APTs are sophisticated threat actors with the resources to coordinate and achieve long-term objectives. Amidst the skyrocketing numbers of BEC attacks, every organization should be worried about the ability of intruders to infiltrate and exploit. This blog will look at several recent examples of complex email attacks and how Darktrace / EMAIL successfully disarmed and prevented intrusion.
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
Carlos Gray
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email
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13
Feb 2025
What are APTs?
An Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) describes an adversary with sophisticated levels of expertise and significant resources, with the ability to carry out targeted cyber campaigns. These campaigns may penetrate an organization and remain undetected for long periods, allowing attackers to gather intelligence or cause damage over time.
Over the last few decades, the term APT has evolved from being almost exclusively associated with nation-state actors to a broader definition that includes highly skilled, well-resourced threat groups. While still distinct from mass, opportunistic cybercrime or "spray and pray" attacks, APT now refers to the elite tier of adversaries, whether state-sponsored or not, who demonstrate advanced capabilities, persistence, and a clear strategic focus. This shift reflects the growing sophistication of cyber threats, where non-state actors can now rival nation-states in executing covert, methodical intrusions to achieve long-term objectives.
These attacks are resource-intensive for threat actors to execute, but the potential rewards—ranging from financial gain to sensitive data theft—can be significant. In 2020, Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks netted cybercriminals over $1.8 billion.1
And recently, the advent of AI has helped to automate launching these attacks, lowering the barriers to entry and making it more efficient to orchestrate the kind of attack that might previously have taken weeks to create. Research shows that AI can do 90% of a threat actor’s work2 – reducing time-to-target by automating tasks rapidly and avoiding errors in phishing communications. Email remains the most popular vector for initiating these sophisticated attacks, making it a critical battleground for cyber defense.
What makes APTs so successful?
The success of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) lies in their precision, persistence, and ability to exploit human and technical vulnerabilities. These attacks are carefully tailored to specific targets, using techniques like social engineering and spear phishing to gain initial access.
Once inside, attackers move laterally through networks, often remaining undetected for months or even years, silently gathering intelligence or preparing for a decisive strike. Alternatively, they might linger inside an account within the M365 environment, which could be even more valuable in terms of gathering information – in 2023 the average time to identify a breach in 2023 was 204 days.3
The subtle and long-term outlook nature of APTs makes them highly effective, as traditional security measures often fail to identify the subtle signs of compromise.
How Darktrace’s approach is designed to catch the most advanced threats
Luckily for our customers, Darktrace’s AI approach is uniquely equipped to detect and neutralize APTs. Unlike the majority of email security solutions that rely on static rules and signatures, or that train their AI on previous known-bad attack patterns, Darktrace leverages Self-Learning AI that baselines normal patterns of behavior within an organization, to immediately detect unusual activity that may signal an APT in progress.
But in the modern era of email threats, no email security solution can guarantee 100% effectiveness. Because attackers operate with great sophistication, carefully adapting their tactics to evade detection – whether by altering attachments, leveraging compromised accounts, or moving laterally across an organization – a siloed security approach risks missing these subtle, multi-domain threats. That’s why a robust defense-in-depth strategy is essential to mitigate APTs.
Real-world threat finds: Darktrace / EMAIL in action
Let’s take a look at some real-world scenarios where Darktrace / EMAIL stopped tactics associated with APT campaigns in their tracks – from adversary-in-the-middle attacks to suspicious lateral movement.
1: How Darktrace disrupted an adversary-in-the-middle attack by identifying abnormal login redirects and blocking credential exfiltration
In October 2024, Darktrace detected an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) attack targeting a Darktrace customer. The attack began with a phishing email from a seemingly legitimate Dropbox address, which contained multiple link payloads inviting the recipient to access a file. Other solutions would have struggled to catch this attack, as the initial AitM attack was launched through delivering a malicious URL through a trusted vendor or service. Once compromised, the threat actor could have laid low on the target account, gathering reconnaissance, without detection from the email security solution.
