Blog

Ransomware

Protecting Healthcare Organizations from Maze Ransomware

Default blog imageDefault blog imageDefault blog imageDefault blog imageDefault blog imageDefault blog image
21
Oct 2020
21
Oct 2020
Discover how Darktrace detected and protected a healthcare organization from a Maze ransomware attack. Stay informed and protect your data today.

Ransomware, with more severe consequences and against increasingly high-stakes targets, continues to cause chaos and disruption to organizations globally. Earlier this year saw a surge in a strain of ransomware known as ‘Maze’, which shut down operations at leading optical products provider Canon and wreaked havoc in Fortune 500 companies like Cognizant.

Ransomware targeting healthcare

Just last month, news of a woman in Germany dying after a ransomware attack on the Dusseldorf University Hospital hit the headlines, confirming that the threat to people is no longer theoretical.

Ransomware affects all industries but 2020 has seen cyber-criminals increasingly hit essential services like healthcare, local government and critical infrastructure – intentionally or as collateral damage. As the stakes rise, so too does the need to understand how to prevent these devastating and pervasive attacks.

Once deployed, ransomware can spread laterally through an organization’s digital infrastructure in seconds, taking entire systems offline in minutes. Attackers often strike at night or at weekends, when they know security teams’ response time will be slower. Machine-speed attacks require machine-speed defenses that can detect and respond to this threat without human guidance, and autonomously block the threat.

This blog explains how AI detects and stops ransomware by learning ‘normal’ across the digital estate – from email and SaaS applications to the network, cloud, IoT and industrial control systems – by looking at an example of a Maze ransomware attack caught by Darktrace in a customer’s environment.

Darktrace’s Immune System detected the threat as soon as it emerged, but as the Autonomous Response capability was configured in passive mode, neutralizing the threat still required human action. This means that attackers were able to move laterally across the organization at speed and began to encrypt files before the security team stepped in. In active mode, Antigena Network would have contained the activity in its earliest stages.

How does Darktrace detect ransomware like Maze?

As soon as Darktrace is deployed – whether virtually or on-premise – the AI begins to learn the ‘pattern of life’ for every user and device across the organization. This enables the technology to detect anomalous activity indicative of a cyber-threat. It does this without relying on hard-coded rules and signatures; an approach that requires a ‘Patient Zero’ before updating these lists and containing subsequent identical threats. When it comes to a novel instance of ransomware spreading across an organization and infecting hundreds of devices in seconds, such an approach becomes useless.

With an understanding of the organization’s ‘pattern of life’, Darktrace’s AI recognizes unusual activity in real time. Such activity might include:

ActivityDarktrace detectionsUnusual downloads from C2 serversEXE from Rare Destination / Masqueraded File TransferBrute forcing publicly accessible RDP serversIncoming RDP brute force modelsBrute forcing access to web portal user accounts with weak passwords or lacking MFAVarious brute force modelsC2 via Cobalt Strike / Empire PowershellSSL Beaconing to Rare Endpoint / Empire Powershell and Cobalt Strike modelsNetwork scanning for reconnaissance & EternalBlue exploitSuspicious Network Scan model known to download Advanced IP Scanner after successful exploitMimikatz usage for privilege escalationUnusual Admin SMB Session / Unusual RDP Admin Session (Procdump, PingCastle, and Bloodhound)Psexec / ‘Living off the Land’ for lateral movementUnusual Remote Command Execution / Unusual PSexec / Unusual DCE RPCData exfiltration to C2 serversData Sent to Rare Domain / Unusual Internal Download / Unusual External UploadEncryptionSuspicious SMB Activity / Additional File Extensions AppendedExfiltration of passwords through various cloud storage servicesData Sent to New External DomainRDP tunnels using NgrokOutbound RDP / Various beaconing models

In addition, Darktrace is able to identify attempts to brute force access on Internet-facing servers. It can also detect specific searches for passwords stored in plain text as well as various password manager databases.

