Blog
/
/
July 27, 2022

Self-Learning AI for Zero-Day and N-Day Attack Defense

Explore the differences between zero-day and n-day attacks on different customer servers to learn how Darktrace detects and prevents cyber threats effectively.
Written by
Lewis Morgan
Cyber Analyst
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
Lewis Morgan
Cyber Analyst
Default blog image
27
Jul 2022

‍Key Terms:

Zero-day | A recently discovered security vulnerability in computer software that has no currently available fix or patch. Its name come from the reality that vendors have “zero days” to act and respond.

N-day | A vulnerability that emerges in computer software in which a vendor is aware and may have already issued (or are currently working on) a patch or fix. Active exploits often already exist and await abuse by nefarious actors.

Traditional security solutions often apply signature-based-detection when identifying cyber threats, helping to defend against legacy attacks but consequently missing novel ones. Therefore, security teams often lend a lot of focus to ensuring that the risk of zero-day vulnerabilities is reduced [1]. As explored in this blog, however, organizations can face just as much of a risk from n-day attacks, since they invite the most attention from malicious actors [2]. This is due in part to the reduced complexity, cost and time invested in researching and finding new exploits compared with that found when attackers exploit zero-days. 

This blog will examine both a zero-day and n-day attack that two different Darktrace customers faced in the fall of 2021. This will include the activity Darktrace detected, along with the steps taken by Darktrace/Network to intervene. It will then compare the incidents, discuss the possible dangers of third-party integrations, and assess the deprecation of legacy security tools.

Revisiting zero-day attacks 

Zero-days are among the greatest concerns security teams face in the era of modern technology and networking. Defending critical systems from zero-day compromises is a task most legacy security solutions are often unable to handle. Due to the complexity of uncovering new security flaws and developing elaborate code that can exploit them, these attacks are often carried out by funded or experienced groups such as nation-state actors and APTs. One of history’s most prolific zero-days, ‘Stuxnet’, sent security teams worldwide into a global panic in 2010. This involved a widespread attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure and was widely accepted to be a result of nation-state actors [3]. The Stuxnet worm took advantage of four zero-day exploits, compromising over 200,000 devices and physically damaging around 10% of the 9,000 critical centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear site. 

More recently, 2021 saw the emergence of several critical zero-day vulnerabilities within SonicWall’s product suite [4]. SonicWall is a security hardware manufacturer that provides hardware firewall devices, unified threat management, VPN gateways and network security solutions. Some of these vulnerabilities lie within their Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series (for example, CVE-2019-7481, CVE-2021-20016 and CVE-2021-20038 to name a few). These directly affected VPN devices and often allowed attackers easy remote access to company devices. CVE-2021-20016 in particular incorporates an SQL-Injection vulnerability within SonicWall’s SSL VPN SMA 100 product line [5]. If exploited, this defect would allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to perform their own malicious SQL query in order to access usernames, passwords and other session related information. 

The N-day underdog

The shadow cast by zero-day attacks often shrouds that of n-day attacks. N-days, however, often pose an equal - if not greater - risk to the majority of organizations, particularly those in industrial sectors. Since these vulnerabilities have fixes available, all of the hard work around research is already done; malicious actors only need to view proof of concepts (POCs) or, if proficient in coding, reverse-engineer software to reveal code-changes (binary diffing) in order to exploit these security flaws in the wild. These vulnerabilities are typically attributed to opportunistic hackers and script-kiddies, where little research or heavy lifting is required.  

August 2021 gave rise to a critical vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence servers, namely CVE-2021-26084 [6]. Confluence is a widely used collaboration wiki tool and knowledge-sharing platform. As introduced and discussed a few months ago in a previous Darktrace blog (Explore Internet-Facing System Vulnerabilities), this vulnerability allows attackers to remotely execute code on internet-facing servers after exploiting injection vulnerabilities in Object-Graph Navigation Language (OGNL). Whilst Confluence had patches and fixes available to users, attackers still jumped on this opportunity and began scanning the internet for signs of critical devices serving this outdated software [7]. Once identified, they would  exploit the vulnerability, often installing crypto mining software onto the device. More recently, Darktrace explored a new vulnerability (CVE-2022-26134), disclosed midway through 2022, that affected Confluence servers and data centers using similar techniques to that found in CVE-2021-26084 [8]. 