Darktrace / EMAIL identified the abnormal login redirects and flagged the suspicious activity. Darktrace / IDENTITY then detected unusual login patterns and blocked credential exfiltration attempts, effectively disrupting the attack and preventing the adversary from gaining unauthorized access. Read more.
Figure 1: Overview of the malicious email in the Darktrace / EMAIL console, highlighting Dropbox associated content/link payloads
2: How Darktrace stopped lateral movement to block NTLM hash theft
In early 2024, Darktrace detected an attack by the TA577 threat group, which aimed to steal NTLM hashes to gain unauthorized access to systems. The attack began with phishing emails containing ZIP files that connected to malicious infrastructure.
A traditional email security solution would have likely missed this attack by focusing too heavily on analyzing the zip file payloads or relying on reputation analysis to understand whether the infrastructure was registered as bad before this activity was a recognized IoC.
Because it correlates activity across domains, Darktrace identified unusual lateral movement within the network and promptly blocked the attempts to steal NTLM hashes, effectively preventing the attackers from accessing sensitive credentials and securing the network. Read more.
Figure 2: A summary of anomaly indicators seen for a campaign email sent by TA577, as detected by Darktrace / EMAIL
3: How Darktrace prevented the WarmCookie backdoor deployment embedded in phishing emails
In mid-2024, Darktrace identified a phishing campaign targeting organizations with emails impersonating recruitment firms. These emails contained malicious links that, when clicked, deployed the WarmCookie backdoor.
These emails are difficult to detect, as they use social engineering tactics to manipulate users into engaging with emails and following the embedded malicious links – but if a security solution is not analysing content and context, these could be allowed through.
In several observed cases across customer environments, Darktrace detected and blocked the suspicious behavior associated with WarmCookie that had already managed to evade customers’ native email security. By using behavioral analysis to correlate anomalous activity across the digital estate, Darktrace was able to identify the backdoor malware strain and notify customers. Read more.
Conclusion
These threat examples highlight a key principle of the Darktrace approach – that a backwards-facing approach grounded in threat intelligence will always be one step behind.
Most threat actors operate in campaigns, carefully crafting attacks and testing them across multiple targets. Once a campaign is identified, good defenders and traditional security solutions quickly update their defenses with new threat intelligence, rules, and signatures. However, APTs have the resources to rapidly adapt – spinning up new infrastructure, modifying payloads and altering their attack footprint to evade detection.
This is where Darktrace / EMAIL excels. Only by analyzing each user, message and interaction can an email security solution hope to catch the types of highly-sophisticated attacks that have the potential to cause major reputational and financial damage. Darktrace / EMAIL ensures that even the most subtle threats are detected and blocked with autonomous response, before causing impact – helping organizations remain one step ahead of increasingly adaptive threat actors.
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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.
Darktrace / EMAIL Expands Behavioral Defense Across Email and Collaboration Workflows
New capabilities help employees understand suspicious content, give administrators more control over sensitive data, and show security teams where risky workflows sit across the organization.
Journey of a Threat: How Multi-Layered AI Works in Darktrace / EMAIL
Follow a malicious email as it moves through Darktrace / EMAIL’s multi-layered AI system, from raw data to final decision. Each layer works together to detect threats, understand intent, and take autonomous action.
Building Operational Resilience Across Mission-Critical Marine Services
Mission-Critical Marine Services
This marine organization supports offshore energy production, export infrastructure, and regional logistics, delivering critical services through its diverse fleet and a regional shorebase footprint. To power rapid mobilization and 24/7 operational readiness, the organization has embraced cloud adoption and digital transformation, reshaping how crews, contractors, and shore-based teams access services.
While technology modernization has enhanced operations, it has also introduced new security complexities.
From perimeter to identity: As access becomes more distributed, identity has become the primary security control, elevating the risk of credential compromise and privilege misuse.
From confidentiality to availability and resilience: As cloud platforms increasingly underpin fleet and operational systems, cyber incidents can disrupt services and safety.
