]. The attackers blended into normal operations by using common user agents and making queries through the Salesforce API, which made their activity resemble legitimate integrations and scripts. This allowed them to operate undetected in the SaaS environment, exploiting the trust in third-party connections and highlighting the limitations of traditional detection controls.

Darktrace Coverage

Anomalous activities have been identified across multiple Darktrace deployments that appear associated with this campaign. This included two cases on customers based within the United States who had a Salesforce integration, where the pattern of activities was notably similar.

On August 17, Darktrace observed an account belonging to one of these customers logging in from the rare endpoint 208.68.36[.]90, while the user was seen active from another location. This IP is a known indicator of compromise (IoC) reported by open-source intelligence (OSINT) for the campaign [2].

Cyber AI Analyst Incident summarizing the suspicious login seen for the account.
Figure 1: Cyber AI Analyst Incident summarizing the suspicious login seen for the account.

The login event was associated with the application Drift, further connecting the events to this campaign.

Advanced Search logs showing the Application used to login.
Figure 2: Advanced Search logs showing the Application used to login.

Following the login, the actor initiated a high volume of Salesforce API requests using methods such as GET, POST, and DELETE. The GET requests targeted endpoints like /services/data/v57.0/query and /services/data/v57.0/sobjects/Case/describe, where the former is used to retrieve records based on a specific criterion, while the latter provides metadata for the Case object, including field names and data types [5,6].

Subsequently, a POST request to /services/data/v57.0/jobs/query was observed, likely to initiate a Bulk API query job for extracting large volumes of data from the Ingest Job endpoint [7,8].

Finally, a DELETE request to remove an ingestion job batch, possibly an attempt to obscure traces of prior data access or manipulation.

A case on another US-based customer took place a day later, on August 18. This again began with an account logging in from the rare IP 208.68.36[.]90 involving the application Drift. This was followed by Salesforce GET requests targeting the same endpoints as seen in the previous case, and then a POST to the Ingest Job endpoint and finally a DELETE request, all occurring within one minute of the initial suspicious login.

The chain of anomalous behaviors, including a suspicious login and delete request, resulted in Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability suggesting a ‘Disable user’ action. However, the customer’s deployment configuration required manual confirmation for the action to take effect.

An example model alert for the user, triggered due to an anomalous API DELETE request.
Figure 3: An example model alert for the user, triggered due to an anomalous API DELETE request.
Figure 4: Model Alert Event Log showing various model alerts for the account that ultimately led to an Autonomous Response model being triggered.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this incident underscores the escalating risks of SaaS supply chain attacks, where third-party integrations can become avenues for attacks. It demonstrates how adversaries can exploit legitimate OAuth tokens and API traffic to circumvent traditional defenses. This emphasizes the necessity for constant monitoring of SaaS and cloud activity, beyond just endpoints and networks, while also reinforcing the significance of applying least privilege access and routinely reviewing OAuth permissions in cloud environments. Furthermore, it provides a wider perspective into the evolution of the threat landscape, shifting towards credential and token abuse as opposed to malware-driven compromise.

Credit to Emma Foulger (Global Threat Research Operations Lead), Calum Hall (Technical Content Researcher), Signe Zaharka (Principal Cyber Analyst), Min Kim (Senior Cyber Analyst), Nahisha Nobregas (Senior Cyber Analyst), Priya Thapa (Cyber Analyst)

Appendices

Darktrace Model Detections

·      SaaS / Access / Unusual External Source for SaaS Credential Use

·      SaaS / Compromise / Login From Rare Endpoint While User Is Active

·      SaaS / Compliance / Anomalous Salesforce API Event

·      SaaS / Unusual Activity / Multiple Unusual SaaS Activities

·      Antigena / SaaS / Antigena Unusual Activity Block

·      Antigena / SaaS / Antigena Suspicious Source Activity Block

Customers should consider integrating Salesforce with Darktrace where possible. These integrations allow better visibility and correlation to spot unusual behavior and possible threats.

IoC List

(IoC – Type)

·      208.68.36[.]90 – IP Address

References

1.     https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/data-theft-salesforce-instances-via-salesloft-drift

2.     https://trust.salesloft.com/?uid=Drift+Security+Update%3ASalesforce+Integrations+%283%3A30PM+ET%29

3.     https://thehackernews.com/2025/08/salesloft-oauth-breach-via-drift-ai.html

4.     https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/threat-brief-compromised-salesforce-instances/

5.     https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/resources_query.htm

6.     https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/resources_sobject_describe.htm

7.     https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_asynch.meta/api_asynch/get_job_info.htm

8.     https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_asynch.meta/api_asynch/query_create_job.htm

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About the author
Emma Foulger
Global Threat Research Operations Lead
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