SonicWall in the wild – 1. Zero-day attack

At the beginning of August 2021, Darktrace prevented an attack from taking place within a European automotive customer’s environment (Figure 1). The attack targeted a vulnerable internet-facing SonicWall VPN server, and while the attacker’s motive remains unclear, similar historic events suggest that they intended to perform ransomware encryption or data exfiltration. 

Figure 1: Timeline of the SonicWall attack 

Darktrace was unable to confirm the definite tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) used by the attacker to compromise the customer’s environment, as the device was compromised before Darktrace installation and coverage. However, from looking at recently disclosed SonicWall VPN vulnerabilities and patterns of behaviour, it is likely CVE-2021-20016 played a part. At some point after this initial infection, it is also believed the device was able to move laterally to a domain controller (DC) using administrative credentials; it was this server that then initiated the anomalous activity that Darktrace detected and alerted on. 

On August 5th 2021 , Darktrace observed this compromised domain controller engaging in unusual ICMP scanning - a protocol used to discover active devices within an environment and create a map of an organization’s network topology. Shortly after, the infected server began scanning devices for open RDP ports and enumerating SMB shares using unorthodox methods. SMB delete and HTTP requests (over port 445 and 80 respectively) were made for files named delete.me in the root directory of numerous network shares using the user agent Microsoft WebDAV. However, no such files appeared to exist within the environment. This may have been the result of an attacker probing devices in the network in an effort to see their responses and gather information on properties and vulnerabilities they could later exploit. 

Soon the infected DC began establishing RDP tunnels back to the VPN server and making requests to an internal DNS server for multiple endpoints relating to exploit kits, likely in an effort to strengthen the attacker’s foothold within the environment. Some of the endpoints requested relate to:

-       EternalBlue vulnerability 

-       Petit Potam NTLM hash attack tool

-       Unusual GitHub repositories

-       Unusual Python repositories  

The DC made outgoing NTLM requests to other internal devices, implying the successful installation of Petit Potam exploitation tools. The server then began performing NTLM reconnaissance, making over 1,000 successful logins under ‘Administrator’ to several other internal devices. Around the same time, the device was also seen making anonymous SMBv1 logins to numerous internal devices, (possibly symptomatic of the attacker probing machines for EternalBlue vulnerabilities). 

Interestingly, the device also made numerous failed authentication attempts using a spoofed credential for one of the organization’s security managers. This was likely in an attempt to hide themselves using ‘Living off the Land’ (LotL) techniques. However, whilst the attacker clearly did their research on the company, they failed to acknowledge the typical naming convention used for credentials within the environment. This ultimately backfired and made the compromise more obvious and unusual. 

In the morning of the following day, the initially compromised VPN server began conducting further reconnaissance, engaging in similar activity to that observed by the domain controller. Until now, the customer had set Darktrace RESPOND to run in human confirmation mode, meaning interventions were not made autonomously but required confirmation by a member of the internal security team. However, thanks to Proactive Threat Notifications (PTNs) delivered by Darktrace’s dedicated SOC team, the customer was made immediately aware of this unusual behaviour, allowing them to apply manual Darktrace RESPOND blocks to all outgoing connections (Figure 2). This gave the security team enough time to respond and remediate before serious damage could be done.