Maze ransomware analysis

Figure 1: A timeline of the attack

Most recently, Darktrace’s AI detected a case of Maze ransomware targeting a healthcare organization. Darktrace’s Immune System spotted every stage of the attack lifecycle within seconds, and the Cyber AI Analyst immediately launched an automated investigation of the full incident, surfacing a natural-language, actionable summary for the security team.

The initial infection vector was spear phishing. Maze is frequently delivered to healthcare organizations using pandemic-themed phishing emails. Darktrace also offers AI-powered email security that understands normal behavior for every Microsoft 365 user and spots anomalies that are indicative of phishing, but in the absence of this protection, the emails were waved through by traditional gateways.

The attacker began engaging in network scanning activity and enumeration to escalate access within the Research and Development subnet. Darktrace’s AI detected a successful compromise of admin level credentials, unusual RDP activities and multiple Kerberos authentication attempts.

Darktrace detected the attacker uploading a domain controller, before batch files were written to multiple file shares, which were used for the encryption process.

An infected device then connected to a suspicious domain that is associated to Maze mazedecrypt[.]top and the TOR browser bundle was downloaded, likely for C2 purposes. A large volume of sensitive data from the R&D subnet was then uploaded to a rare domain. This is typical of Maze ransomware, which is seen as a ‘double threat’ in that it not only seeks to encrypt critical files but also sends a copy of them back to the attacker.

This form of attack, also known as doxware, then provides the attacker with leverage in the possible event that the organization refused to pay the ransom – they can sell the data on the Dark Web, or threaten to leak intellectual property to competitors, for instance.

Real-time automated investigations with Cyber AI Analyst

Throughout the attack lifecycle, multiple high-fidelity alerts were generated by Darktrace AI and this prompted the Cyber AI Analyst to automatically launch an investigation in the background, stitching together the different events into a single, comprehensive security incident, which it then displayed for human review in a single screen.

Figure 2: The data exfiltration to a rare external domain

Figure 3: Darktrace’s user interface highlighting the unusual activity and model breaches on a domain controller directly linked with the ransomware attack

Targeted, double-threat attacks like Maze ransomware are on the rise and extremely dangerous – and they are increasingly targeting high-stakes environments. Thousands of organizations are turning to AI, not only to detect and investigate on ransomware intrusions as demonstrated above, but to autonomously respond to events as they occur. Ransomware attacks like these show organizations why autonomous response in active mode is not just a nice to have – but necessary – as fast-moving threats demand machine-speed responses.

In a previous blog, we looked at a novel zero-day ransomware attack that slipped through legacy security tools – but Antigena Network was configured in active mode, autonomously stopping the threat in its tracks. This unique capability is becoming crucial for organizations in every industry who find themselves targeted by increasingly sophisticated attack methods.

Thanks to Darktrace analyst Adam Stevens for his insights on the above threat find.

Learn more about Autonomous Response

Darktrace model detections

  • Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity
  • Device / Network Scan
  • Device / ICMP Address Scan
  • Unusual Activity / Unusual Internal Connections
  • Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Breaches
  • Experimental / Executable Uploaded to DC
  • Compromise / Ransomware::Suspicious SMB Activity
  • Compromise / Ransomware::Ransom or Offensive Words Written to SMB
  • Compliance / SMB Drive Write
  • Compliance / High Priority Compliance Model Breach
  • Anomalous Connection / SMB Enumeration
  • Device / Suspicious File Writes to Multiple Hidden SMB Shares
  • Device / New or Unusual Remote Command Execution
  • Anomalous Connection / New or Uncommon Service Control
  • Anomalous Connection / SMB Enumeration
  • Experimental / Possible RPC Execution
  • Anomalous Connection / High Volume of New or Uncommon Service Control
  • Experimental / Possible Ransom Note
  • Anomalous File / Internal::Additional Extension Appended to SMB File
  • Compliance / Tor Package Download
  • Device / Suspicious Domain
  • Device / Long Agent Connection to New Endpoint
  • Anomalous Connection / Data Sent to Rare Domain

