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February 14, 2019

Anomaly Detection Techniques for Mimikatz Behavior

Learn how anomaly detection can identify Mimikatz behavior and enhance your cybersecurity measures against credential theft.
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
Max Heinemeyer
Global Field CISO
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14
Feb 2019

Originally created by famed French programmer Benjamin Delpy to highlight security flaws in Windows authentication mechanisms, today Mimikatz is a staple post-exploitation module in the arsenal of cyber-criminals, since it facilitates lateral movement across a victim’s network. Mimikatz was a primary feature of the global ransomware attacks NotPetya and BadRabbit, in addition to the alleged Russian hacking of the German parliament in 2015 and 2017.

Among the primary vulnerabilities that Mimikatz exploits is Windows’ Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS), which is designed to obviate the need for users to reauthenticate every time they seek to access internal resources. Despite its clear utility, LSASS works by keeping a cache of every credential used since the last boot, presenting an obvious security risk in the event the cache is compromised. Broadly speaking, Mimikatz plunders this resource and allows users to access cleartext passwords as well as NTLM hashes. With this data in hand, threat actors are able to conduct the following attacks:

  • Kerberos Golden Ticket: Provides administrative credentials for the whole domain.
  • Pass-the-Ticket: Enables a user to pass a Kerberos ticket to a second device and login using this ticket.
  • Kerberos Silver Ticket: Provides a TGS ticket to log into any network service.
  • Pass-the-Hash: Allows a user to pass a hash string in order to login.

Dumping LSASS memory is just one method that Mimikatz and its many updated versions employ to harvest credentials. Indeed, once malware such as NotPetya has established itself on single device, the Mimikatz module can exploit a variety of security flaws to obtain the password information for any other users or computers that have logged onto that machine: a key step for both lateral movement and privilege escalation. Like many successful hacker tools, Mimikatz has inspired the creation of other programs with similar aims, which are largely intended to circumvent antivirus controls.

Using AI to end the cat-and-mouse game

At the most basic level, security teams can reduce vulnerability to Mimikatz and to lateral movement more generally by ensuring that each user has the minimum amount of privileges needed for his or her role. But while this measure is certainly prudent, it will not always be effective — especially when dealing with sophisticated threats. Another strategy is to implement endpoint security tools and anti-virus software, which rely on rules and signatures to detect known Mimikatz variants. However, as Mimikatz and its copycats continue to evolve, these traditional tools are locked in a ceaseless cat-and-mouse game, unable to spot unknown variants of Mimikatz that are designed to circumvent them.

As a fundamentally different approach to security, artificially intelligent systems like Darktrace avoid this cat-and-mouse game by learning what constitutes normal behavior for the users and devices they safeguard while “on the job,” rather than using fixed rules and signatures. This approach alerts defenders to any anomalous activity, regardless of whether such activity constitutes a known or unknown threat. Typically, lateral movement involving Mimikatz will involve a spike in unusual SMB activity, as attackers seek to write the tool to target devices. The following recent attack on a Darktrace customer highlights how AI can allow security teams to quickly detect and respond to such lateral movement involving Mimikatz:

  1. Darktrace alerts to a non-domain joined Linux device appearing on the customer’s network and engaging in extensive SMB bruteforce activity against key servers.
  1. Figure 1: Darktrace detects the spike in SMB activity.
  2. Darktrace flags the device successfully logging into a server using administrative credentials via SMBv1, opening the \sect pipe and writing the suspicious and likely malicious file Syssvc.exe to the server’s \temp folder. Immediately after this, Darktrace alerts to the device writing mimikatz.exe to the same folder.
  1. Figure 2: Darktrace flags the device using Mimikatz.
  2. Following this step, multiple .tmp and .txt files appear on the target device, indicating that Mimikatz was proceeding to access passwords and hashes.

The novelty of this AI-powered approach is that it does not rely on a string search for the term “mimikatz.exe”; rather, it highlights the unusual behavior that commonly surrounds Mimikatz’ activity. As shown in the screenshot above, this behavior constitutes “New activity”: Darktrace has not seen this type of SMB activity between the source and the destination before. Moreover, SMBv1 is used — highly unusual for the environment. And finally, it is unusual for devices in the target environment to make SMB network drive writes to Temp folders. All these subtle deviations from the customer’s ‘pattern of life,’ taken together, caused Darktrace to alert on the Mimikatz behavior.