Figure 2: Darktrace RESPOND model breach showing the manually applied “Quarantine Device” action taken against the compromised VPN server. This screenshot displays the UI from Darktrace version 5.1

Confluence in the wild – 2. N-day attack

Towards the end of 2021, Darktrace saw a European broadcasting customer leave an Atlassian Confluence internet-facing server unpatched and vulnerable to crypto-mining malware using CVE-2021-26084. Thanks to Darktrace, this attack was entirely immobilized within only a few hours of the initial infection, protecting the organization from damage (Figure 3). 

Figure 3: Timeline of the Confluence attack

On midday on September 1st 2021, an unpatched Confluence server was seen receiving SSL connections over port 443 from a suspicious new endpoint, 178.238.226[.]127.  The connections were encrypted, meaning Darktrace was unable to view the contents and ascertain what requests were being made. However, with the disclosure of CVE-2021-26084 just 7 days prior to this activity, it is likely that the TTPs used involved injecting OGNL expressions to Confluence server memory; allowing the attacker to remotely execute code on the vulnerable server.

Immediately after successful exploitation of the Confluence server, the infected device was observed making outgoing HTTP GET requests to several external endpoints using a new user agent (curl/7.61.1). Curl was used to silently download and configure multiple suspicious files relating to XMRig cryptocurrency miner, including ld.sh, XMRig and config.json. Subsequent outgoing connections were then made to europe.randomx-hub.miningpoolhub[.]com · 172.105.210[.]117 using the JSON-RPC protocol, seen alongside the mining credential maillocal.confluence (Figure 4). Only 3 seconds after initial compromise, the infected device began attempting to mine cryptocurrency using the Minergate protocol but was instantly and autonomously blocked by Darktrace RESPOND. This prevented the server from abusing system resources and generating profits for the attacker.

Figure 4: A graph showing the frequency of external connections using the JSON-RPC protocol made by the breach device over a 48-hour window. The orange-red dots represent models that breached as a result of this activity, demonstrating the “waterfall” effect commonly seen when a device suffers a compromise. This screenshot displays the UI from Darktrace version 5.1

In the afternoon, the malware persisted with its infection. The compromised server began making successive HTTP GET requests to a new rare endpoint 195.19.192[.]28 using the same curl user agent (Figures 5 & 6). These requests were for executable and dynamic library files associated with Kinsing malware (but fortunately were also blocked by Darktrace RESPOND). Kinsing is a malware strain found in numerous attack campaigns which is often associated with crypto-jacking, and has appeared in previous Darktrace blogs [9].

Figure 5: Cyber AI Analyst summarising the unusual download of Kinsing software using the new curl user agent. This screenshot displays the UI from Darktrace version 5.1

The attacker then began making HTTP POST requests to an IP 185.154.53[.]140, using the same curl user agent; likely a method for the attacker to maintain persistence within the network and establish a foothold using its C2 infrastructure. The Confluence server was then again seen attempting to mine cryptocurrency using the Minergate protocol. It made outgoing JSON-RPC connections to a different new endpoint, 45.129.2[.]107, using the following mining credential: ‘42J8CF9sQoP9pMbvtcLgTxdA2KN4ZMUVWJk6HJDWzixDLmU2Ar47PUNS5XHv4Kmfdh8aA9fbZmKHwfmFo8Wup8YtS5Kdqh2’. This was once again blocked by Darktrace RESPOND (Figure 7). 

Figure 6: VirusTotal showing the unusualness of one of these external IPs [10]
Figure 7: Log data showing the action taken by Darktrace RESPOND in response to the device breaching the “Crypto Currency Mining Activity” model. This screenshot displays the UI from Darktrace version 5.1

The final activity seen from this device involved the download of additional shell scripts over HTTP associated with Kinsing, namely spre.sh and unk.sh, from 194.38.20[.]199 and 195.3.146[.]118 respectively (Figure 8). A new user agent (Wget/1.19.5 (linux-gnu)) was used when connecting to the latter endpoint, which also began concurrently initiating repeated connections indicative of C2 beaconing. These scripts help to spread the Kinsing malware laterally within the environment and may have been the attacker's last ditch efforts at furthering their compromise before Darktrace RESPOND blocked all connections from the infected Confluence server [11]. With Darktrace RESPOND's successful actions, the customer’s security team were then able to perform their own response and remediation. 