From isolated tools to unified visibility: Because Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) often intersect, and legacy systems coexist with modern cloud platforms, fragmented monitoring makes it harder to understand risk and respond decisively across domains.
“Our cybersecurity priorities expanded along with our business goals, placing availability and resilience at the forefront. The impact of a potential threat became an operational risk, which elevated cybersecurity from an IT issue to an operational safety and resilience enabler.” - Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Manager.
A Unified, AI-Driven Platform for IT and OT
To strengthen visibility, detection, and response across its highly distributed environment, the customer adopted the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform™ in 2022.
Darktrace’s contextual detection capability was a key driver. Unlike traditional tools that rely on known threat signatures, Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI learns “normal” behavior to identify emerging threats and correlate visibility across the customer's siloed on-premises and cloud domains.
Today, the customer relies on:
Darktrace / EMAIL™ to reduce phishing risk and minimize disruption from legacy mail controls and false positives
Darktrace / IDENTITY™ to support identity-centric security as cloud access expands across vessels and shore-based operations
Darktrace / NETWORK™ to strengthen oversight across the broader environment, including operational contexts where IT and OT intersect
Darktrace / CLOUD™ (Azure), added in 2024, to extend detection and response into Azure and support cloud transformation without treating cloud as a separate security silo
Darktrace / Incident Readiness & Recovery to strengthen incident readiness and recovery planning
Darktrace Managed Detection and Response Services to provide 24/7/365 monitoring and support
This combination supports a single operating model for the customer: security that can adapt as the environment changes while remaining practical for a lean team responsible for safeguarding both business operations and safety-critical services.
Extending cloud protection without complexity
As the customer accelerated cloud adoption, it expanded coverage in 2024 with Darktrace / CLOUD for Azure to bring cloud workloads under the same AI-driven visibility and response model – without adding operational burden. “This matters in hybrid environments because attacks rarely stay in one place,” explains the ICT Manager. “A compromised identity can trigger activity in the cloud, which can open pathways back into on-premises systems.”
In parallel, Darktrace / CLOUD’s posture management capabilities support governance and audit readiness by surfacing misconfigurations and exposure risks earlier, before they become incidents.
A Stronger, Faster, More Resilient Business
Since adopting Darktrace, the customer has strengthened cyber resilience while reducing operational burden on its small ICT team.
Darktrace continuously analyzes millions of individual events that can contribute to a wider incident. Within a single month, the solution autonomously investigated 88% of all potential threats, taking appropriate action within just 39.4 seconds on average.
Autonomous capabilities ensure threats are stopped and contained until the ICT team can investigate. In one standout instance, Darktrace autonomously blocked malicious links during a mass phishing/spam event before other controls flagged the threat. the ICT Manager later confirmed Microsoft reported the link as malicious, but Darktrace had already acted to prevent delivery and reduce exposure.
“Whether something happens during off hours, while we’re on vacation, or when our attention is focused elsewhere, we’re confident Darktrace will take control and stop a threat before it spreads,” says the ICT Manager.
Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI combines multiple AI methods and advanced techniques to improve threat detection, investigation, and response dramatically reducing alert overload and manual triage. Within a single month, the solution saved the customer's IT group 411 equivalent human investigation hours.
“For a lean team supporting a 24/7 operational footprint, this autonomous action eliminates the constant firefighting and stress, giving us the space to focus on higher-value priorities.”- Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Manager.
Protecting communications without disruption
the customer experienced friction from legacy email and network controls prior to Darktrace, which generated high false positive rates, disrupted legitimate communications, created operational drag, and added workload for ICT. With Darktrace / EMAIL learning normal email behavior and applying context-aware actions, the team reduced unnecessary interruptions while maintaining protection.
“That shift matters in marine services, where business communications directly support coordination across vessels, shore bases, clients, ports, and regulators,” says the ICT Manager. “Darktrace doesn’t just block more threats, it autonomously makes decisions that preserve operational continuity and enable my team to focus on credible threats instead of chasing volume.”
