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September 4, 2022

Steps of a BumbleBee Intrusion to a Cobalt Strike

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04
Sep 2022
Discover the steps of a Bumblebee intrusion, from initial detection to Cobalt Strike deployment. Learn how Darktrace defends against evolving threats with AI.

Introduction

Throughout April 2022, Darktrace observed several cases in which threat actors used the loader known as ‘BumbleBee’ to install Cobalt Strike Beacon onto victim systems. The threat actors then leveraged Cobalt Strike Beacon to conduct network reconnaissance, obtain account password data, and write malicious payloads across the network. In this article, we will provide details of the actions threat actors took during their intrusions, as well as details of the network-based behaviours which served as evidence of the actors’ activities.  

BumbleBee 

In March 2022, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) provided details of the activities of an Initial Access Broker (IAB) group dubbed ‘Exotic Lily’ [1]. Before March 2022, Google’s TAG observed Exotic Lily leveraging sophisticated impersonation techniques to trick employees of targeted organisations into downloading ISO disc image files from legitimate file storage services such as WeTransfer. These ISO files contained a Windows shortcut LNK file and a BazarLoader Dynamic Link Library (i.e, DLL). BazarLoader is a member of the Bazar family — a family of malware (including both BazarLoader and BazarBackdoor) with strong ties to the Trickbot malware, the Anchor malware family, and Conti ransomware. BazarLoader, which is typically distributed via email campaigns or via fraudulent call campaigns, has been known to drop Cobalt Strike as a precursor to Conti ransomware deployment [2]. 

In March 2022, Google’s TAG observed Exotic Lily leveraging file storage services to distribute an ISO file containing a DLL which, when executed, caused the victim machine to make HTTP requests with the user-agent string ‘bumblebee’. Google’s TAG consequently called this DLL payload ‘BumbleBee’. Since Google’s discovery of BumbleBee back in March, several threat research teams have reported BumbleBee samples dropping Cobalt Strike [1]/[3]/[4]/[5]. It has also been reported by Proofpoint [3] that other threat actors such as TA578 and TA579 transitioned to BumbleBee in March 2022.  

Interestingly, BazarLoader’s replacement with BumbleBee seems to coincide with the leaking of the Conti ransomware gang’s Jabber chat logs at the end of February 2022. On February 25th, 2022, the Conti gang published a blog post announcing their full support for the Russian state’s invasion of Ukraine [6]. 

Figure 1: The Conti gang's public declaration of their support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Within days of sharing their support for Russia, logs from a server hosting the group’s Jabber communications began to be leaked on Twitter by @ContiLeaks [7]. The leaked logs included records of conversations among nearly 500 threat actors between Jan 2020 and March 2022 [8]. The Jabber logs were supposedly stolen and leaked by a Ukrainian security researcher [3]/[6].

Affiliates of the Conti ransomware group were known to use BazarLoader to deliver Conti ransomware [9]. BumbleBee has now also been linked to the Conti ransomware group by several threat research teams [1]/[10]/[11]. The fact that threat actors’ transition from BazarLoader to BumbleBee coincides with the leak of Conti’s Jabber chat logs may indicate that the transition occurred as a result of the leaks [3]. Since the transition, BumbleBee has become a significant tool in the cyber-crime ecosystem, with links to several ransomware operations such as Conti, Quantum, and Mountlocker [11]. The rising use of BumbleBee by threat actors, and particularly ransomware actors, makes the early detection of BumbleBee key to identifying the preparatory stages of ransomware attacks.  

Intrusion Kill Chain 

In April 2022, Darktrace observed the following pattern of threat actor activity within the networks of several Darktrace clients: 

1.     Threat actor socially engineers user via email into running a BumbleBee payload on their device

2.     BumbleBee establishes HTTPS communication with a BumbleBee C2 server

3.     Threat actor instructs BumbleBee to download and execute Cobalt Strike Beacon

4.     Cobalt Strike Beacon establishes HTTPS communication with a Cobalt Strike C2 server

5.     Threat actor instructs Cobalt Strike Beacon to scan for open ports and to enumerate network shares

6.     Threat actor instructs Cobalt Strike Beacon to use the DCSync technique to obtain password account data from an internal domain controller

7.     Threat actor instructs Cobalt Strike Beacon to distribute malicious payloads to other internal systems 

With limited visibility over affected clients’ email environments, Darktrace was unable to determine how the threat actors interacted with users to initiate the BumbleBee infection. However, based on open-source reporting on BumbleBee [3]/[4]/[10]/[11]/[12]/[13]/[14]/[15]/[16]/[17], it is likely that the actors tricked target users into running BumbleBee by sending them emails containing either a malicious zipped ISO file or a link to a file storage service hosting the malicious zipped ISO file. These ISO files typically contain a LNK file and a BumbleBee DLL payload. The properties of these LNK files are set in such a way that opening them causes the corresponding DLL payload to run. 