Figure 8: Cyber AI Analyst revealing the last ditch efforts made by the threat actor to download further malicious software. This screenshot displays the UI from Darktrace version 5.1

Darktrace Coverage: N- vs Zero-days

In the SonicWall case the attacker was unable to achieve their actions on objectives (thanks to Darktrace's intervention). However, this incident displayed tactics of a more stealthy and sophisticated attacker - they had an exploited machine but waited for the right moment to execute their malicious code and initiate a full compromise. Due to the lack of visibility over attacker motive, it is difficult to deduce what type of actor led to this intrusion. However, with the disclosure of a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2021-20016) not long before this attack, along with a seemingly dormant initially compromised device, it is highly possible that it was carried out by a sophisticated cyber criminal or gang. 

On the other hand, the Confluence case engaged in a slightly more noisy approach; it dropped crypto mining malware on vulnerable devices in the hope that the target’s security team did not maintain visibility over their network or would merely turn a blind eye. The files downloaded and credentials observed alongside the mining activity heavily imply the use of Kinsing malware [11]. Since this vulnerability (CVE-2021-26084) emerged as an n-day attack with likely easily accessible POCs, as well as there being a lack of LotL techniques and the motive being long term monetary gain, it is possible this attack was conducted by a less sophisticated or amateur actor (script-kiddie); one that opportunistically exploits known vulnerabilities in internet-facing devices in order to make a quick profit [12].

Whilst Darktrace RESPOND was enabled in human confirmation mode only during the start of the SonicWall attack, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst still offered invaluable insight into the unusual activity associated with the infected machines during both the Confluence and SonicWall compromises. SOC analysts were able to see these uncharacteristic behaviours and escalate the incident through Darktrace’s PTN and ATE services. Analysts then worked through these tickets with the customers, providing support and guidance and, in the SonicWall case, quickly helping to configure Darktrace RESPOND. In both scenarios, Darktrace RESPOND was able to block abnormal connections and enforce a device’s pattern of life, affording the security team enough time to isolate the infected machines and prevent further threats such as ransomware detonation or data exfiltration. 

Concluding thoughts and dangers of third-party integrations 

Organizations with internet-facing devices will inevitably suffer opportunistic zero-day and n-day attacks. While little can be done to remove the risk of zero-days entirely, ensuring that organizations keep their systems up to date will at the very least help prevent opportunistic and script-kiddies from exploiting n-day vulnerabilities.  

However, it is often not always possible for organizations to keep their systems up to date, especially for those who require continuous availability. This may also pose issues for organizations that rely on, and put their trust in, third party integrations such as those explored in this blog (Confluence and SonicWall), as enforcing secure software is almost entirely out of their hands. Moreover, with the rising prevalence of remote working, it is essential now more than ever that organizations ensure their VPN devices are shielded from external threats, guidance on which has been released by the NSA/CISA [13].

These two case studies have shown that whilst organizations can configure their networks and firewalls to help identify known indicators of compromise (IoC), this ‘rearview mirror’ approach will not account for, or protect against, any new and undisclosed IoCs. With the aid of Self-Learning AI and anomaly detection, Darktrace can detect the slightest deviation from a device’s normal pattern of life and respond autonomously without the need for rules and signatures. This allows for the disruption and prevention of known and novel attacks before irreparable damage is caused- reassuring security teams that their digital estates are secure. 

Thanks to Paul Jennings for his contributions to this blog.