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.
AUTHOR
ABOUT ThE AUTHOR
맥스 하이네마이어
최고 제품 책임자(CPO)

Max is a cyber security expert with over a decade of experience in the field, specializing in a wide range of areas such as Penetration Testing, Red-Teaming, SIEM and SOC consulting and hunting Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups. At Darktrace, Max is closely involved with Darktrace’s strategic customers & prospects. He works with the R&D team at Darktrace, shaping research into new AI innovations and their various defensive and offensive applications. Max’s insights are regularly featured in international media outlets such as the BBC, Forbes and WIRED. Max holds an MSc from the University of Duisburg-Essen and a BSc from the Cooperative State University Stuttgart in International Business Information Systems.

Book a 1-1 meeting with one of our experts
share this article
USE CASES
항목을 찾을 수 없습니다.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT
항목을 찾을 수 없습니다.
COre coverage
항목을 찾을 수 없습니다.

More in this series

항목을 찾을 수 없습니다.

Blog

Inside the SOC

Connecting the Dots: Darktrace’s Detection of the Exploitation of the ConnectWise ScreenConnect Vulnerabilities

Default blog imageDefault blog image
10
May 2024

Introduction

Across an ever changing cyber landscape, it is common place for threat actors to actively identify and exploit newly discovered vulnerabilities within commonly utilized services and applications. While attackers are likely to prioritize developing exploits for the more severe and global Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), they typically have the most success exploiting known vulnerabilities within the first couple years of disclosure to the public.

Addressing these vulnerabilities in a timely manner reduces the effectiveness of known vulnerabilities, decreasing the pace of malicious actor operations and forcing pursuit of more costly and time-consuming methods, such as zero-day related exploits or attacking software supply chain operations. While actors also develop tools to exploit other vulnerabilities, developing exploits for critical and publicly known vulnerabilities gives actors impactful tools at a low cost they are able to use for quite some time.

Between January and March 2024, the Darktrace Threat Research team investigated one such example that involved indicators of compromise (IoCs) suggesting the exploitation of vulnerabilities in ConnectWise’s remote monitoring and management (RMM) software ScreenConnect.

What are the ConnectWise ScreenConnect vulnerabilities?

CVE-2024-1708 is an authentication bypass vulnerability in ScreenConnect 23.9.7 (and all earlier versions) that, if exploited, would enable an attacker to execute remote code or directly impact confidential information or critical systems. This exploit would pave the way for a second ScreenConnect vunerability, CVE-2024-1709, which allows attackers to directly access confidential information or critical systems [1].

ConnectWise released a patch and automatically updated cloud versions of ScreenConnect 23.9.9, while urging security temas to update on-premise versions immediately [3].

If exploited in conjunction, these vulnerabilities could allow a malicious actor to create new administrative accounts on publicly exposed instances by evading existing security measures. This, in turn, could enable attackers to assume an administrative role and disable security tools, create backdoors, and disrupt RMM processes. Access to an organization’s environment in this manner poses serious risk, potentially leading to significant consequences such as deploying ransomware, as seen in various incidents involving the exploitation of ScreenConnect [2]

Darktrace Coverage of ConnectWise Exploitation

Darktrace’s anomaly-based detection was able to identify evidence of exploitation related to CVE-2024-1708 and CVE-2024-1709 across two distinct timelines; these detections included connectivity with endpoints that were later confirmed to be malicious by multiple open-source intelligence (OSINT) vendors. The activity observed by Darktrace suggests that threat actors were actively exploiting these vulnerabilities across multiple customer environments.

In the cases observed across the Darktrace fleet, Darktrace DETECT™ and Darktrace RESPOND™ were able to work in tandem to pre-emptively identify and contain network compromises from the onset. While Darktrace RESPOND was enabled in most customer environments affected by the ScreenConnect vulnerabilities, in the majority of cases it was configured in Human Confirmation mode. Whilst in Human Confirmation mode, RESPOND will provide recommended actions to mitigate ongoing attacks, but these actions require manual approval from human security teams.