In several cases observed by Darktrace, devices contacted a file storage service such as Microsoft OneDrive or Google Cloud Storage immediately before they displayed signs of BumbleBee infection. In these cases, it is likely that BumbleBee was executed on the users’ devices as a result of the users interacting with an ISO file which they were tricked into downloading from a file storage service. 

Figure 2: The above figure, taken from the event log for an infected device, shows that the device contacted a OneDrive endpoint immediately before making HTTPS connections to the BumbleBee C2 server, 45.140.146[.]244
Figure 3: The above figure, taken from the event log for an infected device, shows that the device contacted a Google Cloud Storage endpoint and then the malicious endpoint ‘marebust[.]com’ before making HTTPS connections to the  BumbleBee C2 servers, 108.62.118[.]61 and 23.227.198[.]217

After users ran a BumbleBee payload, their devices immediately initiated communications with BumbleBee C2 servers. The BumbleBee samples used HTTPS for their C2 communication, and all presented a common JA3 client fingerprint, ‘0c9457ab6f0d6a14fc8a3d1d149547fb’. All analysed samples excluded domain names in their ‘client hello’ messages to the C2 servers, which is unusual for legitimate HTTPS communication. External SSL connections which do not specify a destination domain name and whose JA3 client fingerprint is ‘0c9457ab6f0d6a14fc8a3d1d149547fb’ are potential indicators of BumbleBee infection. 

Figure 4:The above figure, taken from Darktrace's Advanced Search interface, depicts an infected device's spike in HTTPS connections with the JA3 client fingerprint ‘0c9457ab6f0d6a14fc8a3d1d149547fb’

Once the threat actors had established HTTPS communication with the BumbleBee-infected systems, they instructed BumbleBee to download and execute Cobalt Strike Beacon. This behaviour resulted in the infected systems making HTTPS connections to Cobalt Strike C2 servers. The Cobalt Strike Beacon samples all had the same JA3 client fingerprint ‘a0e9f5d64349fb13191bc781f81f42e1’ — a fingerprint associated with previously seen Cobalt Strike samples [18]. The domain names ‘fuvataren[.]com’ and ‘cuhirito[.]com’ were observed in the samples’ HTTPS communications. 

Figure 5:The above figure, taken from Darktrace's Advanced Search interface, depicts the Cobalt Strike C2 communications which immediately followed a device's BumbleBee C2 activity

Cobalt Strike Beacon payloads call home to C2 servers for instructions. In the cases observed, threat actors first instructed the Beacon payloads to perform reconnaissance tasks, such as SMB port scanning and SMB enumeration. It is likely that the threat actors performed these steps to inform the next stages of their operations.  The SMB enumeration activity was evidenced by the infected devices making NetrShareEnum and NetrShareGetInfo requests to the srvsvc RPC interface on internal systems.

Figure 6: The above figure, taken from Darktrace’s Advanced Search interface, depicts a spike in srvsvc requests coinciding with the infected device's Cobalt Strike C2 activity

After providing Cobalt Strike Beacon with reconnaissance tasks, the threat actors set out to obtain account password data in preparation for the lateral movement phase of their operation. To obtain account password data, the actors instructed Cobalt Strike Beacon to use the DCSync technique to replicate account password data from an internal domain controller. This activity was evidenced by the infected devices making DRSGetNCChanges requests to the drsuapi RPC interface on internal domain controllers. 

Figure 7: The above figure, taken from Darktrace’s Advanced Search interface, depicts a spike in DRSGetNCChanges requests coinciding with the infected device’s Cobalt Strike C2 activity

After leveraging the DCSync technique, the threat actors sought to broaden their presence within the targeted networks.  To achieve this, they instructed Cobalt Strike Beacon to get several specially selected internal systems to run a suspiciously named DLL (‘f.dll’). Cobalt Strike first established SMB sessions with target systems using compromised account credentials. During these sessions, Cobalt Strike uploaded the malicious DLL to a hidden network share. To execute the DLL, Cobalt Strike abused the Windows Service Control Manager (SCM) to remotely control and manipulate running services on the targeted internal hosts. Cobalt Strike first opened a binding handle to the svcctl interface on the targeted destination systems. It then went on to make an OpenSCManagerW request, a CreateServiceA request, and a StartServiceA request to the svcctl interface on the targeted hosts: 