Appendices: SonicWall (Zero-day)

Darktrace model detections

·      AIA / Suspicious Chain of Administrative Credentials

·      Anomalous Connection / Active Remote Desktop Tunnel

·      Anomalous Connection / SMB Enumeration

·      Anomalous Connection / Unusual Internal Remote Desktop

·      Compliance / High Priority Compliance Model Breach

·      Compliance / Outgoing NTLM Request from DC

·      Device / Anomalous RDP Followed By Multiple Model Breaches

·      Device / Anomalous SMB Followed By Multiple Model Breaches

·      Device / ICMP Address Scan

·      Device / Large Number of Model Breaches

·      Device / Large Number of Model Breaches from Critical Network Device

·      Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Breaches (PTN/Enhanced Monitoring model)

·      Device / Network Scan

·      Device / Possible SMB/NTLM Reconnaissance

·      Device / RDP Scan

·      Device / Reverse DNS Sweep

·      Device / SMB Session Bruteforce

·      Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity (PTN/Enhanced Monitoring model)

·      Unusual Activity / Possible RPC Recon Activity

Darktrace RESPOND (Antigena) actions (as displayed in example)

·      Antigena / Network / Manual / Quarantine Device

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques Observed
IoCs

‍

Appendices: Confluence (N-day)

Darktrace model detections

·      Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname

·      Anomalous Connection / Posting HTTP to IP Without Hostname

·      Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location

·      Anomalous File / Script from Rare Location

·      Compliance / Crypto Currency Mining Activity

·      Compromise / High Priority Crypto Currency Mining (PTN/Enhanced Monitoring model)

·      Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise (PTN/Enhanced Monitoring model)

·      Device / Internet Facing Device with High Priority Alert

·      Device / New User Agent

Darktrace RESPOND (Antigena) actions (displayed in example)

·      Antigena / Network / Compliance / Antigena Crypto Currency Mining Block

·      Antigena / Network / External Threat / Antigena File then New Outbound Block

·      Antigena / Network / External Threat / Antigena Suspicious Activity Block

·      Antigena / Network / External Threat / Antigena Suspicious File Block

·      Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Block Enhanced Monitoring

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques Observed
IOCs

References:

[1] https://securitybrief.asia/story/why-preventing-zero-day-attacks-is-crucial-for-businesses

[2] https://electricenergyonline.com/energy/magazine/1150/article/Security-Sessions-More-Dangerous-Than-Zero-Days-The-N-Day-Threat.htm

[3] https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/

[4] https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=SonicWall+2021 

[5] https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2021-20016

[6] https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2021-26084

[7] https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cybercom-says-mass-exploitation-of-atlassian-confluence-vulnerability-ongoing-and-expected-to-accelerate/

[8] https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-26134

[9] https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0599/

[10] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/195.19.192.28/detection 

[11] https://sysdig.com/blog/zoom-into-kinsing-kdevtmpfsi/

[12] https://github.com/alt3kx/CVE-2021-26084_PoC

[13] https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Press-Release-View/Article/2791320/nsa-cisa-release-guidance-on-selecting-and-hardening-remote-access-vpns/

Written by
Lewis Morgan
Cyber Analyst
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
Lewis Morgan
Cyber Analyst

Security After Signatures: Operating in a World of Pre‑CVE Disclosure Exploitation, Collapsed Trust Boundaries, and Autonomous Systems

•
July 13, 2026
Nathaniel Jones
VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO
Watch the NIS2 Webinar
Trending blogs
1
Prompt Security in Enterprise AI: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Common Approaches
May 21, 2026
2
How Empowering End Users can Improve Your Email Security and Decrease the Burden on the SOC
May 8, 2024
3
Elevating Network Security: Confronting Trust, Ransomware, & Novel Attacks
Jun 21, 2024
4
The State of AI in Cybersecurity: Unveiling Global Insights from 1,800 Security Practitioners
Apr 9, 2024
5
The State of AI in Cybersecurity: The Impact of AI on Cybersecurity Solutions
May 13, 2024

More in this series

No items found.
Continue reading
No items found.

