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
Neal Mohammed
VP of Technology, Rudin Management (Guest Contributor)
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Jul 2022
At Rudin Management, our 700 employees are responsible for managing 33 residential and commercial properties in New York City. We pride ourselves on operating these Class A buildings with premier customer service and a real duty of care – a big part of which is ensuring the security of our buildings and clients.
We’ve been keenly aware of developments in cyber over recent years, from new attacker techniques to changes in our own digital environments. It was clear that our cyber security efforts would need to keep pace if we were to avoid causing disruption to the tenants and businesses who use our properties. Prior to Darktrace, we employed a range of security tools, each with a highly specific function. This method was complex, however, and potentially risked leaving gaps for attackers to slip through into our network. We were soon seeking out other solutions.
Protecting every corner of every property
We brought Darktrace in to protect our whole environment, streamlining and strengthening our cyber security processes. For the first time, we have security for our network, ICS, Azure environment, and endpoint devices under one roof – all working together to spot threats. In an era where attackers will no longer confine their efforts to a single system, detecting threats with this extra context provides stronger insights into attacks and can prove essential for spotting dispersed threats.
Crucially for the work we do, we were able to make this switch without disruption. Darktrace integrated seamlessly with all of the tools we wanted to hang on to, augmenting their capabilities without getting in the way.
Darktrace is now not only protecting our important IT systems, but our ICS network as well, which alone spans millions of square feet. Keeping this network functioning properly is essential to the upkeep of our common building services, and Darktrace/OT gives us the confidence that we’re safe from OT attacks and dangerous misconfigurations.
Adding Peace of Mind with Autonomous Response
Beyond simply spotting these threats, Darktrace is able to take action against them with Autonomous Response. Darktrace can respond to threats whether they arise in our network, our individual endpoints, or even our cloud environment. It has totally kept up with our adoption of cloud infrastructure, shining a light on what would otherwise be a major blind spot and taking action against fast-moving threats. These actions don’t get in the way of our normal business operations – they simply cut off the malicious activity and leave us to carry on working hard for our clients.
Autonomous Response is configurable, meaning we can set it to only take action in certain systems, at certain times or in response to certain threats. We therefore initially considered restricting its ability to take action on our ICS network, but it has since proved to be particularly useful in that area of the environment.
Autonomous Response secures a dangerous misconfiguration
Limited expertise has long been a concern in the cyber security space, and has often led to strain being put on smaller teams, inevitably causing fatigue and errors. With Darktrace taking on some of our team’s most time-consuming tasks, and its Autonomous Response capability removing the danger of human error and misconfigurations, however, that concern has been alleviated at Rudin Management.
In a recent incident, one of our integrators misconfigured some of our critical ICS systems, exposing them to the internet. This, of course, posed a massive threat. If attackers had been able to take control of our systems, they could have caused massive disruption to our clients, and attempted to leverage a damaging ransom payment out of our business. Gladly, I can say that these were problems we didn’t have to face. On detecting the threat of the misconfiguration, Darktrace’s Autonomous Response blocked access to these exposed components, and prevented the possibility of an intrusion.
Having Darktrace as a safety net has taken the tension out of our security efforts – we now know that should a slip-up occur again, Autonomous Response will be there to keep the organization safe and on course.
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
Neal Mohammed
VP of Technology, Rudin Management (Guest Contributor)
Darktrace Redefines NDR: Industry-First Autonomous Threat Investigation from Network to Endpoint with Agentic AI
Darktrace delivers the next evolution of unified and proactive NDR
Darktrace Network Endpoint eXtended Telemetry (NEXT) is revolutionizing NDR with the industry’s first mixed-telemetry agent using Self-Learning AI.
The combined context of native network and endpoint process data significantly reduces incident triage and investigation times for threats spanning both domains. Our business-centric approach learns what normal looks like for each endpoint, and now uses process context to extend our ability to identify novel threats that existing EDR/XDR tools often miss.
Summary of what’s new:
Native endpoint process telemetry combined with NDR, bridging the EDR gap
Self-Learning AI on the endpoint to stop novel threats missed by EDR
Sophisticated Agentic AI to automate SecOps investigations across all major IT domains
AI-native, real-time threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR) for cross-domain activity throughout the enterprise
Why is this an important next step in NDR?
