December 4, 2024

Phishing Attacks Surge Over 600% in the Buildup to Black Friday

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are prime targets for cyber-attacks, as consumer spending rises and threat actors flock to take advantage. Darktrace analysis reveals a surge in retail cyber scams at the opening of the peak 2024 shopping period, and the top brands that scammers love to impersonate. Plus, don’t forget to check out our top tips for holiday-proofing your SOC before you clock off for the festive season.

Written by

Nathaniel Jones

VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO

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

Nathaniel Jones

VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO

Dec 2024

Defenders are accustomed now to an uptick in cyber-attacks around the holiday period. The festive shopping season creates ideal conditions for cybercriminals. Consumers are inundated with time-sensitive deals, while retailers handle record-breaking transaction volumes at speed. This environment makes it harder than ever to identify suspicious activity.

An investigation conducted by Darktrace’s global analyst team revealed that Christmas-themed phishing attacks leapt 327%¹ around the world and Black Friday and Cyber Monday themed phishing attacks soared to 692% last week compared to the beginning of November² (4th - 9th November), as threat actors seek to take advantage of the busy holiday shopping period.

The United States retail sector saw the most marked increase in threat actors crafting convincing emails purporting to be from well-known brands, mimicking promotional emails. Attacks designed to look like they came from major brands including Walmart – which was easily the most mimicked US brand – Macy’s, Target, Old Navy, and Best Buy³ increased by more than 2000% during peak shopping periods.

Darktrace analysis also highlighted a redistribution of scammers’ resources to take advantage of the festive shopping season, moving from targeting businesses to consumers. The impersonation of major consumer brands, dominated by Amazon and PayPal⁴, increased by 92% globally between analyzed periods, while the spoofing of workplace-focused brands, like Adobe, Zoom and LinkedIn, decreased by 9%.

Major retail brands invest heavily in safeguarding themselves and their customers from scams and cyberattacks, particularly during the holiday season. However, phishing and website spoofing occur outside the retailers' legitimate infrastructure and security controls, making it difficult to catch and prevent every instance due to their sheer volume. While advancements like AI are helping security teams narrow the gap, brand impersonation remains a persistent challenge.

Multiple attack methods exploit trust during holiday rush

Darktrace’s findings demonstrate some of the most common brand spoofing strategies used by attackers during the holiday season:

Domain spoofing, which sees attackers create near perfect replicas of retail websites, complete with lookalike domain names and branding, to trick consumers into handing over personal and payment details.

Brand spoofing, where attackers send a phishing email designed to look like a favorite retailer, enticing their target to click a link for a discount, when in fact the link downloads malware to their device.

Safelink smuggling, which involves an attacker intentionally getting their malicious payload rewritten by a security solution’s Safelink capability to then propagate the rewritten URL to others. This not only evades detection but also undermines trust in email security tools. Darktrace observed over 300,000 cases of Safelinks being included in unexpected and suspicious contexts over a period of 3 months.

Multi-stage attacks which combine these tactics into a single attack: brand spoofing emails lead unsuspecting shoppers directly to domain spoofed websites that harvest login or payment details, creating a seamless deception that hands personal and financial data directly to attackers. This coordinated approach exploits the chaos of holiday sales, when shoppers are primed to expect high volumes of retail emails and website traffic promoting significant savings.

A spike in cyber-criminal activity which extends beyond email

While email often serves as the front door to an organization and the initial avenue of attack, Darktrace frequently observes a surge in cyber-attacks during public holidays⁵. These “off-peak” attacks exploit common organizational practices and human vulnerabilities with greater ease.

When staff numbers are reduced, and employees mentally and physically disconnect from work, the speed of detection and response has the potential to slow. This creates opportunities for threat actors to infiltrate undetected. Without real-time autonomous systems in place, such attacks can have a far more severe impact on an organization’s ability to respond and recover effectively.

Ransomware is among the most common threats targeting organizations after hours. In 76% of cases, the encryption process begins during off-hours or on weekends6. For instance, Darktrace identified a ransomware attack launched in the early hours of Christmas Day on a client’s network, taking advantage of the period when most employees were offline.

