June 25, 2024

Let the Dominos Fall! SOC and IR Metrics for ROI

Vendors are scrambling to compare MTTD metrics laid out in the latest MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluations. But this analysis is reductive, ignoring the fact that in cybersecurity, there are far more metrics that matter.

Written by

John Bradshaw

Sr. Director, Technical Marketing

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

John Bradshaw

Sr. Director, Technical Marketing

Jun 2024

One of the most enjoyable discussions (and debates) I engage in is the topic of Security Operations Center (SOC) and Incident Response (IR) metrics to measure and validate an organization’s Return on Investment (ROI). The debate part comes in when I hear vendor experts talking about “the only” SOC metrics that matter, and only list the two most well-known, while completely ignoring metrics that have a direct causal relationship.

In this blog, I will discuss what I believe are the SOC/IR metrics that matter, how each one has a direct impact on the others, and why organizations should ensure they are working towards the goal of why these metrics are measured in the first place: Reduction of Risk and Costs.

Reduction of Risk and Costs

Every security solution and process an organization puts in place should reduce the organization’s risk of a breach, exposure by an insider threat, or loss of productivity. How an organization realizes net benefits can be in several ways:

Improved efficiencies can result in SOC/IR staff focusing on other areas such as advanced threat hunting rather than churning through alerts on their security consoles. It may also help organizations dealing with the lack of skilled security staff by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automated processes.
A well-oiled SOC/IR team that has greatly reduced or even eliminated mundane tasks attracts, motivates, and retains talent resulting in reduced hiring and training costs.
The direct impact of a breach such as a ransomware attack can be devastating. According to the 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon, MGM Resorts International reported the ALPHV ransomware cost the company approximately $100 million^[1].
Failure to take appropriate steps to protect the organization can result in regulatory fines; and if an organization has, or is considering, purchasing Cyber Insurance, can result in declined coverage or increased premiums.

How does an organization demonstrate they are taking proactive measures to prevent breaches? That is where it's important to understand the nine (yes, nine) key metrics, and how each one directly influences the others, play their roles.

Metrics in the Incident Response Timeline

Let’s start with a review of the key steps in the Incident Response Timeline:

Seven of the nine key metrics are in the IR timeline, while two of the metrics occur before you ever have an incident. They occur in the Pre-Detection Stage.

‍Pre-Detection stage metrics are:

Preventions Per Intrusion Attempt (PPIA)
False Positive Reduction Rate (FPRR)

Next is the Detect and Investigate stage, there are three metrics to consider:

Mean Time to Detection (MTTD)
Mean Time to Triage (MTTT)
Mean Time to Understanding (MTTU)

This is followed by the Remediation stage, there are two metrics here:

Mean Time to Containment (MTTC)
Mean Time to Remediation / Recovery (MTTR)

Finally, there is the Risk Reduction stage, there are two metrics:

Mean Time to Advice (MTTA)
Mean Time to Implementation (MTTI)

Pre-Detection Stage

Preventions Per Intrusion Attempt

PPIA is defined as stopping any intrusion attempt at the earliest possible stage. Your network Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) blocks vulnerability exploits, your e-mail security solution intercepts and removes messages with malicious attachments or links, your egress firewall blocks unauthorized login attempts, etc. The adversary doesn’t get beyond Step 1 in the attack life cycle.

This metric is the first domino. Every organization should strive to improve on this metric every day. Why? For every intrusion attempt you stop right out of the gate, you eliminate the actions for every other metric. There is no incident to detect, triage, investigate, remediate, or analyze post-incident for ways to improve your security posture.

When I think about PPIA, I always remember back to a discussion with a former mentor, Tim Crothers, who discussed the benefits of focusing on Prevention Failure Detection.

The concept is that as you layer your security defenses, your PPIA moves ever closer to 100% (no one has ever reached 100%). This narrows the field of fire for adversaries to breach into your organization. This is where novel, unknown, and permuted threats live and breathe. This is where solutions utilizing Unsupervised Machine Learning excel in raising anomalous alerts – indications of potential compromise involving one of these threats. Unsupervised ML also raises alerts on anomalous activity generated by known threats and can raise detections before many signature-based solutions. Most organizations struggle to find strong permutations of known threats, insider threats, supply chain attacks, attacks utilizing n-day and 0-day exploits. Moving PPIA ever closer to 100% also frees your team up for conducting threat hunting activities – utilizing components of your SOC that collect and store telemetry to query for potential compromises based on hypothesis the team raises. It also significantly reduces the alerts your team must triage and investigate – solving many of the issues outlined at the start of this paper.