·      Bind request – opens a binding handle to the relevant RPC interface (in this case, the svcctl interface) on the destination device

·      OpenSCManagerW request – establishes a connection to the Service Control Manager (SCM) on the destination device and opens a specified SCM database

·      CreateServiceA request – creates a service object and adds it to the specified SCM database 

·      StartServiceA request – starts a specified service

Figure 8: The above figure, taken from Darktrace’s Advanced Search interface, outlines an infected system’s lateral movement activities. After writing a file named ‘f.dll’ to the C$ share on an internal server, the infected device made several RPC requests to the svcctl interface on the targeted server

It is likely that the DLL file which the threat actors distributed was a Cobalt Strike payload. In one case, however, the threat actor was also seen distributing and executing a payload named ‘procdump64.exe’. This may suggest that the threat actor was seeking to use ProcDump to obtain authentication material stored in the process memory of the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS). Given that ProcDump is a legitimate Windows Sysinternals tool primarily used for diagnostics and troubleshooting, it is likely that threat actors leveraged it in order to evade detection. 

In all the cases which Darktrace observed, threat actors’ attempts to conduct follow-up activities after moving laterally were thwarted with the help of Darktrace’s SOC team. It is likely that the threat actors responsible for the reported activities were seeking to deploy ransomware within the targeted networks. The steps which the threat actors took to make progress towards achieving this objective resulted in highly unusual patterns of network traffic. Darktrace’s detection of these unusual network activities allowed security teams to prevent these threat actors from achieving their disruptive objectives. 

Darktrace Coverage

Once threat actors succeeded in tricking users into running BumbleBee on their devices, Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI immediately detected the command-and-control (C2) activity generated by the loader. BumbleBee’s C2 activity caused the following Darktrace models to breach:

·      Anomalous Connection / Anomalous SSL without SNI to New External

·      Anomalous Connection / Suspicious Self-Signed SSL

·      Anomalous Connection / Rare External SSL Self-Signed

·      Compromise / Suspicious TLS Beaconing To Rare External

·      Compromise / Beacon to Young Endpoint

·      Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare

·      Compromise / Sustained SSL or HTTP Increase

·      Compromise / Suspicious TLS Beaconing To Rare External

·      Compromise / SSL Beaconing to Rare Destination

·      Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Successful Connections

·      Device / Multiple C2 Model Breaches 

BumbleBee’s delivery of Cobalt Strike Beacon onto target systems resulted in those systems communicating with Cobalt Strike C2 servers. Cobalt Strike Beacon’s C2 communications resulted in breaches of the following models: 

·      Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare

·      Compromise / High Volume of Connections with Beacon Score

·      Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Successful Connections

·      Compromise / Sustained SSL or HTTP Increase

·      Compromise / SSL or HTTP Beacon

·      Compromise / Slow Beaconing Activity To External Rare

·      Compromise / SSL Beaconing to Rare Destination 

The threat actors’ subsequent port scanning and SMB enumeration activities caused the following models to breach:

·      Device / Network Scan

·      Anomalous Connection / SMB Enumeration

·      Device / Possible SMB/NTLM Reconnaissance

·      Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity  

The threat actors’ attempts to obtain account password data from domain controllers using the DCSync technique resulted in breaches of the following models: 

·      Compromise / Unusual SMB Session and DRS

·      Anomalous Connection / Anomalous DRSGetNCChanges Operation

Finally, the threat actors’ attempts to internally distribute and execute payloads resulted in breaches of the following models:

·      Compliance / SMB Drive Write

·      Device / Lateral Movement and C2 Activity

·      Device / SMB Lateral Movement

·      Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Breaches

·      Anomalous File / Internal / Unusual SMB Script Write

·      Anomalous File / Internal / Unusual Internal EXE File Transfer

·      Anomalous Connection / High Volume of New or Uncommon Service Control

If Darktrace/Network had been configured in the targeted environments, then it would have blocked BumbleBee’s C2 communications, which would have likely prevented the threat actors from delivering Cobalt Strike Beacon into the target networks. 

Figure 9: Attack timeline

Conclusion

Threat actors use loaders to smuggle more harmful payloads into target networks. Prior to March 2022, it was common to see threat actors using the BazarLoader loader to transfer their payloads into target environments. However, since the public disclosure of the Conti gang’s Jabber chat logs at the end of February, the cybersecurity world has witnessed a shift in tradecraft. Threat actors have seemingly transitioned from using BazarLoader to using a novel loader known as ‘BumbleBee’. Since BumbleBee first made an appearance in March 2022, a growing number of threat actors, in particular ransomware actors, have been observed using it.