Delivering clarity and confidence
Darktrace has reduced manual triage by correlating activity across email, identity, network, and cloud, providing the context needed to prioritize what matters without requiring the ICT team to stitch together evidence across multiple tools.
“With unified visibility we can identify patterns across domains, make informed decisions about where risk actually exists, and align security actions with operational impact rather than theoretical threats,” explains the ICT Manager. “I can now prioritize effort and investment across our ICT landscape with far greater confidence.”
Regular Executive Threat Reports reinforce operational confidence by giving leadership clear visibility into threats Darktrace has handled autonomously, supporting decisive action when needed and confidence to avoid unnecessary disruption when it isn’t.
Scaling Securely in a Hybrid World
As the customer advances its cloud transformation, the ICT Manager sees the Darktrace partnership evolving into a foundational layer of resilience and assurance, supporting scale, governance, and operational confidence in an increasingly cloud-centric environment.
Key priorities include:
Shifting from hybrid visibility to cloud-first resilience, using continuous monitoring and posture insights to reduce exposure earlier
Strengthening governance and audit readiness, especially as critical workloads and sensitive data expand in Azure and expectations rise under regulatory and client assurance requirements
Increasing reliance on autonomous response and AI investigation as the number of identities, workloads, and access paths grows faster than headcount
Deepening cross-domain correlation so cloud signals further enrich decision-making, supporting faster containment and more confident prioritization
“As we accelerate our cloud strategy, Darktrace will play an even more strategic role,” says the ICT Manager, “providing the guidance, technology, and expertise that allow us to grow with confidence and innovate securely.”
Hiding in Plain Sight: Uncovering a Multi-Stage Ransomware Attack Through Behavioral Detection
Why ransomware has changed
Ransomware attacks have continued to increase globally, with 698 incidents reported in May 2026, representing a 48% rise compared to 472 incidents in May 2025 [1]. At the same time, the ransomware landscape is evolving. Several major ransomware groups, including LockBit [2], have been disrupted by successful joint law enforcement operations, resulting in a shift away from a small number of dominant actors towards a more fragmented and distributed ecosystem. This is increasingly composed of smaller groups who play a specialized role in the attack, such as initial access brokers, affiliates or developers.
As a result, ransomware tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are becoming more diverse and less predictable. On top of this, adversaries are leveraging native tools and legitimate penetration testing frameworks to evade detection. Anomaly-based detection is therefore critical to identify pre-ransomware activity, rather than relying on signatures associated with a handful of well-known ransomware groups.
As these attacks often unfold over several days, there is a critical window for defenders to act. In this context, behavioral-based detection plays a vital role in identifying suspicious pre-ransomware activity, and enabling early intervention before encryption or exfiltration occurs.
Inside a modern ransomware intrusion
In early 2026, Darktrace detected activity within a customer’s environment related to a multi-stage ransomware intrusion from the initial compromise. This activity does not appear to be attributable to a specific ransomware group, and no known ransomware payload was observed until the final stage.
The attack aligns with a broader industry trend in which compromised virtual private network (VPN) credentials are used as an entry point, followed by rapid internal reconnaissance and lateral movement using legitimate administrative tools. This growing preference for native tools and legitimate frameworks in cyber-attacks illustrates that it is increasingly unreliable to depend solely on traditional indicators of compromise such as known malware signatures or exploit detection.
The intrusion also involved the use of Sliver, an open-source adversary emulation framework, which is increasingly observed in real-world attacks. Originally designed for penetration testing and red teaming, Sliver has gained traction among threat actors as a stealthier alternative to more heavily signatured frameworks such as Cobalt Strike. As a legitimate framework, its use further complicates detection for security tools that rely on known malicious signatures.
Darktrace’s detection of a ransomware event in a customer’s environment
The initial compromise appears to have occurred via compromised credentials used over the VPN shortly before, or at the onset of the first indicators of suspicious activity. While it remains unclear as to how or when the threat actors gained access to these credentials, the use of initial access brokers (IABs) is a common feature of modern ransomware operations. This suggests that access to the environment may have been established several days or weeks beforehand.
