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October 2, 2024

How Darktrace won an email security trial by learning the business, not the breach

Discover how Darktrace identified a sophisticated business email compromise (BEC) attack to successfully acquire a prospective customer in a trial alongside two other email security vendors. This case demonstrates the clear differentiator of true unsupervised machine learning applied to the right use cases, compared to miscellaneous vendor hype around AI.
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
Carlos Gray
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email
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02
Oct 2024

Recently, Darktrace ran a customer trial of our email security product for a leading European infrastructure operator looking to upgrade its email protection.

During this prospective customer trial, Darktrace encountered several security incidents that penetrated existing security layers. Two of these incidents were Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, which we’re going to take a closer look at here.  

Darktrace was deployed for a trial at the same time as two other email security vendors, who were also being evaluated by the prospective customer. Darktrace’s superior detection of threats in this trial laid the groundwork for the respective company to choose our product.

Let’s dig into some of the elements of this Darktrace tech win and how they came to light during this trial.

Why truly intelligent AI starts learning from scratch

Darktrace’s detection capabilities are powered by true unsupervised machine learning, which detects anomalous activity from its ever-evolving understanding of normal for every unique environment. Consequently, it learns every business from the beginning, training on an organization’s data to understand normal for its users, devices, assets and the millions of connections between them.  

This learning period takes around a week, during which the AI hones its understanding of the business to a precise degree. At this stage, the system may produce some noise or lack precision, but this is a testament to our unsupervised machine learning. Unlike solutions that promise faster results by relying on preset assumptions, our AI takes the necessary time to learn from scratch, ensuring a deeper understanding and increasingly accurate detection over time.

Real threats detected by Darktrace

Attack 1: Supply chain attack

BEC and supply chain attacks are notoriously difficult to detect, as they take advantage of established, trusted senders.  

This attack came from a legitimate server via a known supplier with which the prospective customer had active and ongoing communication. Using the compromised account, the attacker didn’t just send out randomized spam, they crafted four sophisticated social engineering emails with the aim of soliciting users to click on a link – directly tapping into existing conversations. Darktrace / EMAIL was configured in passive mode during this trial; it would otherwise have held the emails before they arrived in the inbox. Luckily in this instance, one user reported the email to the CISO before any other users clicked the link. Upon investigation, the link contained timed ransomware detonation.  

Darktrace was the only vendor that caught any of these four emails. Our unique behavioral AI approach enables Darktrace / EMAIL to protect customers from even the most sophisticated attacks that abuse prior trust and relationships.

How did Darktrace catch this attack that other vendors missed?

With traditional email security, security teams have been obliged to allow entire organizations to eliminate false positives – on the premise that it’s easier to make a broad decision based on an entire known domain and assume that potential risk of a supply chain attack.

By contrast, Darktrace adopts a zero trust mentality, analyzing every email to understand whether communication that has previously been safe remains safe. That’s why Darktrace is uniquely positioned to detect BEC, based on its deep learning of internal and external users. Because it creates individual profiles for every account, group and business composed of multiple signals, it can detect deviations in their communication patterns based on the context and content of each message. We think of this as the ‘self-learning’ vs ‘learning the breach’ differentiator.

Fig 1: Darktrace analysis of one of four malicious emails sent by the trusted supplier. It gives it an anomaly score of 100, despite it being from a known correspondent with a known domain relationship and moderate mailing history.

If set in autonomous mode where it can apply actions, Darktrace / EMAIL would have quarantined all four emails. Using machine learning indicators such as ‘Inducement Shift’ and ‘General Behavioral Anomaly’, it deemed the four emails ‘Out of Character’. It also identified the link as highly likely to be phishing, based purely on its context. These indicators are critical because the link itself belonged to a widely used legitimate domain, leveraging their established internet reputation to appear safe.  

Around an hour later the supplier regained control of the account and sent a legitimate email alerting a wide distribution list to the phishing emails sent. Darktrace was able to discern the previously sent malicious emails from the current legitimate emails and allowed these emails through. Compared to other vendors that have a static understanding of malicious which needs to be updated (in cases like this, once a supplier is de-compromised), Darktrace’s deep understanding of external entities enables further nuance and precision in determining good from bad.