Security analysts are buried under a flood of alerts that lack the context needed to separate genuine threats from noise. The root problem is that most security tools only see one slice of the environment. IT and OT networks, endpoints, and cloud systems are monitored in isolation, with little correlation between them.
As a result, investigations are highly manual. Analysts are forced to pivot between siloed point-products, each providing only a fragment of the incident. This slows response, creates blind spots, and limits the team’s ability to understand and contain threats effectively.
In many cases, the high degree of skill it takes to pivot tools and conduct investigations leads even the most experienced analysts closer to burnout, especially when they are already exhausted by the quantity of alerts. Ultimately, the human personnel managing these systems are using their skills to accommodate for the lack of synergy between tools they are using in their security stack, rather than developing the higher-value expertise needed to anticipate, prevent, and respond to emerging threats.
Many organizations have attempted to overcome this challenge by implementing XDR solutions. But, XDR does not cover NDR related use cases. This is especially true in OT/CPS environments where it is not possible to install an agent on devices.
XDR is an Endpoint-focused tool that cannot see the full picture of threats moving laterally across the network, targeting unmanaged devices, or blending into legitimate traffic. While XDR is still a strong tool in the arsenal, attackers are noticing where the gaps are:
A CISA Red Team assessment found that one U.S. critical infrastructure organization suffered prolonged compromise because it overly relied on host‑based EDR and lacked sufficient network-layer defenses.
Bottom line: Without native network detection and response (NDR), critical incidents slip through undetected.
Not all NDR tools are built the same
When it comes to NDR, the details matter. Here are a few reasons why not all NDR solutions are created equal:
Most NDR solutions depend on EDR/XDR integrations to ingest endpoint alerts, which are raised based on activity that is already known to be malicious
They can’t investigate beyond what the EDR already flags, lacking process-level context in network investigations
Almost no NDR solutions have a native endpoint agent to extend NDR visibility to remote worker devices
This reliance on EDR leaves critical gaps in network coverage, since EDRs themselves don’t provide network-level visibility.
The NEXT evolution of NDR
Darktrace Network Endpoint eXtended Telemetry (NEXT) is revolutionizing NDR with the industry’s first mixed-telemetry agent using Self-Learning AI.
The combined context of native network and endpoint process data significantly reduces incident triage and investigation times for threats spanning both domains, our business-centric approach with new data also extends our ability to identify novel threats that existing EDR/XDR may miss.
Darktrace / ENDPOINT agents are now able to utilize new Network Endpoint eXtended Telemetry (NEXT) capabilities. This combines full network visibility with native endpoint process data, enabling autonomous investigations that trace threats from initial network activity all the way to the root cause at the endpoint, without manual correlation or tool switching. This bridges the gap between NDR and the endpoint, while adding value to existing EDR investments.
Figure 1: Darktrace natively shows the endpoint process context in relation to network events, complete with parent/child process relationships, adding immediate context to network investigations without needing to pivot to your EDR.
Leveraging this data in investigations
This additional context is then leveraged by Cyber AI Analyst, a sophisticated agentic AI system that autonomously performs end-to-end investigations of all relevant alerts and prioritizes incidents. With the new endpoint process visibility, Cyber AI Analyst now incorporates process context into its decision-making, which improves detection accuracy, filters out benign activity, and enhances incident narratives with process-level insights.
This makes Darktrace the first NDR to natively investigate threats across network and endpoint telemetry with an autonomous, agentic AI analyst. And with our Self-Learning AI, Darktrace continuously evolves by understanding what’s normal for each unique environment, now adding process data to extend visibility and range of detections. This enables Darktrace to detect and contain novel threats, including zero-days, insider threats, and emerging attack techniques, up to 8 days before public disclosure.
This is more than a solution to a visibility problem. It’s a fundamental evolution in how threats are detected, investigated, and stopped. By applying agentic AI, Darktrace empowers security teams to move from reactive alert triage to proactive, autonomous defense, surfacing and blocking threats that others simply can’t see.
Figure 2: An excerpt from a Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst incident, showing the inclusion of native endpoint process context alongside other network events.
