Navigating Buying and Adoption Journeys for AI Cybersecurity Tools
More and more security teams are adopting AI-powered cybersecurity solutions, but first-time buyers may not know how to evaluate new vendors and tools. This blog covers questions to consider at each stage of the AI adoption journey to ensure return on investment.
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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.
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15
Oct 2024
Enterprise AI tools go mainstream
In this dawning Age of AI, CISOs are increasingly exploring investments in AI security tools to enhance their organizations’ capabilities. AI can help achieve productivity gains by saving time and resources, mining intelligence and insights from valuable data, and increasing knowledge sharing and collaboration.
While investing in AI can bring immense benefits to your organization, first-time buyers of AI cybersecurity solutions may not know where to start. They will have to determine the type of tool they want, know the options available, and evaluate vendors. Research and understanding are critical to ensure purchases are worth the investment.
Challenges of a muddied marketplace
Key challenges in AI purchasing come from consumer doubt and lack of vendor transparency. The AI software market is buzzing with hype and flashy promises, which are not necessarily going to be realized immediately. This has fostered uncertainty among potential buyers, especially in the AI cybersecurity space.
As Gartner writes, “There is a general lack of transparency and understanding about how AI-enhanced security solutions leverage AI and the effectiveness of those solutions within real-world SecOps. This leads to trust issues among security leaders and practitioners, resulting in slower adoption of AI features” [1].
Given this widespread uncertainty generated through vague hype, buyers must take extra care when considering new AI tools to adopt.
Goals of AI adoption
Buyers should always start their journeys with objectives in mind, and a universal goal is to achieve return on investment. When organizations adopt AI, there are key aspects that will signal strong payoff. These include:
Wide-ranging application across operations and areas of the business
Actual, enthusiastic adoption and application by the human security team
Integration with the rest of the security stack and existing workflows
Business and operational benefits, including but not limited to:
Reduced risk
Reduced time to response
Reduced potential downtime, damage, and disruption
Increased visibility and coverage
Improved SecOps workflows
Decreased burden on teams so they can take on more strategic tasks
Ideally, most or all these measurements will be fulfilled. It is not enough for AI tools to benefit productivity and workflows in theory, but they must be practically implemented to provide return on investment.
Investigation before investment
Before investing in AI tools, buyers should ask questions pertaining to each stage of the adoption journey. The answers to these questions will not only help buyers gauge if a tool could be worth the investment, but also plan how the new tool will practically fit into the organization’s existing technology and workflows.
Figure 1: Initial questions to consider when starting to shop for AI [2].
These questions are good to imagine how a tool will fit into your organization and determine if a vendor is worth further evaluation. Once you decide a tool has potential use and feasibility in your organization, it is time to dive deeper and learn more.
Ask vendors specific questions about their technology. This information will most likely not be on their websites, and since it involves intellectual property, it may require an NDA.
Find a longer list of questions to ask vendors and what to look for in their responses in the white paper “CISO’s Guide to Buying AI.”
Committing to transparency amidst the AI hype
For security teams to make the most out of new AI tools, they must trust the AI. Especially in an AI marketplace full of hype and obfuscation, transparency should be baked into both the descriptions of the AI tool and the tool’s functionality itself. With that in mind, here are some specifics about what techniques make up Darktrace’s AI.
Darktrace as an AI cybersecurity vendor
Darktrace has been using AI technology in cybersecurity for over 10 years. As a pioneer in the space, we have made innovation part of our process.
The Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform™ uses multi-layered AI that trains on your unique business operations data for tailored security across the enterprise. This approach ensures that the strengths of one AI technique make up for the shortcomings of another, providing well-rounded and reliable coverage. Our models are always on and always learning, allowing your team to stop attacks in real time.
The machine learning techniques used in our solution include:
Unsupervised machine learning
Multiple Clustering Techniques
Multiple anomaly detection models in tandem analyzing data across hundreds of metrics
Bayesian probabilistic methods
Bayesian metaclassifier for autonomous fine-tuning of unsupervised machine learning models
Deep learning engines
Graph theory
Applied supervised machine learning for investigative AI
Neural networks
Reinforcement Learning
Generative and applied AI
Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs)
Post-processing models
Additionally, since Darktrace focuses on using the customer’s data across its entire digital estate, it brings a range of advantages in data privacy, interpretability, and data transfer costs.