False Positive Reduction Rate

Before we discuss FPRR, I should clarify how I define False Positives (FPs). Many define FPs as an alert that is in error (i.e.: your EDR alerts on malware that turns out to be AV signature files). While that is a FP, I extend the definition to include any alert that did not require triage / investigation and distracts the SOC/IR team (meaning they conducted some level of triage / investigation).

This metric is the second domino. Why is this metric important? Every alert your team exerts time and effort on that is a non-issue distracts them from alerts that matter. One of the major issues that has resonated in the security industry for decades is that SOCs are inundated with alerts and cannot clear the backlog. When it comes to PPIA + FPRR, I have seen analysts spend time investigating alerts that were blocked out of the gate while their screen continued to fill up with more. You must focus on Prevention Failure Detection to get ahead of the backlog.

Detect and Investigate Stages

Mean Time to Detection

MTTD, or “Dwell Time”, has decreased dramatically over the past 12 years. From well over a year to 16 days in 2023^[2]. MTTD is measured from the earliest possible point you could detect the intrusion to the moment you actually detect it.

This third domino is important because the longer an adversary remains undetected, the more the odds increase they will complete their mission objective. It also makes the tasks of triage and investigation more difficult as analysts must piece together more activity and adversaries may be erasing evidence along the way – or your storage retention does not cover the breach timeline.

Many solutions focusing solely on MTTD can actually create the very problem SOCs are looking to solve. That is, they generate so much alerting that they flood the console, email, or text messaging app causing an unmanageable queue of alerts (this is the problem XDR solutions were designed to resolve by focusing on incidents rather than alerts).

Mean Time to Triage

MTTT involves SOCs that utilize Level 1 (aka Triage) analysts to render an “escalate / do not escalate” alert verdict accurately. Accuracy is important because Triage Analysts typically are staff new to cyber security (recent grad / certification) and may over escalate (afraid to miss something important) or under escalate (not recognize signs of a successful breach). Because of this, a small MTTT does not always equate to successful handling of incidents.

This metric is important because keeping your senior staff focused on progressing incidents in a timely manner (and not expending time on false positives) should reduce stress and required headcount.

Mean Time to Understanding

MTTU deals with understanding the complete nature of the incident being investigated. This is different than MTTT which only deals with whether the issue merits escalation to senior analysts. It is then up to the senior analysts to determine the scope of the incident, and if you are a follower of my UPSET Investigation Framework, you know understanding the full scope involves:

U = All compromised accounts

P = Persistence Mechanisms used

S = All systems involved (organization, adversary, and intermediaries)

E = Endgame (or mission objective)

T = Techniques, Tactics, Procedures (TTPs) utilized by the adversary

MTTU is important because this information is critical before any containment or remediation actions are taken. Leave a stone unturned, and you alert the adversary that you are onto them and possibly fail to close an avenue of access.

Remediation Stages

Mean Time to Containment

MTTC deals with neutralizing the threat. You may not have kicked the adversary out, but you have halted their progress to their mission objective and ability to inflict further damage. This may be through use of isolation capabilities, termination of malicious processes, or firewall blocks.

MTTC is important, especially with ransomware attacks where every second counts. Faster containment responses can result in reduced / eliminated disruption to business operations or loss of data.

Mean Time to Remediation / Recovery

The full scope of the incident is understood, the adversary has been halted in their tracks, no malicious processes are running on any systems in your organization. Now is the time to put things back to right. MTTR deals with the time involved in restoring business operations to pre-incident stage. It means all remnants of changes made by the adversary (persistence, account alterations, programs installed, etc.) are removed; all disrupted systems are restored to operations (i.e.: ransomware encrypted systems are recovered from backups / snapshots), compromised user accounts are reset, etc.

MTTR is important because it informs senior management of how fast the organization can recover from an incident. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans play a major role in improving this score.

Risk Reduction Stages

Mean Time to Advice

After the dust has settled from the incident, the job is not done. MTTA deals with identifying and assessing the specific areas (vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, lack of security controls) that permitted the adversary to advance to the point where detection occurred (and any actions beyond). The SOC and IR teams should then compile a list of recommendations to present to management to improve the security posture of the organization so the same attack path cannot be used.

Mean Time to Implement

Once recommendations are delivered to management, how long does it take to implement them? MTTI tracks this timeline because none of it matters if you don’t fix the holes that led to the breach.