Continued innovation in detection and response
Darktrace also continues to invest in our core NDR capabilities, delivering enhancements and innovations to solve modern network security challenges. In the latest release, Darktrace / NETWORK has been enhanced to increase detection efficacy and performance. This includes increased protocol detection fidelity and new support for custom port mappings, plus expanded visibility into HTTP traffic to support more targeted threat hunting across a wider range of application layer activity. In addition, vSensor performance has been upgraded for tunnel protocols such as Geneve.
We have also released enhancements to Autonomous Response, which is already trusted by thousands of organizations to contain threats at the earliest stages without causing business disruption. This includes enhanced support for highly complex and segmented networks, plus the ability to extend Autonomous Response actions to more areas with additional firewall integration support. This enables faster and more effective response to network threats, and continues Darktrace’s proven ability to contain zero-day threats up to 8 days before public disclosure.
Providing seamless operations with the new Darktrace ActiveAI Security Portal
As part of Darktrace’s commitment to breaking down silos across the cyber defense lifecycle, this release also introduces major platform enhancements that tackle often-overlooked operational gaps specifically around user access, permissions, and integration workflows. With the launch of the new Darktrace ActiveAI Security Portal, organizations can now manage security at scale across diverse environments, making it ideal for large enterprises, MSSPs, and partners overseeing multiple tenants. These updates ensure that visibility, control, and scalability extend beyond detection and response and into how teams manage and interact with the platform itself.
Committed to innovation
These updates are part of the broader Darktrace release, which also included major innovations in cloud security with the launch of the industry’s first fully automated cloud forensics solution, reinforcing Darktrace’s leadership in AI-native security. As attackers exploit gaps between tools, the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform delivers unified detection, automated investigation, and autonomous response across cloud, endpoint, email, network, and OT. With full-stack visibility and AI-native workflows, Darktrace empowers security teams to detect, understand, and stop novel threats before they escalate.
Join our live broadcast to experience how Darktrace is eliminating blind spots for detection and response across your complete enterprise with new innovations in Agentic AI across our ActiveAI Security platform. Industry leaders from IDC will join Darktrace customers to discuss challenges in cross-domain security, with a live walkthrough reshaping the future of Network Detection & Response, Endpoint Detection & Response, Email Security, and SecOps in novel threat detection and autonomous investigations.
Salty Much: Darktrace’s view on a recent Salt Typhoon intrusion
What is Salt Typhoon?
Salt Typhoon represents one of the most persistent and sophisticated cyber threats targeting global critical infrastructure today. Believed to be linked to state-sponsored actors from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), this advanced persistent threat (APT) group has executed a series of high-impact campaigns against telecommunications providers, energy networks, and government systems—most notably across the United States.
Active since at least 2019, the group—also tracked as Earth Estries, GhostEmperor, and UNC2286—has demonstrated advanced capabilities in exploiting edge devices, maintaining deep persistence, and exfiltrating sensitive data across more than 80 countries. While much of the public reporting has focused on U.S. targets, Salt Typhoon’s operations have extended into Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) where it has targeted telecoms, government entities, and technology firms. Its use of custom malware and exploitation of high-impact vulnerabilities (e.g., Ivanti, Fortinet, Cisco) underscores the strategic nature of its campaigns, which blend intelligence collection with geopolitical influence [1].
Leveraging zero-day exploits, obfuscation techniques, and lateral movement strategies, Salt Typhoon has demonstrated an alarming ability to evade detection and maintain long-term access to sensitive environments. The group’s operations have exposed lawful intercept systems, compromised metadata for millions of users, and disrupted essential services, prompting coordinated responses from intelligence agencies and private-sector partners worldwide. As organizations reassess their threat models, Salt Typhoon serves as a stark reminder of the evolving nature of nation-state cyber operations and the urgent need for proactive defense strategies.
Darktrace’s coverage
In this case, Darktrace observed activity in a European telecommunications organisation consistent with Salt Typhoon’s known tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), including dynamic-link library (DLL) sideloading and abuse of legitimate software for stealth and execution.
Initial access
The intrusion likely began with exploitation of a Citrix NetScaler Gateway appliance in the first week of July 2025. From there, the actor pivoted to Citrix Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) hosts in the client’s Machine Creation Services (MCS) subnet. Initial access activities in the intrusion originated from an endpoint potentially associated with the SoftEther VPN service, suggesting infrastructure obfuscation from the outset.