Building trust with Darktrace AI
Darktrace further supports the human security team’s adoption of our technology by building trust. To do that, we designed our platform to give your team visibility and control over the AI.
Instead of functioning as a black box, our products focus on interpretability and sharing confidence levels. This includes specifying the threshold of what triggered a certain alert and the details of the AI Analyst’s investigations to see how it reached its conclusions. The interpretability of our AI uplevels and upskills the human security team with more information to drive investigations and remediation actions.
For complete control, the human security team can modify all the detection and response thresholds for our model alerts to customize them to fit specific business preferences.
Conclusion
CISO’s are increasingly considering investing in AI cybersecurity tools, but in this rapidly growing field, it’s not always clear what to look for.
Buyers should first determine their goals for a new AI tool, then research possible vendors by reviewing validation and asking deeper questions. This will reveal if a tool is a good match for the organization to move forward with investment and adoption.
As leaders in the AI cybersecurity industry, Darktrace is always ready to help you on your AI journey.
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.
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Each year, Darktrace experts step back from the day-to-day pace of incidents, vulnerabilities, and headlines to reflect on the forces reshaping the threat landscape in order to identify and share the trends we believe will matter most in the year ahead. These are our predictions for 2026
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Threat actors frequently exploit ongoing world events to trick users into opening and executing malicious files. Darktrace security researchers recently identified a threat group using reports around the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolàs Maduro on January 3, 2025, as a lure to deliver backdoor malware.
Technical Analysis
While the exact initial access method is unknown, it is likely that a spear-phishing email was sent to victims, containing a zip archive titled “US now deciding what’s next for Venezuela.zip”. This file included an executable named “Maduro to be taken to New York.exe” and a dynamic-link library (DLL), “kugou.dll”.
The binary “Maduro to be taken to New York.exe” is a legitimate binary (albeit with an expired signature) related to KuGou, a Chinese streaming platform. Its function is to load the DLL “kugou.dll” via DLL search order. In this instance, the expected DLL has been replaced with a malicious one with the same name to load it.
Figure 1: DLL called with LoadLibraryW.
Once the DLL is executed, a directory is created C:\ProgramData\Technology360NB with the DLL copied into the directory along with the executable, renamed as “DataTechnology.exe”. A registry key is created for persistence in “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Lite360” to run DataTechnology.exe --DATA on log on.
Figure 2. Registry key added for persistence.
Figure 3: Folder “Technology360NB” created.
During execution, a dialog box appears with the caption “Please restart your computer and try again, or contact the original author.”
Figure 4. Message box prompting user to restart.
Prompting the user to restart triggers the malware to run from the registry key with the command --DATA, and if the user doesn't, a forced restart is triggered. Once the system is reset, the malware begins periodic TLS connections to the command-and-control (C2) server 172.81.60[.]97 on port 443. While the encrypted traffic prevents direct inspection of commands or data, the regular beaconing and response traffic strongly imply that the malware has the ability to poll a remote server for instructions, configuration, or tasking.
Conclusion
Threat groups have long used geopolitical issues and other high-profile events to make malicious content appear more credible or urgent. Since the onset of the war in Ukraine, organizations have been repeatedly targeted with spear-phishing emails using subject lines related to the ongoing conflict, including references to prisoners of war [1]. Similarly, the Chinese threat group Mustang Panda frequently uses this tactic to deploy backdoors, using lures related to the Ukrainian war, conventions on Tibet [2], the South China Sea [3], and Taiwan [4].
The activity described in this blog shares similarities with previous Mustang Panda campaigns, including the use of a current-events archive, a directory created in ProgramData with a legitimate executable used to load a malicious DLL and run registry keys used for persistence. While there is an overlap of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), there is insufficient information available to confidently attribute this activity to a specific threat group. Users should remain vigilant, especially when opening email attachments.