When enabled in autonomous response mode, Darktrace RESPOND will take action automatically, shutting down suspicious activity as soon as it is detected without the need for human intervention. This is the ideal end state for RESPOND as actions can be taken at machine speed, without any delays waiting for user approval.

Looking within the patterns of activity observed by Darktrace , the typical  attack timeline included:

Darktrace observed devices on affected customer networks performing activity indicative of ConnectWise ScreenConnect usage, for example connections over 80 and 8041, connections to screenconnect[.]com, and the use of the user agent “LabTech Agent”. OSINT research suggests that this user agent is an older name for ConnectWise Automate [5] which also includes ScreenConnect as standard [6].

Darktrace DETECT model alert highlighting the use of a remote management tool, namely “screenconnect[.]com”.
Figure 1: Darktrace DETECT model alert highlighting the use of a remote management tool, namely “screenconnect[.]com”.

This activity was typically followed by anomalous connections to the external IP address 108.61.210[.]72 using URIs of the form “/MyUserName_DEVICEHOSTNAME”, as well as additional connections to another external, IP 185.62.58[.]132. Both of these external locations have since been reported as potentially malicious [14], with 185.62.58[.]132 in particular linked to ScreenConnect post-exploitation activity [2].

Figure 2: Darktrace DETECT model alert highlighting the unusual connection to 185.62.58[.]132 via port 8041.
Figure 2: Darktrace DETECT model alert highlighting the unusual connection to 185.62.58[.]132 via port 8041.
Figure 3: Darktrace DETECT model alert highlighting connections to 108.61.210[.]72 using a new user agent and the “/MyUserName_DEVICEHOSTNAME” URI.
Figure 3: Darktrace DETECT model alert highlighting connections to 108.61.210[.]72 using a new user agent and the “/MyUserName_DEVICEHOSTNAME” URI.

Same Exploit, Different Tactics?  

While the majority of instances of ConnectWise ScreenConnect exploitation observed by Darktrace followed the above pattern of activity, Darktrace was able to identify some deviations from this.

In one customer environment, Darktrace’s detection of post-exploitation activity began with the same indicators of ScreenConnect usage, including connections to screenconnect[.]com via port 8041, followed by connections to unusual domains flagged as malicious by OSINT, in this case 116.0.56[.]101 [16] [17]. However, on this deployment Darktrace also observed threat actors downloading a suspicious AnyDesk installer from the endpoint with the URI “hxxp[:]//116.0.56[.]101[:]9191/images/Distribution.exe”.

Figure 4: Darktrace DETECT model alert highlighting the download of an unusual executable file from 116.0.56[.]101.
Figure 4: Darktrace DETECT model alert highlighting the download of an unusual executable file from 116.0.56[.]101.

Further investigation by Darktrace’s Threat Research team revealed that this endpoint was associated with threat actors exploiting CVE-2024-1708 and CVE-2024-1709 [1]. Darktrace was additionally able to identify that, despite the customer being based in the United Kingdom, the file downloaded came from Pakistan. Darktrace recognized that this represented a deviation from the device’s expected pattern of activity and promptly alerted for it, bringing it to the attention of the customer.

Figure 5: External Sites Summary within the Darktrace UI pinpointing the geographic locations of external endpoints, in this case highlighting a file download from Pakistan.
Figure 5: External Sites Summary within the Darktrace UI pinpointing the geographic locations of external endpoints, in this case highlighting a file download from Pakistan.

Darktrace’s Autonomous Response

In this instance, the customer had Darktrace enabled in autonomous response mode and the post-exploitation activity was swiftly contained, preventing the attack from escalating.

As soon as the suspicious AnyDesk download was detected, Darktrace RESPOND applied targeted measures to prevent additional malicious activity. This included blocking connections to 116.0.56[.]101 and “*.56.101”, along with blocking all outgoing traffic from the device. Furthermore, RESPOND enforced a “pattern of life” on the device, restricting its activity to its learned behavior, allowing connections that are considered normal, but blocking any unusual deviations.