It is likely that this trend will continue, which makes the detection of BumbleBee activity vital for the prevention of ransomware deployment within organisations’ networks. During April, Darktrace’s SOC team observed a particular pattern of threat actor activity involving the BumbleBee loader. After tricking users into running BumbleBee on their devices, threat actors were seen instructing BumbleBee to drop Cobalt Strike Beacon. Threat actors then leveraged Cobalt Strike Beacon to conduct network reconnaissance, obtain account password data from internal domain controllers, and distribute malicious payloads internally.  Darktrace’s detection of these activities prevented the threat actors from achieving their likely harmful objectives.  

Thanks to Ross Ellis for his contributions to this blog.‍

Appendices 

References 

[1] https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/exposing-initial-access-broker-ties-conti/ 

[2] https://securityintelligence.com/posts/trickbot-gang-doubles-down-enterprise-infection/ 

[3] https://www.proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-insight/bumblebee-is-still-transforming

[4] https://www.cynet.com/orion-threat-alert-flight-of-the-bumblebee/ 

[5] https://research.nccgroup.com/2022/04/29/adventures-in-the-land-of-bumblebee-a-new-malicious-loader/ 

[6] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/conti-ransomwares-internal-chats-leaked-after-siding-with-russia/ 

[7] https://therecord.media/conti-leaks-the-panama-papers-of-ransomware/ 

[8] https://www.secureworks.com/blog/gold-ulrick-leaks-reveal-organizational-structure-and-relationships 

[9] https://www.prodaft.com/m/reports/Conti_TLPWHITE_v1.6_WVcSEtc.pdf 

[10] https://www.kroll.com/en/insights/publications/cyber/bumblebee-loader-linked-conti-used-in-quantum-locker-attacks 

[11] https://symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/bumblebee-loader-cybercrime 

[12] https://isc.sans.edu/diary/TA578+using+thread-hijacked+emails+to+push+ISO+files+for+Bumblebee+malware/28636 

[13] https://isc.sans.edu/diary/rss/28664 

[14] https://www.logpoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/buzz-of-the-bumblebee-a-new-malicious-loader-threat-report-no-3.pdf 

[15] https://ghoulsec.medium.com/mal-series-23-malware-loader-bumblebee-6ab3cf69d601 

[16]  https://blog.cyble.com/2022/06/07/bumblebee-loader-on-the-rise/  

[17]  https://asec.ahnlab.com/en/35460/ 

[18] https://thedfirreport.com/2021/07/19/icedid-and-cobalt-strike-vs-antivirus/

‍

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.
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November 28, 2024

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Cloud

Cloud security: addressing common CISO challenges with advanced solutions

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Cloud adoption is a cornerstone of modern business with its unmatched potential for scalability, cost efficiency, flexibility, and net-zero targets around sustainability. However, as organizations migrate more workloads, applications, and sensitive data to the cloud it introduces more complex challenges for CISO’s. Let’s dive into the most pressing issues keeping them up at night—and how Darktrace / CLOUD provides a solution for each.

1. Misconfigurations: The Silent Saboteur

Misconfigurations remain the leading cause of cloud-based data breaches. In 2023 alone over 80%  of data breaches involved data stored in the cloud.1  Think open storage buckets or overly permissive permissions; seemingly minor errors that are easily missed and can snowball into major disasters. The fallout of breaches can be costly—both financially and reputationally.

How Darktrace / CLOUD Helps:

Darktrace / CLOUD continuously monitors your cloud asset configurations, learning your environment and using these insights to flag potential misconfigurations. New scans are triggered when changes take place, then grouped and prioritised intelligently, giving you an evolving and prioritised view of vulnerabilities, best practice and mitigation strategies.

2. Hybrid Environments: The Migration Maze

Many organizations are migrating to the cloud, but hybrid setups (where workloads span both on-premises and cloud environments) create unique challenges and visibility gaps which significantly increase complexity. More traditional and most cloud native security tooling struggles to provide adequate monitoring for these setups.

How Darktrace / CLOUD Helps:

Provides the ability to monitor runtime activity for both on-premises and cloud workloads within the same user interface. By leveraging the right AI solution across this diverse data set, we understand the behaviour of your on-premises workloads and how they interact with cloud systems, spotting unusual connectivity or data flow activity during and after the migration process.