Credit to Tara Gould (Malware Research Lead) Edited by Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)
Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)
172.81.60[.]97 8f81ce8ca6cdbc7d7eb10f4da5f470c6 - US now deciding what's next for Venezuela.zip 722bcd4b14aac3395f8a073050b9a578 - Maduro to be taken to New York.exe aea6f6edbbbb0ab0f22568dcb503d731 - kugou.dll
Under Medusa’s Gaze: How Darktrace Uncovers RMM Abuse in Ransomware Campaigns
What is Medusa Ransomware in 2025?
In 2025, the Medusa Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) emerged as one of the top 10 most active ransomware threat actors [1]. Its growing impact prompted a joint advisory from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) [3]. As of January 2026, more than 500 organizations have fallen victim to Medusa ransomware [2].
Darktrace previously investigated Medusa in a 2024 blog, but the group’s rapid expansion and new intelligence released in late 2025 has lead Darktrace’s Threat Research team to investigate further. Recent findings include Microsoft’s research on Medusa actors exploiting a vulnerability in Fortra’s GoAnywhere MFT License Servlet (CVE-2025-10035)[4] and Zencec’s report on Medusa’s abuse of flaws in SimpleHelp’s remote support software (CVE-2024-57726, CVE-2024-57727, CVE-2024-57728) [5].
Reports vary on when Medusa first appeared in the wild. Some sources mention June 2021 as the earliest sightings, while others point to late 2022, when its developers transitioned to the RaaS model, as the true beginning of its operation [3][11].
Madusa Ransomware history and background
The group behind Medusa is known by several aliases, including Storm-1175 and Spearwing [4] [7]. Like its mythological namesake, Medusa has many “heads,” collaborating with initial access brokers (IABs) and, according to some evidence, affiliating with Big Game Hunting (BGH) groups such as Frozen Spider, as well as the cybercriminal group UNC7885 [3][6][13].
Use of Cyrillic in its scripts, activity on Russian-language cybercrime forums, slang unique to Russian criminal subcultures, and avoidance of targets in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries suggest that Medusa operates from Russia or an allied state [11][12].
Medusa ransomware should not be confused with other similarly named malware, such as the Medusa Android Banking Trojan, the Medusa Botnet/Medusa Stealer, or MedusaLocker ransomware. It is easily distinguishable from these variants because it appends the extension .MEDUSA to encrypted files and drops the ransom note !!!READ_ME_MEDUSA!!!.txt on compromised systems [8].
Who does Madusa Ransomware target?
The group appears to show little restraint, indiscriminately attacking organizations across all sectors, including healthcare, and is known to employ triple extortion tactics whereby sensitive data is encrypted, victims are threatened with data leaks, and additional pressure is applied through DDoS attacks or contacting the victim’s customers, rather than the more common double extortion model [13].
Madusa Ransomware TTPs
To attain initial access, Medusa actors typically purchase access to already compromised devices or accounts via IABs that employ phishing, credential stuffing, or brute-force attacks, and also target vulnerable or misconfigured Internet-facing systems.
Between December 2023 and November 2025, Darktrace observed multiple cases of file encryption related to Medusa ransomware across its customer base. When enabled, Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability intervened early in the attack chain, blocking malicious activity before file encryption could begin.
Some of the affected were based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), others in the Americas (AMS), and the remainder in the Asia-Pacific and Japan region. The most impacted sectors were financial services and the automotive industry, followed by healthcare, and finally organizations in arts, entertainment and recreation, ICT, and manufacturing.
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tool abuse
In most customer environments where Medusa file encryption attempts were observed, and in one case where the compromise was contained before encryption, unusual external HTTP connections associated with JWrapper were also detected. JWrapper is a legitimate tool designed to simplify the packaging, distribution, and management of Java applications, enabling the creation of executables that run across different operating systems. Many of the destination IP addresses involved in this activity were linked to SimpleHelp servers or associated with Atera.
Medusa actors appear to favor RMM tools such as SimpleHelp. Unpatched or misconfigured SimpleHelp RMM servers can serve as an initial access vector to the victims’ infrastructure. After gaining access to SimpleHelp management servers, the threat actors edit server configuration files to redirect existing SimpleHelp RMM agents to communicate with unauthorized servers under their control.