Figure 6: Darktrace RESPOND enforcing a “pattern of life” on the offending device after detecting the suspicious AnyDesk download.
Figure 6: Darktrace RESPOND enforcing a “pattern of life” on the offending device after detecting the suspicious AnyDesk download.
Figure 7: Darktrace RESPOND blocking connections to the suspicious endpoint 116.0.56[.]101 and “*.56.101” following the download of the suspicious AnyDesk installer.
Figure 7: Darktrace RESPOND blocking connections to the suspicious endpoint 116.0.56[.]101 and “*.56.101” following the download of the suspicious AnyDesk installer.

The customer was later able to use RESPOND to manually quarantine the offending device, ensuring that all incoming and outgoing traffic to or from the device was prohibited, thus preventing ay further malicious communication or lateral movement attempts.

Figure 8: The actions applied by Darktrace RESPOND in response to the post-exploitation activity related to the ScreenConnect vulnerabilities, including the manually applied “Quarantine device” action.

Conclusion

In the observed cases of the ConnectWise ScreenConnect vulnerabilities being exploited across the Darktrace fleet, Darktrace was able to pre-emptively identify and contain network compromises from the onset, offering vital protection against disruptive cyber-attacks.

While much of the post-exploitation activity observed by Darktrace remained the same across different customer environments, important deviations were also identified suggesting that threat actors may be adapting their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) from campaign to campaign.

While new vulnerabilities will inevitably surface and threat actors will continually look for novel ways to evolve their methods, Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI and behavioral analysis offers organizations full visibility over new or unknown threats. Rather than relying on existing threat intelligence or static lists of “known bads”, Darktrace is able to detect emerging activity based on anomaly and respond to it without latency, safeguarding customer environments whilst causing minimal disruption to business operations.

Credit: Emma Foulger, Principal Cyber Analyst for their contribution to this blog.

Appendices

Darktrace Model Coverage

DETECT Models

Compromise / Agent Beacon (Medium Period)

Compromise / Agent Beacon (Long Period)

Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location

Device / New PowerShell User Agent

Anomalous Connection / Powershell to Rare External

Anomalous Connection / New User Agent to IP Without Hostname

User / New Admin Credentials on Client

Device / New User Agent

Anomalous Connection / Multiple HTTP POSTs to Rare Hostname

Anomalous Server Activity / Anomalous External Activity from Critical Network Device

Compromise / Suspicious Request Data

Compliance / Remote Management Tool On Server

Anomalous File / Anomalous Octet Stream (No User Agent)

RESPOND Models

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

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

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

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

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

Antigena / Network::Insider Threat::Antigena Unusual Privileged User Activities Block

Antigena / Network / External Threat / Antigena Suspicious File Pattern of Life Block

Antigena / Network / Insider Threat / Antigena Unusual Privileged User Activities Pattern of Life Block

List of IoCs

IoC - Type - Description + Confidence

185.62.58[.]132 – IP- IP linked with threat actors exploiting CVE-2024-1708 and CVE-2024-17091

108.61.210[.]72- IP - IP linked with threat actors exploiting CVE-2024-1708 and CVE-2024-17091

116.0.56[.]101    - IP - IP linked with threat actors exploiting CVE-2024-1708 and CVE-2024-17091

/MyUserName_ DEVICEHOSTNAME – URI - URI linked with threat actors exploiting CVE-2024-1708 and CVE-2024-17091

/images/Distribution.exe – URI - URI linked with threat actors exploiting CVE-2024-1708 and CVE-2024-17091

24780657328783ef50ae0964b23288e68841a421 - SHA1 Filehash - Filehash linked with threat actors exploiting CVE-2024-1708 and CVE-2024-17091

a21768190f3b9feae33aaef660cb7a83 - MD5 Filehash - Filehash linked with threat actors exploiting CVE-2024-1708 and CVE-2024-17091

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Technique – Tactic – ID - Sub-technique of

Web Protocols - COMMAND AND CONTROL - T1071.001 - T1071

Web Services      - RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT - T1583.006 - T1583