The intrusion unfolded over three days, presenting multiple opportunities for early detection and intervention before ransomware deployment. The attack progressed through a compressed but structured sequence: initial access and reconnaissance were completed within hours, followed by privilege escalation and lateral movement the next day, and culminating in data exfiltration and encryption shortly thereafter. Throughout each stage, distinct behavioral anomalies emerged across the network providing clear indicators of malicious activity well before the ransomware was deployed.
While Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability was enabled within the customer’s environment, it was not fully configured across the impacted devices, allowing the attack to progress to ransomware deployment. Had Autonomous Response been fully deployed across the affected systems, it could have taken targeted action against the earliest stages of malicious activity, potentially disrupting the intrusion before it escalated.
Figure 1: Timeline of the attack progression.
Day 1: Reconnaissance and privilege escalation
The threat actor gained access via compromised VPN credentials and initiated internal reconnaissance. Darktrace detected anomalous scanning behavior, including unusual port scanning activity and widespread network enumeration.
Specifically, Darktrace detected a high volume of east-west scanning activity across a broad range of ports, with TCP connections targeting ports 21, 80, 445, 4899 and 8080. Associated URIs suggested the use of Nmap, a widely used penetration testing tool. This highlights how attackers often leverage legitimate penetration testing tools for malicious reconnaissance, enabling them to blend into normal network activity and evade traditional signature-based detection methods.
Figure 2: Darktrace's detection of a sharp increase in anomalous internal connections, triggering multiple high-severity model alerts associated with reconnaissance activity.
Several devices were observed using administrative credentials to carry out privileged actions in a manner that was highly anomalous for the environment. This activity was accompanied by behavior consistent with SMB authentication scanning, suggesting efforts to identify and access additional systems. As the activity intensified, an increasing number of devices became involved, signalling lateral movement and further spread across the network.
Darktrace also identified privilege escalation through active directory (AD) replication abuse, specifically via the drsuapi::DRSGetNCChanges function. This technique allows an attacker with sufficient privileges to request directory replication data from a domain controller (DC), enabling them to extract credentials, including password hashes, without directly interacting with user accounts. Commonly associated with ‘DCSync’ attacks, this technique is frequently used to obtain highly privileged credentials and enable further escalation within an environment.
Figure 3: Darktrace’s detection of anomalous AD replication activity indicative of privilege escalation.
This activity was seen alongside the use of the now obsolete SMBv1, repeated NTLM authentication attempts using multiple variations of ‘Administrator’ credentials, reverse DNS scanning, and large-scale network scanning. Darktrace observed widespread use of SMBv1 across the customer’s environment, exposing a significant security weakness. As a legacy protocol with well-documented weaknesses, SMBv1 can be exploited to facilitate lateral movement, allowing the attackers to expand their access following initial compromise.
Day 3: Lateral Movement, Command & Control, and Exfiltration
Two days later, the attacker escalated privileges and expanded their foothold using living-off-the-land (LOTL) techniques such as PSExec, WMI, and RDP. Concurrently, Darktrace identified command-and-control (C2)-style communications consistent with the Sliver framework, alongside rare outbound connections to cloud infrastructure indicating potential data exfiltration. The volume and severity of observed activity increased as attack behavior intensified.
The device was observed conducting extensive lateral movement, leveraging LOTL techniques to evade detection. Activity included WMI execution (e.g. ExecQuery), DCE-RPC activity, SMB sessions and file writes, most of which were successful, as well as the deployment of PSEXESVC.exe via ADMIN$ shares and prolonged RDP sessions. Darktrace identified this behavior as highly anomalous for the environment. Such activity is commonly associated with the transfer of attacker tooling, remote command execution, and the establishment of persistent access across compromised systems.
Figure 4: Darktrace’s detection of a spike in RPC binding events indicative of potential lateral movement.