Since its introduction to the cyber-threat landscape, Mimikatz has become a highly effective means for cyber-attackers to move laterally inside corporate and government networks. But by empowering security teams to respond before attackers can plunder a network’s entire cache of passwords, AI cyber defenses are thwarting Mimikatz and its copycats alike.

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
Max Heinemeyer
Global Field CISO

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July 3, 2025

Top Eight Threats to SaaS Security and How to Combat Them

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The latest on the identity security landscape

Following the mass adoption of remote and hybrid working patterns, more critical data than ever resides in cloud applications – from Salesforce and Google Workspace, to Box, Dropbox, and Microsoft 365.

On average, a single organization uses 130 different Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, and 45% of organizations reported experiencing a cybersecurity incident through a SaaS application in the last year.

As SaaS applications look set to remain an integral part of the digital estate, organizations are being forced to rethink how they protect their users and data in this area.

What is SaaS security?

SaaS security is the protection of cloud applications. It includes securing the apps themselves as well as the user identities that engage with them.

Below are the top eight threats that target SaaS security and user identities.

1.  Account Takeover (ATO)

Attackers gain unauthorized access to a user’s SaaS or cloud account by stealing credentials through phishing, brute-force attacks, or credential stuffing. Once inside, they can exfiltrate data, send malicious emails, or escalate privileges to maintain persistent access.

2. Privilege escalation

Cybercriminals exploit misconfigurations, weak access controls, or vulnerabilities to increase their access privileges within a SaaS or cloud environment. Gaining admin or superuser rights allows attackers to disable security settings, create new accounts, or move laterally across the organization.

3. Lateral movement

Once inside a network or SaaS platform, attackers move between accounts, applications, and cloud workloads to expand their foot- hold. Compromised OAuth tokens, session hijacking, or exploited API connections can enable adversaries to escalate access and exfiltrate sensitive data.

4. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) bypass and session hijacking

Threat actors bypass MFA through SIM swapping, push bombing, or exploiting session cookies. By stealing an active authentication session, they can access SaaS environments without needing the original credentials or MFA approval.

5. OAuth token abuse

Attackers exploit OAuth authentication mechanisms by stealing or abusing tokens that grant persistent access to SaaS applications. This allows them to maintain access even if the original user resets their password, making detection and mitigation difficult.

6. Insider threats

Malicious or negligent insiders misuse their legitimate access to SaaS applications or cloud platforms to leak data, alter configurations, or assist external attackers. Over-provisioned accounts and poor access control policies make it easier for insiders to exploit SaaS environments.

7. Application Programming Interface (API)-based attacks

SaaS applications rely on APIs for integration and automation, but attackers exploit insecure endpoints, excessive permissions, and unmonitored API calls to gain unauthorized access. API abuse can lead to data exfiltration, privilege escalation, and service disruption.

8. Business Email Compromise (BEC) via SaaS

Adversaries compromise SaaS-based email platforms (e.g., Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace) to send phishing emails, conduct invoice fraud, or steal sensitive communications. BEC attacks often involve financial fraud or data theft by impersonating executives or suppliers.

BEC heavily uses social engineering techniques, tailoring messages for a specific audience and context. And with the growing use of generative AI by threat actors, BEC is becoming even harder to detect. By adding ingenuity and machine speed, generative AI tools give threat actors the ability to create more personalized, targeted, and convincing attacks at scale.

Protecting against these SaaS threats

Traditionally, security leaders relied on tools that were focused on the attack, reliant on threat intelligence, and confined to a single area of the digital estate.

However, these tools have limitations, and often prove inadequate for contemporary situations, environments, and threats. For example, they may lack advanced threat detection, have limited visibility and scope, and struggle to integrate with other tools and infrastructure, especially cloud platforms.

AI-powered SaaS security stays ahead of the threat landscape

New, more effective approaches involve AI-powered defense solutions that understand the digital business, reveal subtle deviations that indicate cyber-threats, and action autonomous, targeted responses.

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Carlos Gray
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email

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July 2, 2025

Pre-CVE Threat Detection: 10 Examples Identifying Malicious Activity Prior to Public Disclosure of a Vulnerability

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Vulnerabilities are weaknesses in a system that can be exploited by malicious actors to gain unauthorized access or to disrupt normal operations. Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (or CVEs) are a list of publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities that can be tracked and mitigated by the security community.