Drive-by Compromise - INITIAL ACCESS - T1189 – NA

Ingress Tool Transfer   - COMMAND AND CONTROL - T1105 - NA

Malware - RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT - T1588.001- T1588

Exploitation of Remote Services - LATERAL MOVEMENT - T1210 – NA

PowerShell – EXECUTION - T1059.001 - T1059

Pass the Hash      - DEFENSE EVASION, LATERAL MOVEMENT     - T1550.002 - T1550

Valid Accounts - DEFENSE EVASION, PERSISTENCE, PRIVILEGE ESCALATION, INITIAL ACCESS - T1078 – NA

Man in the Browser – COLLECTION - T1185     - NA

Exploit Public-Facing Application - INITIAL ACCESS - T1190         - NA

Exfiltration Over C2 Channel – EXFILTRATION - T1041 – NA

IP Addresses – RECONNAISSANCE - T1590.005 - T1590

Remote Access Software - COMMAND AND CONTROL - T1219 – NA

Lateral Tool Transfer - LATERAL MOVEMENT - T1570 – NA

Application Layer Protocol - COMMAND AND CONTROL - T1071 – NA

References:

[1] https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/connectwise-threat-brief-cve-2024-1708-cve-2024-1709/  

[2] https://www.huntress.com/blog/slashandgrab-screen-connect-post-exploitation-in-the-wild-cve-2024-1709-cve-2024-1708    

[3] https://www.huntress.com/blog/a-catastrophe-for-control-understanding-the-screenconnect-authentication-bypass

[4] https://www.speedguide.net/port.php?port=8041  

[5] https://www.connectwise.com/company/announcements/labtech-now-connectwise-automate

[6] https://www.connectwise.com/solutions/software-for-internal-it/automate

[7] https://www.securityweek.com/slashandgrab-screenconnect-vulnerability-widely-exploited-for-malware-delivery/

[8] https://arcticwolf.com/resources/blog/cve-2024-1709-cve-2024-1708-follow-up-active-exploitation-and-pocs-observed-for-critical-screenconnect-vulnerabilities/https://success.trendmicro.com/dcx/s/solution/000296805?language=en_US&sfdcIFrameOrigin=null

[9] https://www.connectwise.com/company/trust/security-bulletins/connectwise-screenconnect-23.9.8

[10] https://socradar.io/critical-vulnerabilities-in-connectwise-screenconnect-postgresql-jdbc-and-vmware-eap-cve-2024-1597-cve-2024-22245/

[11] https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/24/b/threat-actor-groups-including-black-basta-are-exploiting-recent-.html

[12] https://otx.alienvault.com/indicator/ip/185.62.58.132

[13] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/185.62.58.132/community

[14] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/108.61.210.72/community

[15] https://otx.alienvault.com/indicator/ip/108.61.210.72

[16] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/116.0.56[.]101/community

[17] https://otx.alienvault.com/indicator/ip/116.0.56[.]101

Continue reading
About the author
Justin Torres
Cyber Analyst

Blog

이메일

How Empowering End Users can Improve Your Email Security and Decrease the Burden on the SOC

Default blog imageDefault blog image
08
May 2024

Why do we pay attention to the end user?

Every email security solution filters inbound mail, then typically hands over false positives and false negatives to the security team for manual triage. A crucial problem with this lifecycle is that it ignores the inevitability of end users being at the front line of any organization. Employees may receive point in time security awareness training, but it is rarely engaging or contextualized to their reality. While an employee may report a suspicious-looking email to the security team, they will rarely get to understand the outcome or impact of that decision. This means that the quality of reporting never improves, so the burden on the security team of triaging these emails – of which 90% are falsely reported – persists and grows with the business over time.

At Darktrace, we recognize that employees will always be on the front line of email security. That’s why we aim to improve end-user reporting from the ground up, reducing the overall number of emails needing triage and saving security team resource.

How does Darktrace improve the quality of end-user reporting?

Darktrace prioritizes improving users’ security awareness to increase the quality of end-user reporting from day one. We train users and optimize their experience, which in turn provides better detection. 