The SimpleHelp tool is not only used for command-and-control (C2) and enabling persistence but is also observed during lateral movement within the network, downloading additional attack tools, data exfiltration, and even ransomware binary execution. Other legitimate remote access tools abused by Medusa in a similar manner to evade detection include Atera, AnyDesk, ScreenConnect, eHorus, N-able, PDQ Deploy/Inventory, Splashtop, TeamViewer, NinjaOne, Navicat, and MeshAgent [4][5][15][16][17].
Data exfiltration
Another correlation among Darktrace customers affected by Medusa was observed during the data exfiltration phase. In several environments, data was exfiltrated to the endpoints erp.ranasons[.]com or pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx (143.110.243[.]154, 144.217.181[.]205) over ports 443, 445, and 80. erp.ranasons[.]com was seemingly active between November 2024 and September 2025, while pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx was seen from November 2024 to March 2025. Evidence suggests that pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx previously hosted a SimpleHelp server [22][23].
Apart from RMM tools, Medusa is also known to use Rclone and Robocopy for data exfiltration [3][19]. During one Medusa compromise detected in mid-2024, the customer’s data was exfiltrated to external destinations associated with the Ngrok proxy service using an SSH-2.0-rclone client.
Medusa Compromise Leveraging SimpleHelp
In Q4 2025, Darktrace assisted a European company impacted by Medusa ransomware. The organization had partial Darktrace / NETWORK coverage and had configured Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability to require manual confirmation for all actions. Despite these constraints, data received through the customer’s security integration with CrowdStrike Falcon enabled Darktrace analysts to reconstruct the attack chain, although the initial access vector remains unclear due to limited visibility.
In late September 2025, a device out of the scope of Darktrace's visibility began scanning the network and using RDP, NTLM/SMB, DCE_RPC, and PowerShell for lateral movement.
CrowdStrike “Defense Evasion: Disable or Modify Tools” alerts related to a suspicious driver (c:\windows\[0-9a-b]{4}.exe) and a PDQ Deploy executable (share=\\<device_hostname>\ADMIN$ file=AdminArsenal\PDQDeployRunner\service-1\exec\[0-9a-b]{4}.exe) suggest that the attackers used the Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) technique to terminate antivirus processes on network devices, leveraging tools such as KillAV or AbyssWorker along with the PDQ Software Deployment solution [19][26].
A few hours later, Darktrace observed the same device that had scanned the network writing Temp\[a-z]{2}.exe over SMB to another device on the same subnet. According to data from the CrowdStrike alert, this executable was linked to an RMM application located at C:\Users\<compromised_user>\Documents\[a-z]{2}.exe. The same compromised user account later triggered a CrowdStrike “Command and Control: Remote Access Tools” alert when accessing C:\ProgramData\JWrapper-Remote Access\JWrapper-Remote Access Bundle-[0-9]{11}\JWrapperTemp-[0-9]{10}-[0-9]{1}-app\bin\windowslauncher.exe [27].
Figure 1: An executable file associated with the SimpleHelp RMM tool being written to other devices using the SMB protocol, as detected by Darktrace.
Soon after, the destination device and multiple other network devices began establishing connections to 31.220.45[.]120 and 213.183.63[.]41, both of which hosted malicious SimpleHelp RMM servers. These C2 connections continued for more than 20 days after the initial compromise.
CrowdStrike integration alerts for the execution of robocopy . "c:\windows\\" /COPY:DT /E /XX /R:0 /W:0 /NP /XF RunFileCopy.cmd /IS /IT commands on several Windows servers, suggested that this utility was likely used to stage files in preparation for data exfiltration [19].
Around two hours later, Darktrace detected another device connecting to the attacker’s SimpleHelp RMM servers. This internal server had ‘doc’ in its hostname, indicating it was likely a file server. It was observed downloading documents from another internal server over SMB and uploading approximately 70 GiB of data to erp.ranasons[.]com (143.110.243[.]154:443).
Figure 2: Data uploaded to erp.ranasons[.]com and the number of model alerts from the exfiltrating device, represented by yellow and orange dots.
Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst autonomously investigated the unusual connectivity, correlating the separate C2 and data exfiltration events into a single incident, providing greater visibility into the ongoing attack.