Nine Dominos

There are the nine dominos of SOC / IR metrics I recommend helping organizations know if they are on the right track to reduce risk, costs and improve morale / retention of the security teams. You may not wish to track all nine, but understanding how each metric impacts the others can provide visibility into why you are not seeing expected improvements when you implement a new security solution or change processes.

Improving prevention and reducing false positives can make huge positive impacts on your incident response timeline. Utilizing solutions that get you to resolution quicker allows the team to focus on recommendations and risk reduction strategies.

Whichever metrics you choose to track, just be sure the dominos fall in your favor.

‍

References

[1] 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, p83

[2] Mandiant M-Trends 2023

‍

執筆者

John Bradshaw

Sr. Director, Technical Marketing

Inside the SOC

Written by

John Bradshaw

Sr. Director, Technical Marketing

•

September 30, 2026

Angel Arribas Lopez

Associate Principal Cyber Analyst

•

September 24, 2026

Sam Lister

Specialist Security Researcher

Watch the NIS2 Webinar

Blog

AI

September 30, 2026

AI-Assisted Attacks Still Leave a Behavioral Trace

Key Insights

Darktrace identified behavioral indicators associated with two campaigns linked to AI-assisted threat activity, highlighting the growing role of AI in modern cyber-attacks.
Observed activity involved suspicious WebDAV file transfers, disguised executable downloads, beaconing to rare infrastructure, unusual process execution, and communications with C2 infrastructure linked to active intrusion campaigns.

Introduction

Just as organizations are incorporating AI into their operations to take advantage of its benefits, threat actors are doing the same, creating new challenges for defenders.

Much of the discussion around AI risk has focused on the expanding attack surface created by AI systems within organizations. These systems are often granted privileged access and heightened permissions to carry out their duties, introducing new security risks and unintended consequences.

At the same time, threat actors are learning to leverage AI to enable malicious activities such as vulnerability discovery, exploit creation, and progressing through the Cyber Kill Chain more quickly. By accelerating development, adaptation, and scaling, AI enables attackers to operate more efficiently while making some capabilities more accessible to less skilled operators.

Whether AI is the target or the enabler, the resulting activity still manifests through networks, identities, endpoints and cloud services. Those interactions create observable signals that defenders can investigate, regardless of how the attack was developed.

AI as part of the attacker’s workflow

Darktrace has previously documented how threat actors are increasingly incorporating AI into offensive operations [1]. Two recent investigations from open-source intelligence (OSINT) illustrate this. In both cases, researchers identified the role of AI within malicious operations. Separately, Darktrace detected activity in customer environments that aligned with the infrastructure and techniques reported in those campaigns. These perspectives provide a view of both attacker workflow and operational consequences.

Although AI played different roles in each campaign, it did not remove the need for the attackers to interact with their targets. Payloads still had to be delivered, processes executed, and command-and-control (C2) connections established, creating behavioral anomalies that Darktrace was able to identify.

‍

Case 1: A Mexican government impersonation campaign with LLM-assisted malware development

Rapid7 reported on a malware delivery operation that used generative AI to assist development, testing, documentation and refinement of attacker infrastructure. Between May and June 2026, Darktrace similarly observed two chains of suspicious activity across customer environments in the Americas that exhibited clear similarities in behavior.

In both cases Darktrace observed:

WebDAV communication with onedrive[.]cv·138.124.123[.]87, retrieving a file from the path /Downloads/CURP/
Transfer of a masqueraded .scr executable
Subsequent communication with google.services[.]ug·77.110.127[.]205 over unusual high ports
Additional Darktrace detections correlating the unusual behavior seen spanning payload delivery and C2 communication
Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability alerted across multiple stages of the attack

The infrastructure and behavior observed by Darktrace closely aligned with a campaign reported by Rapid7, in which a WebDAV malware delivery environment was exposed. Rapid7 assessed that threat actors had used generative AI to support the development, testing, documentation and refinement of the operation. The observed activity also aligned with reporting on a campaign in which impersonation of Mexico’s government Unique Population Registry Code (CURP) identity-record service led to delivery of PureRAT, a .NET-based information stealer and remote access trojan (RAT) [2]. The infrastructure overlap and consistent behavioural sequence provides strong alignment and offers a view of how an AI-assisted development pipeline ultimately manifested inside target environments.