That starts with training and security awareness. Traditionally, organizations oblige employees to attend point-in-time training sessions which interrupt their daily work schedules. With Darktrace/Email, if a message contains some potentially suspicious markers but is most likely safe, Darktrace takes a specific action to neutralize the risky components and presents it to the user with a simple narrative explaining why certain elements have been held back. The user can then decide whether to report this email to the security team. 

AI shares its analysis in context and in real time at the moment a user is questioning an email
Figure 1: AI shares its analysis in context and in real time at the moment a user is questioning an email

The AI narrative gives the user context for why their specific email may carry risk, putting their security awareness training into practice. This creates an element of trust with the security solution, rather than viewing it as outside of daily workflows. Users may also receive a daily or weekly digest of their held emails and make a decision on whether to release or report them.  

Whatever the user’s existing workflow is for reporting emails, Darktrace/Email can integrate with it and improve its quality. Our add-in for Outlook gives users a fully optimized experience, allowing them to engage with the narratives for each email, as well as non-productive mail management. However, if teams want to integrate Darktrace into an existing workflow, it can analyze emails reported to an internal SOC mailbox, the native email provider’s 'Report Phish’ button, or the ‘Knowbe4’ button.

By empowering the user with contextual feedback on each unique email, we foster employee engagement and elevate both reporting quality and security awareness. In fact, 60% fewer benign emails are reported because of the extra context supplied by Darktrace to end users. The eventual report is then fed back to the detection algorithm, improving future decision-making.  

Reducing the amount of emails that reach the SOC

Out of the higher-quality emails that do end up being reported by users, the next step is to reduce the amount of emails that reach the SOC.   

Once a user reports an email, Darktrace will independently determine if the mail should be automatically remediated based on second level triage. Darktrace/Email’s Mailbox Security Assistant automates secondary triage by combining additional behavioral signals and the most advanced link analysis engine we have ever built. It detects 70% more sophisticated malicious phishing links by looking at an additional twenty times more context than at the primary analysis stage, revealing the hidden intent within interactive and dynamic webpages. This directly alleviates the burden of manual triage for security analysts.

Following this secondary triage the emails that are deemed worthy of security team attention are then passed over, resulting in a lower quantity and higher quality of emails for SOC manual triage.

Centralizing and speeding analysis for investigations

For those emails that are received by the SOC, Darktrace also helps to improve triage time for manual remediation.  

AI-generated narratives and automated remediation actions empower teams to fast-track manual triage and remediation, while still providing security analysts with the necessary depth. With live inbox view, security teams gain access to a centralized platform that combines intuitive search capabilities, Cyber AI Analyst reports, and mobile application access. With all security workflows consolidated within a unified interface, users can analyze and take remediation actions without the need to navigate multiple tools, such as e-discovery platforms – eliminating console hopping and accelerating incident response.

Our customers tell us that our AI allows them to go in-depth quickly for investigations, versus other solutions that only provide a high-level view.

Cyber AI Analyst provides a simple language narrative for each reported email, allowing teams to quickly understand why it may be suspicious
Figure 2: Cyber AI Analyst provides a simple language narrative for each reported email, allowing teams to quickly understand why it may be suspicious

Conclusion

Unlike our competitors, we believe that improving the quality of users’ experience is not only a nice-to-have, but a fundamental means for improving security. Any modern solution should consider end users as a key source of information as well as an opportunity for defense. Darktrace does both – optimizing the user experience as well as our AI learning from the user to augment detection.  

The benefits of empowering users are ultimately felt by the security team, who benefit from improved detection, a reduction in manual triage of benign emails, and faster investigation workflows.

Augmented end user reporting is just one of a range of features new to Darktrace/Email. Check out the latest Innovations to Darktrace/Email in our recent blog.

Continue reading
About the author
Carlos Gray
Product Manager
Our ai. Your data.

Elevate your cyber defenses with Darktrace AI

무료 평가판 시작
Darktrace AI protecting a business from cyber threats.