On the same day, Darktrace detected C2-style SSL communications originating from multiple internal devices to rare external endpoints. These connections exhibited anomalous characteristics, including invalid SSL certificates and repeated connection patterns resembling beaconing. Analysis of the observed JA3 fingerprint further linked the activity to Sliver, the adversary simulation framework referenced earlier, as the hash has previously been associated with Sliver-related infrastructure [3]. The use of this framework reflects a broader trend of attackers repurposing legitimate offensive security tools for stealthy C2 communications. Connections to 137[.]220[.]59[.]55 (ASN AS20473 AS-VULTR) indicated that the communications were likely routed via a virtual private server (VPS) hosted by Vultr. Attackers often utilize VPS infrastructure from legitimate cloud providers like Vultr to obscure their true origin, blend into benign traffic, and evade IP-based detection mechanisms [4].
Figure 5: Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst detection of two linked unusual connections to Vultr infrastructure.
Darktrace also observed a device initiating SSL connections to safedata.s3[.]wasabisys[.]com, an endpoint associated with Wasabi cloud storage. Darktrace recognized that neither the destination nor the associated IP address had previously been observed within the environment. More than 200 MB of data was subsequently uploaded externally to endpoints sharing the same JA3 client hash, indicating a sustained transfer session and potential data exfiltration to third-party storage. The apparent exfiltration prior to encryption is consistent with a double-extortion ransomware strategy.
Figure 6: Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst detection of more than 30 rare outbound connections to a Wasabi cloud storage endpoint, indicative of potential data exfiltration
Day 4: Encryption
The attack culminated in ransomware deployment, marking the transition from suspicious network activity to a business-impacting incident. Using SMB-based propagation, the threat actor encrypted thousands of files across the network, affecting multiple systems and disrupting normal operations. Throughout the encryption event, the legacy SMBv1 protocol was used extensively across multiple internal systems, resulting in a significant increase in newly encrypted files.
Figure 7: Darktrace’s detection of abnormal spikes in SMB activity and associated model alerts, indicative of ransomware encryption and propagation.
Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst automatically investigated and correlated the encryption activity and related events into a single incident narrative, providing the customer with real-time visibility into the attack while significantly reducing investigation time.
Figure 8: Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst’s investigation into the encryption activity. AI Analyst incident detailing example encryption activity in real time. Related events are automatically correlated and summarized into a clear narrative, reducing investigation time.
Defender action recommendations
What Could Have Stopped the Attack Earlier?
Although the attack ultimately resulted in ransomware deployment, there were multiple opportunities to detect, contain, and disrupt the intrusion before encryption occurred. The following actions could have significantly reduced the overall impact:
Detect and investigate indicators of reconnaissance and lateral movement
Unusual scanning
Active Directory replication anomalies consistent with DCSync activity
Anomalous use of native tools and processes indicative of LOTL attacks
Unusual use of common reconnaissance tools such as Nmap and NetScan
Contain compromised credentials and affected devices
Disable and reset compromised VPN credentials
Isolate devices performing anomalous scanning and lateral movement activity
Block suspicious external communications and data exfiltration
Use anomaly-based detection to detect and block repeated outbound connections to rare external infrastructure
Prevent data exfiltration to unauthorized cloud storage services such as Wasabi
Conclusion
The incident highlights the importance of anomaly-based detection, particularly against attacks that primarily use native or legitimate tools to evade traditional security measures. Darktrace identified suspicious activity from the first day of the compromise, providing multiple opportunities to disrupt the intrusion before it progressed to lateral movement and data exfiltration.
In this instance, detection was not the limiting factor; response time was. Prompt investigation and containment of devices exhibiting anomalous behavior could have prevented lateral movement, data exfiltration, and ultimately ransomware deployment.
As adversaries increasingly prioritize stealth over custom malware, relying instead on legitimate tools, valid credentials, and trusted infrastructure, traditional signature-based detection becomes less effective. Identifying subtle behavioral deviations early remains critical to disrupting attacks before they escalate into full-scale ransomware incidents.
Credit to Alexandra Evzona (Cyber Analyst), Priya Thapa (Senior Cyber Analyst) Edited by Ryan Traill (Content Manager)
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