Festive cheer: giving your SOC team the break they deserve

Staff burnout is increasingly top of mind, with 74% of cybersecurity leaders reporting that they’ve had employees resign due to stress⁷. And the numbers stack up – almost 60% of security analysts report feeling burnt out, and many are choosing to leave their jobs and even security altogether.⁸

At a human level, the holiday season should be a time of relaxation and merriment rather than anxiety. For SOC leaders, giving teams time to prioritize recharging during the holidays is crucial for sustaining long-term resilience and productivity, balanced with the importance of maintaining rigorous defenses with a reduced workforce.

So… how can cybersecurity leaders ensure peace of mind during the holidays?

Step 1: Cover yourself from every angle. It’s no longer enough for your email solution to only catch known threats. Security leaders need to invest in multi-layered email defenses that can combat novel and advanced attacks – such as the multi-stage brand personation attacks that lead shoppers to domain-spoofed websites.

Darktrace / EMAIL – the fastest growing email security solution – has been proven to detect up to 56% more threats than other email solutions.⁹ It is uniquely capable of catching novel attacks on the first encounter, rather than waiting the 13 days it takes for other solutions to take action¹⁰– by which time your decorations might be coming down, along with your business.

Step 2: Avoid an overwhelming deluge of alerts raining (or snowing) down on your L1 SOC analysts. Lining up people to manage the grunt work over the holidays is an easy pattern to fall into, but consider technology that can automate that initial triage. For example, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst automatically investigates every alert detected by Darktrace’s core real-time detection engine. It does an additional layer of AI analysis – establishing whether an alert is unusual but benign, or part of a more serious security incident. Rather than looking at hundreds of alerts, your team is presented with just a handful of overall incidents. They can use that new free time to do more strategic work, or take some much-needed time off.

Step 3: Make sure someone – or something – is keeping guard in those super off-peak hours. Enter Autonomous Response. Because it knows what normal looks like for your business it can take action to stop and contain only the unusual and threatening activity. Even if it doesn’t eliminate the threat entirely, it can buy your security team time and space, allowing them to enjoy their holiday in peace.

With Black Friday over and the festive shopping period looming, businesses should act now to protect their brand and ensure they have the cybersecurity measures are in place to enjoy the gift of a stress-free holiday season.

Interested in how AI-driven email security can protect your organization? Check out the product hub to learn more. Or watch the demo video to see Darktrace / EMAIL in action.

References

[1] Based on analysis of 626 customer deployments and attempted phishing emails mentioning Christmas that were detected by Darktrace / EMAIL.

[2] Emails in the analysis mentioning ‘Black Friday’ or ‘Cyber Monday’.

[3] Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Macy's, Old Navy, 1800-Flowers

[4] Amazon, eBay, Netflix, Alibaba, Paypal, Apple

[5] In 2021, Darktrace observed a 70% average increase in attempted ransomware attacks in November and December compared to January and February. (Darktrace Press Release, 2021)

[6] https://www.zdnet.com/article/most-ransomware-attacks-take-place-during-the-night-or-the-weekend

[7] https://www.scworld.com/perspective/ciso-stress-levels-are-out-of-control

[8] https://www.informationweek.com/cyber-resilience/the-psychology-of-cybersecurity-burnout

[9] 56% of malicious phishing emails detected and analyzed across Darktrace / EMAIL customer deployments from December 2023 – July 2024 passed through all existing security layers. (Darktrace Half Year Report 2024)

[10] 13 days mean average of phishing payloads active in the wild between the response of Darktrace / EMAIL compared to the earliest of 16 independent feeds submitted by other email security technologies. (Darktrace Press Release, 2023)

Written by

Nathaniel Jones

VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO

Inside the SOC

Written by

Nathaniel Jones

VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO

•

September 8, 2025

Emma Foulger

Global Threat Research Operations Lead

Product Marketing Manager, Network Detection & Response

Watch the NIS2 Webinar

Blog

Network

September 9, 2025

The benefits of bringing together network and email security

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.

[related-resource]

About the author

Mikey Anderson

Product Marketing Manager, Network Detection & Response

Blog

September 9, 2025

Unpacking the Salesloft Incident: Insights from Darktrace Observations

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].

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.

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.

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.