Blog

/

Email

/

July 24, 2026

Darktrace / EMAIL Expands Behavioral Defense Across Email and Collaboration Workflows

Default blog imageDefault blog image

Email and collaboration tools do more than carry messages. They are where organizations approve payments, share sensitive data, reset credentials, and make thousands of everyday decisions. Increasingly, they are interfaces through which humans direct AI agents in their daily activity. Email, Slack and Teams are high volume, rich with sensitive data, and an easy place to hide malicious activity.

The opportunity isn’t lost on bad actors. Darktrace / EMAIL detected more than 32 million high-confidence phishing emails globally in 2025, and 70% of those messages passed DMARC authentication.  Phishing is increasingly difficult to detect and familiar trust signals alone are not enough. People and security teams need to understand how a message fits the normal behavior of the sender, recipient, and organization. They also need to correlate activity across platforms to spot threats that span multiple channels.

To effectively secure against today’s evolved threats, security teams need to act at two levels: they need to help each employee make a safer decision ‘in the moment’, and they need to understand the wider patterns that may expose the business to risk.

Darktrace is introducing four new capabilities in Darktrace / EMAIL to address both challenges. The new features explain suspicious content more clearly to end users, strengthen the capabilities of Darktrace / Adaptive Human Defense with richer guidance, let organizations define their own patterns for detecting sensitive data in messages, and give security teams a process-level view of risk across email and collaboration workflows.

Darktrace / EMAIL Inbox Analysis highlights risky content within your emails

A warning is more useful when it explains what the user should look at. To help do that, we’ve expanded Darktrace / EMAIL’s Inbox Analysis Add-In to highlight potentially dangerous content within the body of emails that Darktrace / EMAIL flags as potentially suspicious or high risk.  

The add-in can highlight language designed to create urgency, financial references, requests for payment, suspicious links, and content that is unusual for the sender. Each highlighted element includes a pop up that explains why it may be suspicious. Instead of asking an employee to accept a verdict without context, the analysis helps them examine the message and make a more informed decision.

Enhanced Just-In-Time Training Banners in Darktrace / Adaptive Human Defense

Enhanced Just-In-Time Training Banners build on the same principle. The banners now include a contextual header, actionable advice, and specific detection context. This gives employees more useful guidance at the point of risk without adding unnecessary information or cognitive load.

Together, the capabilities help turn a warning into a short learning moment. Employees can see what looks unusual, understand what action to take, and build their judgment.

Custom Sensitive Data Detection in Darktrace / EMAIL - Data Loss Prevention

Sensitive data is different for every business. Standard categories such as payment card details or government identifiers matter, but organizations also have their own customer codes, project names, research formats, account structures, and internal identifiers.

Custom Sensitive Data Detection in Darktrace / EMAIL - Data Loss Prevention allows administrators to write custom expressions for the data their organization needs to protect. Matched content can trigger existing model actions and data loss prevention (DLP) workflows, extending Darktrace's DLP capabilities.

This extends data loss detection beyond a fixed library of common data types. Security teams can apply controls to information that is sensitive in the context of their own organization and adapt those controls as the business changes.

Introducing Email and Collaboration Workflow Risk Posture Dashboards

Some of the most important risks are not isolated events. They are repeated ways of working that create an opening for error, misuse, or attack. For example, a payment request may be one suspicious message, but a recurring approval workflow that relies on weak verification is a business process risk.

The new Email and Collaboration Workflow Risk Posture Dashboard analyzes email and collaboration data across Email, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Zoom to provide a process-level view of risk in the organization. These may include financial authorization workflows, sensitive data sharing patterns, and activity that could expose credentials.

The dashboard brings these patterns into a view and provides actionable recommendations. This helps security teams determine where to investigate or strengthen controls, where ownership needs to be clarified, and where the business may need to change a risky process. It gives CISOs a clearer view of how human and communication risk is embedded in everyday operations, not only where individual alerts occur.

Behavior connects the individual decision to the wider risk

These capabilities build on Darktrace’s unique behavioral approach to security. We use Adaptive AI to learn how people and AI normally behave within an organization, creating the context needed to recognize when activity changes.