Case 2: A suspected China-linked intrusion campaign with AI-assisted automation

In July 2026, Hunt.io published research into a suspected China-based intrusion operation targeting government and financial services organizations [3]. Material recovered from exposed attacker infrastructure by Hunt.io indicated that Claude Code and DeepSeek-v4-pro were being used as active components of the attacker’s workflow. According to the research, the models supported activities including attack reasoning, script generation, execution, exploit adaptation, and phishing-page development.

The investigation identified 192.229.115[.]229 and 192.229.115[.]230 as infrastructure associated with suspected TencShell operations and a possible second C2 framework known as Gshell [3].

Darktrace identified likely related activity within a financial services customer environment involving a newly observed laptop running the Windows 11 Pro operating system. Over a six-day period in July, the device made repeated outbound connections to 192.229.115[.]229 over port 8083.

Darktrace recognized the destination was highly rare for the environment, and the connectivity exhibited beaconing characteristics. During the same timeframe, Darktrace also identified suspicious process behavior associated with process chains involving svchost.exe and cmd.exe. The device repeatedly communicated with infrastructure identified in the Hunt.io research while exhibiting beaconing characteristics and suspicious process activity, strengthening the assessment that the activity likely was associated with the same operation.

Unlike many previous examples of AI-assisted cybercrime, the Hunt.io investigation provided rare visibility into how large language models were being incorporated directly into operational workflows rather than being used solely for content generation. Darktrace, meanwhile, observed how activity associated with that operation ultimately manifested inside a target environment, providing a complementary view of its operational impact.

Operational consequences of AI-assisted attacks

These investigations provide two complementary perspectives on AI-assisted cyber operations. OSINT research revealed how AI was incorporated into attacker workflows, while Darktrace observed the resulting activity within customer environments.

Although AI played different roles in each campaign, it did not remove the need for attackers to interact with their targets, deliver payloads, execute processes, and communicate with C2, all of which generated observable signals.

In these cases, Darktrace identified suspicious file delivery, unusual process behavior, beaconing activity, and communication with rare external infrastructure that aligned with campaigns later linked to AI-assisted operations. While AI may influence how attacks are developed, adapted, and scaled, it does not make them operationally invisible.

For defenders, the broader lesson extends beyond these specific campaigns. As AI becomes increasingly embedded within both enterprise operations and attacker workflows, understanding what a model was asked to do is often less important than understanding the actions it ultimately took and the consequences those actions produced. Whether the actor is human, AI-assisted, or increasingly autonomous, activity still manifests through identities, endpoints, applications, cloud services and network infrastructure.

Credit to Angel Arribas Lopez (Associate Principal Cyber Analyst), Emma Foulger (Global Threat Research Operations Lead), Nathaniel Jones, SVP Global Threat Intelligence
Edited by Ryan Traill (Content Manager)

‍

Appendices

Darktrace Model Detections

Case 1

Anomalous File / Masqueraded File Transfer from New External Endpoint

Anomalous File / Script from Rare External Location

Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location

Anomalous File / Script and EXE from Rare External

Anomalous Connection / Multiple Failed Connections to Rare Endpoint

Anomalous Connection / Rare External SSL Self-Signed

Compromise / New or Repeated to Unusual SSL Port

Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Failed Connections

Device / Initial Attack Chain Activity

Antigena / Network / External Threat::Antigena Suspicious File Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly::Antigena Enhanced Monitoring from Client Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly::Antigena Controlled and Model Alert

Antigena / Network / External Threat::Antigena File then New Outbound Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly::Antigena Significant Anomaly from Client Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly::Antigena Alerts Over Time Block

Case 2

Anomalous Connection / Multiple Failed Connections to Rare Endpoint

Compromise / High Volume of Connections with Beacon Score

Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Failed Connections

‍

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

‍

Case 1

IoC	Type	Description + Confidence
onedrive[.]cv	Hostname	Likely C2 server
138.124.123[.]87	IP Address	Possible C2 server
hXXp://onedrive[.]cv/Downloads/CURP/ReportFinal.%E2%80%AE%E1%BA%9D%D4%81%EF%BD%90.scr	URI	Possible payload
google.services[.]ug	Hostname	Likely C2 server
77.110.127[.]205	IP Address	Likely C2 server
google.services[.]ug:57666	Hostname + Port	Likely C2 communication
google.services[.]ug:57888	Hostname + Port	Likely C2 communication
google.services[.]ug:56001	Hostname + Port	Likely C2 communication

‍

Case 2

IoC	Type	Description + Confidence
192.229.115[.]229	IP Address	Likely C2 communication