When a vulnerability is discovered, the standard practice is to report it to the vendor or the responsible organization, allowing them to develop and distribute a patch or fix before the details are made public. This is known as responsible disclosure.

With a record-breaking 40,000 CVEs reported for 2024 and a predicted higher number for 2025 by the Forum for Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) [1], anomaly-detection is essential for identifying these potential risks. The gap between exploitation of a zero-day and disclosure of the vulnerability can sometimes be considerable, and retroactively attempting to identify successful exploitation on your network can be challenging, particularly if taking a signature-based approach.

Detecting threats without relying on CVE disclosure

Abnormal behaviors in networks or systems, such as unusual login patterns or data transfers, can indicate attempted cyber-attacks, insider threats, or compromised systems. Since Darktrace does not rely on rules or signatures, it can detect malicious activity that is anomalous even without full context of the specific device or asset in question.

For example, during the Fortinet exploitation late last year, the Darktrace Threat Research team were investigating a different Fortinet vulnerability, namely CVE 2024-23113, for exploitation when Mandiant released a security advisory around CVE 2024-47575, which aligned closely with Darktrace’s findings.

Retrospective analysis like this is used by Darktrace’s threat researchers to better understand detections across the threat landscape and to add additional context.

Below are ten examples from the past year where Darktrace detected malicious activity days or even weeks before a vulnerability was publicly disclosed.

ten examples from the past year where Darktrace detected malicious activity days or even weeks before a vulnerability was publicly disclosed.

Trends in pre-cve exploitation

Often, the disclosure of an exploited vulnerability can be off the back of an incident response investigation related to a compromise by an advanced threat actor using a zero-day. Once the vulnerability is registered and publicly disclosed as having been exploited, it can kick off a race between the attacker and defender: attack vs patch.

Nation-state actors, highly skilled with significant resources, are known to use a range of capabilities to achieve their target, including zero-day use. Often, pre-CVE activity is “low and slow”, last for months with high operational security. After CVE disclosure, the barriers to entry lower, allowing less skilled and less resourced attackers, like some ransomware gangs, to exploit the vulnerability and cause harm. This is why two distinct types of activity are often seen: pre and post disclosure of an exploited vulnerability.

Darktrace saw this consistent story line play out during several of the Fortinet and PAN OS threat actor campaigns highlighted above last year, where nation-state actors were seen exploiting vulnerabilities first, followed by ransomware gangs impacting organizations [2].

The same applies with the recent SAP Netweaver exploitations being tied to a China based threat actor earlier this spring with subsequent ransomware incidents being observed [3].

Autonomous Response

Anomaly-based detection offers the benefit of identifying malicious activity even before a CVE is disclosed; however, security teams still need to quickly contain and isolate the activity.

For example, during the Ivanti chaining exploitation in the early part of 2025, a customer had Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability enabled on their network. As a result, Darktrace was able to contain the compromise and shut down any ongoing suspicious connectivity by blocking internal connections and enforcing a “pattern of life” on the affected device.

This pre-CVE detection and response by Darktrace occurred 11 days before any public disclosure, demonstrating the value of an anomaly-based approach.

In some cases, customers have even reported that Darktrace stopped malicious exploitation of devices several days before a public disclosure of a vulnerability.

For example, During the ConnectWise exploitation, a customer informed the team that Darktrace had detected malicious software being installed via remote access. Upon further investigation, four servers were found to be impacted, while Autonomous Response had blocked outbound connections and enforced patterns of life on impacted devices.

Conclusion

By continuously analyzing behavioral patterns, systems can spot unusual activities and patterns from users, systems, and networks to detect anomalies that could signify a security breach.

Through ongoing monitoring and learning from these behaviors, anomaly-based security systems can detect threats that traditional signature-based solutions might miss, while also providing detailed insights into threat tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This type of behavioral intelligence supports pre-CVE detection, allows for a more adaptive security posture, and enables systems to evolve with the ever-changing threat landscape.

Credit to Nathaniel Jones (VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO), Emma Fougler (Global Threat Research Operations Lead), Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)

References and further reading:

  1. https://www.first.org/blog/20250607-Vulnerability-Forecast-for-2025
  2. https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/fortimanager-zero-day-exploitation-cve-2024-47575
  3. https://thehackernews.com/2025/05/china-linked-hackers-exploit-sap-and.html

Related Darktrace blogs:

*Self-reported by customer, confirmed afterwards.

**Updated January 2024 blog now reflects current findings

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