Within the Darktrace Behavioral Defense Platform, Darktrace / EMAIL helps protect people against phishing, account takeover, data exfiltration, and human risk across email and collaboration tools. The new capabilities extend that protection in both directions. They give employees clearer context for the decision in front of them, while giving security leaders a broader view of the workflows and behavior that create risk across the organization.

The result is not simply more alerts. It is a better understanding of why something is risky, what action to take, and where the organization can reduce risk before a familiar process becomes an easy route for an attacker.

‍

[related-resource]

Continue reading
About the author
Carlos Gray
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email

Blog

/

/

July 24, 2026

When Guardrails Break: Why Securing AI Requires Behavioral Detection and Autonomous Containment

behavioral detectionDefault blog imageDefault blog image

Bottom line up front: Governance, guardrails, identity controls, and secure development are necessary to secure AI, but they are not sufficient. AI systems are probabilistic, adaptive, and non-deterministic. Therefore, organizations need two critical layers of security:

  1. Behavioral-based detection that can identify when AI begins to act outside its intended purpose; and  
  2. Surgical, explainable autonomous containment that can stop risky activity before it causes material damage.  

That capability depends on multiple specialized AI models working together, not one LLM making every decision.

Organizations are embedding AI into development, business operations, and security workflows faster than most security programs can adapt. The risk is no longer limited to the model. It extends across prompts, data, identities, agents, memory, APIs, tools, permissions, and the trust relationships connecting them.

In my recent blog, Securing AI: Analysis of the Complete Security Stack with Governance and Controls, I outlined a defense-in-depth strategy spanning governance, identity, data security, secure development, runtime detection, autonomous containment, and recovery. The most urgent requirement across that architecture is the ability to understand how AI behaves in practice and contain it when that behavior becomes risky.  

Why non-deterministic systems require behavioral-based detection

Traditional controls remain foundational. Organizations need least privilege, strong identity controls, secure-by-design architecture, data governance, AI inventories, guardrails, testing, and clear boundaries on autonomy.

But deterministic controls, which assume predictable and repeatable behavior, cannot fully secure non-deterministic systems, where the same input may not always produce the same outcome.

AI agents can interpret the same instruction differently, chain individually authorized actions into an unsafe outcome, or pursue a legitimate goal through a method the organization did not anticipate. One of the most recent examples of this is the incident that OpenAI and Hugging Face jointly disclosed, where an autonomous agent escaped its intended testing boundaries and compromised Hugging Face infrastructure.  

An agent may have permission to access data and invoke a tool, but that does not mean every use of that access is appropriate. It is not enough to know whether an action is allowed. Organizations need to know whether it makes sense.

  • Is this normal for this agent?  
  • Is it acting within its intended purpose?  
  • Is it accessing unusual data, invoking an unexpected tool, or beginning to drift?  
  • Do a series of ordinary-looking actions become risky when viewed together?

Behavioral-based detection specific to an environment or organization with an understanding of context and risk enables provides the needed detection engineering for AI systems. It learns normal activity across people, systems, data, devices, and AI agents, then identifies deviations and evaluates their risk, intent, and context. This enables detection of misuse, abuse, compromise, manipulation, and unintended behavior even when no known attack signature or explicit policy violation exists.

Why accuracy is the foundation for SOC optimization

AI will only improve the SOC if it produces accurate, explainable, and actionable outcomes.

If analysts must manually validate every AI-generated finding because they cannot understand the evidence or confidence behind it, automation has not reduced workload. It has moved the workload. False positives increase fatigue. False negatives cause the most risk and damage to organizations. Inaccurate autonomous actions can disrupt critical operations.

Accuracy is therefore more than a model-performance metric. It is the prerequisite for analyst trust, SOC optimization, and safe autonomous response.

That accuracy is unlikely to come from one model.