About the author

Angel Arribas Lopez

Associate Principal Cyber Analyst

Blog

Network

September 30, 2026

A Chain Reaction: Blockchain-Hosted Infostealer Campaign Targets Windows and macOS

Key Insights

Darktrace detected a blockchain-hosted infostealer campaign targeting Windows and macOS devices across multiple customer environments.
The campaign combined ClickFix social engineering with trusted services and decentralized blockchain infrastructure to support malware delivery and C2 activity.
Compromised devices were observed connecting to rare and unusual external endpoints, including DGA C2 domains, blockchain-related endpoints, and cryptocurrency mining infrastructure.
The activity was associated with information-stealing malware strains including Atomic macOS Stealer (AMOS), Lumma, Rhadamanthys, Vidar, and Phexia.
Darktrace identified anomalous device behavior, beaconing patterns, rare external connections, cryptomining activity, and suspicious TLS/SSL communications without relying solely on prior knowledge or static indicators of compromise.
The campaign highlights how attackers are increasingly using legitimate and decentralized infrastructure to make detection, disruption, and attribution more challenging for defenders.

The Infostealer Ecosystem

The information stealer malware ecosystem continues to grow in value for threat actors across the digital threat landscape. Infostealers are increasingly delivered through Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) operating models, distributed through affiliate networks, and designed to withstand infrastructure takedowns. This resilience was demonstrated by the recent takedown of Lumma Stealer malicious domains by Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) [1].

Infostealers are used to gather and exfiltrate sensitive information, including non-human identity (NHI) data, from compromised systems across cloud, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Virtual Private Network (VPN), and development environments. They can also support ransomware operations by expanding the credentials and access paths available to threat actors, contributing to the high volume of identity-based attacks observed across the broader threat landscape [2][3].

Darktrace’s Observations of ClickFix and Infostealers

Throughout 2026, Darktrace has observed multiple campaigns using ClickFix social engineering to trick users into carrying out malicious actions and downloading initial payloads, including information stealers. More recently, Darktrace’s Threat Research team identified a specific ClickFix campaign involving a blockchain-hosted infostealer targeting Windows and macOS devices.

Darktrace identified affected customer environments across Europe, the United States, Asia, and the Middle East where blockchain-hosted infostealer malware appears to have been delivered to compromised systems following likely ClickFix-driven initial access. Darktrace investigated the activity and found that decentralized blockchain infrastructure, alongside widely trusted legitimate services, was used to support malware delivery and information theft across Windows and macOS systems.

Following initial access, compromised systems established C2 communication, with C2 configuration and payloads hosted on public blockchain infrastructure. The ultimate objective appears to be credential and cryptocurrency theft through the deployment of information stealers such as Atomic macOS Stealer (AMOS), Lumma, Rhadamanthys, and Vidar [5][6][7].

Darktrace’s Investigation

Affected devices across the Darktrace customer base were observed making outbound connections to rare external endpoints in patterns consistent with beaconing and C2 activity. Darktrace primarily detected devices making repeated connections to algorithmically generated domains (DGA) such as hf98x4d[.]site [8]. In many cases, these domains were linked through open-source intelligence (OSINT) to information-stealing malware families including AMOS and Phexia [5][6][7][8][9].

In multiple cases, devices were also observed connecting to blockchain-related endpoints, such as polygon[.]drpc[.]org, as well as legitimate public services, including GitHub. The use of decentralized blockchain infrastructure and trusted services such as GitHub to facilitate malware distribution and C2 activity can make disruption and attribution significantly more difficult for defenders.

Darktrace also detected a significant proportion of impacted devices making outbound connections to cryptocurrency mining infrastructure associated with the legitimate open-source XMRig mining software and the HashVault mining pool, including pool.hashvault[.]pro and donate[.]ssl[.]xmrig[.]com, which were abused by the attackers, indicating, including pool.hashvault[.]pro and donate[.]ssl[.]xmrig[.]com, indicating active cryptomining on compromised systems.

In one case, mining activity was observed before and during connections to the DGA endpoint hf98x4d[.]site. Due to its highly anomalous nature, Darktrace's Real-Time AI Analyst autonomously investigated the activity as it occurred, correlating the two events into a single cryptocurrency mining incident and providing comprehensive visibility into the broader attack.

‍

Figure 1: Real-Time AI Analyst investigation of suspicious SSL and C2 communications with hf98x4d[.]site over port 443.