Fig 2: Darktrace let through four emails (subject line: Virus E-Mail) from the supplier once they had regained control of the compromised account, with a limited anomaly score despite having held the previous malicious emails. If any actions had been taken a red icon would show on the right-hand side – in this instance Darktrace did not take action and let the emails through.

Attack 2: Microsoft 365 account takeover

As part of building behavioral profiles of every email user, Darktrace analyzes their wider account activity. Account activity, such as unusual login patterns and administrative activity, is a key variable to detect account compromise before malicious activity occurs, but it also feeds into Darktrace’s understanding of which emails should belong in every user’s inbox.  

When the customer experienced an account compromise on day two of the trial, Darktrace began an investigation and was able to provide the full breakdown and scope of the incident.

The account was compromised via an email, which Darktrace would have blocked if it had been deployed autonomously at the time. Once the account had been compromised, detection details included:

  • Unusual Login and Account Update
  • Multiple Unusual External Sources for SaaS Credential
  • Unusual Activity Block
  • Login From Rare Endpoint While User is Active
Fig 3: Darktrace flagged the following indicators of compromise that deviated from normal behavior for the user in question, signaling an account takeover

With Darktrace / EMAIL, every user is analyzed for behavioral signals including authentication and configuration activity. Here the unusual login, credential input and rare endpoint were all clear signals a compromised account, contextualized against what is normal for that employee. Because Darktrace isn’t looking at email security merely from the perspective of the inbox. It constantly reevaluates the identity of each individual, group and organization (as defined by their behavioral signals), to determine precisely what belongs in the inbox and what doesn’t.  

In this instance, Darktrace / EMAIL would have blocked the incident were it not deployed in passive mode. In the initial intrusion it would have blocked the compromising email. And once the account was compromised, it would have taken direct blocking actions on the account based on the anomalous activity it detected, providing an extra layer of defense beyond the inbox.  

Account takeover protection is always part of Darktrace / EMAIL, which can be extended to fully cover Microsoft 365 SaaS with Darktrace / IDENTITY. By bringing SaaS activity into scope, security teams also benefit from an extended set of use cases including compliance and resource management.

Why this customer committed to Darktrace / EMAIL

“Darktrace was the only AI vendor that showed learning,” – CISO, Trial Customer

Throughout this trial, Darktrace evolved its understanding of the trial customer’s business and its email users. It identified attacks that other vendors did not, while allowing safe emails through. Furthermore, the CISO explicitly cited Darktrace as the only technology that demonstrated autonomous learning. As well as catching threats that other vendors did not, the CISO saw maturity areas such as how Darktrace dealt with non-productive mail and business-as-usual emails, without any user input.  Because of the nature of unsupervised ML, Darktrace’s learning of right and wrong will never be static or complete – it will continue to revise its understanding and adapt to the changing business and communications landscape.

This case study highlights a key tenet of Darktrace’s philosophy – that a rules and tuning-based approach will always be one step behind. Delivering benign emails while holding back malicious emails from the same domain demonstrates that safety is not defined in a straight line, or by historical precedent. Only by analyzing every email in-depth for its content and context can you guarantee that it belongs.  

While other solutions are making efforts to improve a static approach with AI, Darktrace’s AI remains truly unsupervised so it is dynamic enough to catch the most agile and evolving threats. This is what allows us to protect our customers by plugging a vital gap in their security stack that ensures they can meet the challenges of tomorrow's email attacks.

Interested in learning more about Darktrace / EMAIL? Check out our product hub.

Download: Darktrace / EMAIL Solution Brief

Discover the most advanced cloud-native AI email security solution to protect your domain and brand while preventing phishing, novel social engineering, business email compromise, account takeover, and data loss.

  • Gain up to 13 days of earlier threat detection and maximize ROI on your current email security
  • Experience 20-25% more threat blocking power with Darktrace / EMAIL
  • Stop the 58% of threats bypassing traditional email security

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
Carlos Gray
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email

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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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