Generative AI is valuable for natural-language analysis, summarization, and human interaction. But an LLM should not be the sole analytical engine for behavioral-based detection, investigation, risk assessment, and containment. Interpretability and consistency are required for high-consequence security decisions.

A stronger architecture uses multiple specialized AI systems collaboratively:  

  • Behavioral models can establish normal activity.  
  • Unsupervised learning can identify novel anomalies.  
  • Graph analysis can evaluate relationships among agents, identities, systems, and tools.  
  • Other models can correlate events, investigate competing hypotheses, and assess risk.  
  • Semantic models can analyze language where behavior-based language analysis is needed but this can be used in tandem with vector embeddings, graph neural networks, and a variety of other AI systems.

Each model contributes a different analytical perspective. Their outputs can corroborate one another, improving accuracy and creating a more reliable basis for response. The objective is not one model operating as an oracle. It is layered, adaptive intelligence designed to produce decisions the SOC can understand and trust.

Autonomous containment is required to secure autonomous systems

Many SOCs remain hesitant to trust LLM-based agents with autonomous containment. That concern is reasonable. A poorly selected response can isolate the wrong asset, stop a critical workflow, block a legitimate identity, or create more operational damage than the original incident.

But relying exclusively on human response is also not viable.

AI systems can operate at machine speed. They can expose sensitive data, execute workflows, modify records, call tools, or propagate actions across connected systems before an analyst can investigate and intervene. The behavior may be unintentional, the result of an agent optimizing toward a goal, or caused by misuse, compromise, prompt injection, or offensive AI.

Intent affects the investigation. It does not change the need to stop the damage.

Organizations need autonomous response, but it must be surgical and explainable. The objective is not to shut down an entire agent, user, application, or business process whenever an anomaly occurs. It is to interrupt the specific risky behavior: block an unusual connection, constrain a tool call, stop an abnormal data transfer, or temporarily limit an agent when it is performing anomalous, risky activity.  

That buys humans time. It stops the spread, limits damage, and allows the SOC to investigate without unnecessarily disrupting the business.

Layered, Adaptive AI provides a path forward

Darktrace has spent more than a decade researching and operationalizing layered, behavioral, Adaptive AI that learns a specific organization rather than relying only on historic attacks or predefined signatures.

The approach is designed to understand normal behavior, identify anomalous activity, assess its risk, correlate related events, autonomously investigate, and, when necessary, apply targeted containment while normal operations continue.

That sequence matters. Autonomous response cannot simply be added to the end of an LLM workflow. Trusted containment depends on broad visibility, continuous behavioral understanding, multiple analytical techniques, risk and context evaluation, autonomous investigation, explainability, and precise response actions.

This represents a more responsible model for security autonomy: not automation for its own sake, but controlled autonomy built to improve security outcomes and protect business operations.

Security must enable AI adoption

The answer for security teams is not to block AI. Organizations are adopting it to improve productivity, accelerate development, and create new business value.

But innovation without behavioral detection and autonomous containment is not sustainable.

Organizations should continue investing in governance, identity, least privilege, data security, secure MLOps, guardrails, testing, evaluation, validation, verification, kill switches, rollback, and forensic readiness. At the same time, they cannot wait for every governance program to mature before addressing runtime risk.

Behavioral-based detection and autonomous containment provide an immediate layer of resilience. They allow organizations to detect exploitation and risky AI behavior they did not anticipate, contain it at machine speed, and preserve human control over broader remediation.

The future of AI security will not be defined by a single model making every decision. It will be defined by multiple specialized AI systems working collaboratively, with sufficient accuracy, transparency, and context to support trusted autonomous action.

Surgical, explainable autonomous containment is no longer a future capability. It is a requirement for scaling AI securely today.

Learn how to build a defense-in-depth strategy for securing AI at scale in our talk at Black Hat on August 5 at 3:15 PM.  

[related-resource]

Continue reading
About the author
Your data. Our AI.
Elevate your network security with Darktrace AI