‍

Figure 2: Real-Time AI Analyst investigation into cryptocurrency mining activity involving pool[.]hashvault[.]pro over SSL on port 443.

‍

Around the same time, Darktrace identified the same device initiating connections to the GitHub endpoint release-assets[.]githubusercontent[.]com while continuing to make repeated connections to hf98x4d[.]site.

‍

Figure 3: Darktrace's detection of an affected device connecting to a GitHub endpoint between repeated connections to the anomalous external endpoint hf98x4d[.]site.

On the network of another customer, Darktrace observed an affected device making highly unusual outbound connections consistent with beaconing activity. The device initiated multiple connections over port 443 to the external hostname polygon[.]drpc[.]org. According to OSINT, this hostname is a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) endpoint provided by dRPC, a legitimate service enabling decentralized applications (dApps), cryptocurrency wallets, and developer tools to interact with the Polygon blockchain [10].

The same device was later observed making repeated TLS/SSL connections to the previously mentioned DGA C2 domain. In addition, it made outbound connections to the external IP 195.242.214[.]34 over destination port 51820, an endpoint associated with the ProtonVPN service. Collectively, these connections to blockchain-related infrastructure, the DGA C2 domain, and ProtonVPN-associated infrastructure suggested the device had been affected by the campaign.

Conclusion

This campaign demonstrates how attackers can combine ClickFix social engineering with trusted services and decentralized blockchain infrastructure to create a resilient, cross-platform malware delivery chain. By using services such as GitHub alongside blockchain RPC endpoints and rapidly replaceable DGA domains, the activity can blend into legitimate traffic while making infrastructure disruption and attribution more difficult.

For defenders, it’s a reminder that trusted infrastructure does not automatically mean trusted activity. Security teams should look for the behaviors surrounding these connections, including unusual outbound communication, repeated beaconing, unexpected access to blockchain services, suspicious TLS/SSL activity and cryptomining. In this campaign, Darktrace identified and correlated these deviations without depending solely on previously known indicators, providing visibility as affected devices moved between legitimate services, decentralized infrastructure and malicious C2 endpoints

Credit to Nahisha Nobregas (Associate Principal Cyber Analyst), Manoel Kadja (Senior Cyber Analyst)

Edited by Ryan Traill (Content Manager)

Appendices

Darktrace Model Detections

▪ Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare

▪ Compromise / Beacon to Young Endpoint

▪ Compromise / Fast Beaconing to DGA

▪ Compromise / High Volume of Connections with Beacon Score

▪ Compromise / DGA Beacon

▪ Compromise / Slow Beaconing Activity To External Rare

▪ Compromise / Agent Beacon (Long Period)

▪ Compromise / Agent Beacon (Medium Period)

▪ Compromise / Sustained SSL or HTTP Increase

▪ Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Failed Connections

▪ Compromise / SSL Beaconing to Rare Destination

▪ Compromise / Beacon for 4 Days

▪ Compromise / High Priority Crypto Currency Mining

▪ Compromise / Monero Mining

▪ Device / Long Agent Connection to New Endpoint

▪ Device / New Connections On Suspicious Port

▪ Anomalous Connection / High Volume of Connections to Rare Domain

‍

List of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

Indicator	Description
hf98x4d[.]site	C2 Endpoint (Hostname)
sj98xe4[.]xyz	C2 Endpoint (Hostname)
citcix6[.]xyz	C2 Endpoint (Hostname)
bduwih8[.]pro	C2 Endpoint (Hostname)

‍

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Tactic (ID)	Technique
Persistence (T1176)	Browser Extensions (T1176.001)
Persistence (T1176)	Software Extensions
Command and Control (T1071)	Web Protocols (T1071.001)
Command and Control (T1568)	Domain Generation Algorithms (T1568.002)
Command and Control (T1071)	Application Layer Protocol
Command and Control (T1102)	One-Way Communication (T1102.003)
Command and Control (T1571)	Non-Standard Port
Command and Control (T1104)	Multi-Stage Channels
Command and Control (T1573)	Encrypted Channel
Command and Control (T1008)	Fallback Channels
Initial Access ICS (T0862)	Supply Chain Compromise
Command and Control ICS (T0885)	Commonly Used Port
Collection (T1185)	Browser Session Hijacking
Impact (T1496)	Compute Hijacking (T1496.001)
Impact (T1496)	Resource Hijacking
Command and Control (T1071)	Publish/Subscribe Protocols (T1071.001)
Lateral Movement (T1210)	Exploitation of Remote Services