Tooling
Darktrace subsequently observed the threat actor delivering a backdoor assessed with high confidence to be SNAPPYBEE (also known as Deed RAT) [2][3] to multiple Citrix VDA hosts. The backdoor was delivered to these internal endpoints as a DLL alongside legitimate executable files for antivirus software such as Norton Antivirus, Bkav Antivirus, and IObit Malware Fighter. This pattern of activity indicates that the attacker relied on DLL side-loading via legitimate antivirus software to execute their payloads. Salt Typhoon and similar groups have a history of employing this technique [4][5], enabling them to execute payloads under the guise of trusted software and bypassing traditional security controls.
Command-and-Control (C2)
The backdoor delivered by the threat actor leveraged LightNode VPS endpoints for C2, communicating over both HTTP and an unidentified TCP-based protocol. This dual-channel setup is consistent with Salt Typhoon’s known use of non-standard and layered protocols to evade detection. The HTTP communications displayed by the backdoor included POST requests with an Internet Explorer User-Agent header and Target URI patterns such as “/17ABE7F017ABE7F0”. One of the C2 hosts contacted by compromised endpoints was aar.gandhibludtric[.]com (38.54.63[.]75), a domain recently linked to Salt Typhoon [6].
Detection timeline
Darktrace produced high confidence detections in response to the early stages of the intrusion, with both the initial tooling and C2 activities being strongly covered by both investigations by Darktrace Cyber AI AnalystTM investigations and Darktrace models. Despite the sophistication of the threat actor, the intrusion activity identified and remediated before escalating beyond these early stages of the attack, with Darktrace’s timely high-confidence detections likely playing a key role in neutralizing the threat.
Cyber AI Analyst observations
Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst autonomously investigated the model alerts generated by Darktrace during the early stages of the intrusion. Through its investigations, Cyber AI Analyst discovered the initial tooling and C2 events and pieced them together into unified incidents representing the attacker’s progression.
Figure 1: Cyber AI Analyst weaved together separate events from the intrusion into broader incidents summarizing the attacker’s progression.
Conclusion
Based on overlaps in TTPs, staging patterns, infrastructure, and malware, Darktrace assesses with moderate confidence that the observed activity was consistent with Salt Typhoon/Earth Estries (ALA GhostEmperor/UNC2286). Salt Typhoon continues to challenge defenders with its stealth, persistence, and abuse of legitimate tools. As attackers increasingly blend into normal operations, detecting behavioral anomalies becomes essential for identifying subtle deviations and correlating disparate signals. The evolving nature of Salt Typhoon’s tradecraft, and its ability to repurpose trusted software and infrastructure, ensures it will remain difficult to detect using conventional methods alone. This intrusion highlights the importance of proactive defense, where anomaly-based detections, not just signature matching, play a critical role in surfacing early-stage activity.
Credit to Nathaniel Jones (VP, Security & AI Strategy, FCISO), Sam Lister (Specialist Security Researcher), Emma Foulger (Global Threat Research Operations Lead), Adam Potter (Senior Cyber Analyst)
Edited by Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)
Appendices
Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)
IoC-Type-Description + Confidence
89.31.121[.]101 – IP Address – Possible C2 server
hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/WINMM.dll - URI – Likely SNAPPYBEE download
The content provided in this blog is published by Darktrace for general informational purposes only and reflects our understanding of cybersecurity topics, trends, incidents, and developments at the time of publication. While we strive to ensure accuracy and relevance, the information is provided “as is” without any representations or warranties, express or implied. Darktrace makes no guarantees regarding the completeness, accuracy, reliability, or timeliness of any information presented and expressly disclaims all warranties.
Nothing in this blog constitutes legal, technical, or professional advice, and readers should consult qualified professionals before acting on any information contained herein. Any references to third-party organizations, technologies, threat actors, or incidents are for informational purposes only and do not imply affiliation, endorsement, or recommendation.
Darktrace, its affiliates, employees, or agents shall not be held liable for any loss, damage, or harm arising from the use of or reliance on the information in this blog.
The cybersecurity landscape evolves rapidly, and blog content may become outdated or superseded. We reserve the right to update, modify, or remove any content.