Figure 3: Cyber AI Analyst identified a file server making C2 connections to an attacker-controlled SimpleHelp server (213.183.63[.]41) and exfiltrating data to erp.ranasons[.]com.
Figure 4: The same file server that connected to 213.183.63[.]41 and exfiltrated data to erp.ranasons[.]com was also observed attempting to connect to an IP address associated with Moscow, Russia (193.37.69[.]154:7070).
One of the devices connecting to the attacker's SimpleHelp RMM servers was also observed downloading 35 MiB from [0-9]{4}.filemail[.]com. Filemail, a legitimate file-sharing service, has reportedly been abused by Medusa actors to deliver additional malicious payloads [11].
Figure 5: A device controlled remotely via SimpleHelp downloading additional tooling from the Filemail file-sharing service.
Finally, integration alerts related to the ransomware binary, such as c:\windows\system32\gaze.exe and <device_hostname>\ADMIN$ file=AdminArsenal\PDQDeployRunner\service-1\exec\gaze.exe, along with “!!!READ_ME_MEDUSA!!!.txt” ransom notes were observed on network devices. This indicates that file encryption in this case was most likely carried out directly on the victim hosts rather than via the SMB protocol [3].
Conclusion
Threat actors, including nation-state actors and ransomware groups like Medusa, have long abused legitimate commercial RMM tools, typically used by system administrators for remote monitoring, software deployment, and device configuration, instead of relying on remote access trojans (RATs).
Attackers employ existing authorized RMM tools or install new remote administration software to enable persistence, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and ingress tool transfer. By mimicking legitimate administrative behavior, RMM abuse enables attackers to evade detection, as security software often implicitly trusts these tools, allowing attackers to bypass traditional security controls [28][29][30].
To mitigate such risks, organizations should promptly patch publicly exposed RMM servers and adopt anomaly-based detection solutions, like Darktrace / NETWORK, which can distinguish legitimate administrative activity from malicious behavior, applying rapid response measures through its Autonomous Response capability to stop attacks in their tracks.
Darktrace delivers comprehensive network visibility and Autonomous Response capabilities, enabling real-time detection of anomalous activity and rapid mitigation, even if an organization fall under Medusa’s gaze.
Credit to Signe Zaharka (Principal Cyber Analyst) and Emma Foulger (Global Threat Research Operations Lead
Edited by Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)
Appendices
List of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)
IoC - Type - Description + Confidence + Time Observed
185.108.129[.]62 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - March 7, 2023
185.126.238[.]119 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - November 26-27, 2024
213.183.63[.]41 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - November 28, 2024 - Sep 30, 2025
213.183.63[.]42 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - July 4 -9 , 2024
31.220.45[.]120 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - September 12 - Oct 20 , 2025
91.92.246[.]110 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - May 24, 2024
45.9.149[.]112:15330 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - June 21, 2024
89.36.161[.]12 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - June 26-28, 2024
193.37.69[.]154:7070 IP address Suspicious RU IP seen on a device being controlled via SimpleHelp and exfiltrating data to a Medusa related endpoint - September 30 - October 20, 2025
erp.ranasons[.]com·143.110.243[.]154 Hostname Data exfiltration destination - November 27, 2024 - September 30, 2025
pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx·144.217.181[.]205 - Hostname Data exfiltration destination - November 27, 2024 - March 26, 2025
lirdel[.]com · 44.235.83[.]125/a.msi (1b9869a2e862f1e6a59f5d88398463d3962abe51e19a59) File & hash Atera related file downloaded with PowerShell - June 20, 2024
wizarr.manate[.]ch/108.215.180[.]161:8585/$/1dIL5 File Suspicious file observed on one of the devices exhibiting unusual activity during a Medusa compromise - February 28, 2024
!!!READ_ME_MEDUSA!!!.txt" File - Ransom note
*.MEDUSA - File extension File extension added to encrypted files
gaze.exe – File - Ransomware binary
Darktrace Model Coverage
Darktrace / NETWORK model detections triggered during connections to attacker controlled SimpleHelp servers:
Anomalous Connection/Anomalous SSL without SNI to New External
Anomalous Connection/Multiple Connections to New External UDP Port
Anomalous Connection/New User Agent to IP Without Hostname