This unified visibility enables proactive detection of anomalies, ensures seamless monitoring across hybrid environments, and provides actionable insights to mitigate risks during and after the migration process.

3. Securing Productivity Suites: The Last Mile

Cloud productivity suites like Microsoft 365 (M365) are essential for modern businesses and are often the first step for an organization on a journey to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS) use cases. They also represent a prime target for attackers. Consider a scenario where an attacker gains access to an M365 account, and proceeds to; access sensitive emails, downloading files from SharePoint, and impersonating the user to send phishing emails to internal employees and external partners. Without a system to detect these behaviours, the attack may go unnoticed until significant damage is done.

How Darktrace helps:

Darktrace’s Active AI platform integrates with M365 and establishes an understanding of normal business activity, enabling the detection of abnormalities across its suite including Email, SharePoint and Teams. By identifying subtle deviations in behaviour, such as:

   •    Unusual file accesses

   •    Anomalous login attempts from unexpected locations or devices.

   •    Suspicious email forwarding rules created by compromised accounts.

Darktrace’s Autonomous Response can act precisely to block malicious actions, by disabling compromised accounts and containing threats before they escalate. Precise actions also ensure that critical business operations are maintained even when a response is triggered.  

4. Agent Fatigue: The Visibility Struggle

To secure cloud environments, visibility is critical. If you don’t know what’s there, how can you secure it? Many solutions require agents to be deployed on every server, workload, and endpoint. But managing and deploying agents across sprawling hybrid environments can be both complex and time-consuming when following change controls, and especially as cloud resources scale dynamically.

How Darktrace / CLOUD Helps:

Darktrace reduces or eliminates the need for widespread agent deployment. Its agentless by default, integrating directly with cloud environments and providing instant visibility without the operational headache. Darktrace ensures coverage with minimal friction. By intelligently graphing the relationships between assets and logically grouping your deployed Cloud resources, you are equipped with real-time visibility to quickly understand and protect your environment.

So why Darktrace / CLOUD?

Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI redefines cloud security by adapting to your unique environment, detecting threats as they emerge, and responding in real-time. From spotting misconfigurations to protecting productivity suites and securing hybrid environments. Darktrace / CLOUD simplifies cloud security challenges without adding operational burdens.

From Chaos to Clarity

Cloud security doesn’t have to be a game of endless whack-a-mole. With Darktrace / CLOUD, CISOs can achieve the visibility, control, and proactive protection they need to navigate today’s complex cloud ecosystems confidently.

‍

[1] https://hbr.org/2024/02/why-data-breaches-spiked-in-2023

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About the author
Adam Stevens
Director of Product, Cloud Security

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November 28, 2024

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Thought Leadership

Preparing for 2025: Darktrace's top 10 AI and cybersecurity predictions

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Each year, Darktrace's AI and cybersecurity experts reflect on the events of the past 12 months and predict the trends we expect to shape the cybersecurity landscape in the year ahead. In 2024, we predicted that the global elections, fast-moving AI innovations, and increasingly cloud-based IT environments would be key factors shaping the cyber threat landscape.

Looking ahead to 2025, we expect the total addressable market of cybercrime to expand as attackers add more tactics to their toolkits. Threat actors will continue to take advantage of the volatile geopolitical environment and cybersecurity challenges will increasingly move to new frontiers like space. When it comes to AI, we anticipate the innovation in AI agents in 2024 to pave the way for the rise of multi-agent systems in 2025, creating new challenges and opportunities for cybersecurity professionals and attackers alike.

Here are ten trends to watch for in 2025:

The overall Total Addressable Market (TAM) of cybercrime gets bigger

Cybercrime is a global business, and an increasingly lucrative one, scaling through the adoption of AI and cybercrime-as-a-service. Annual revenue from cybercrime is already estimated to be over $8 trillion, which we’ve found is almost 5x greater than the revenue of the Magnificent Seven stocks. There are a few key factors driving this growth.

The ongoing growth of devices and systems means that existing malware families will continue to be successful. As of October 2024, it’s estimated that more than 5.52 billion people (~67%) have access to the internet and sources estimate 18.8 billion connected devices will be online by the end of 2024. The increasing adoption of AI is poised to drive even more interconnected systems as well as new data centers and infrastructure globally.

At the same time, more sophisticated capabilities are available for low-level attackers – we’ve already seen the trickle-down economic benefits of living off the land, edge infrastructure exploitation, and identity-focused exploitation. The availability of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) and Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) make more advanced tactics the norm. The subscription income that these groups can generate enables more adversarial innovation, so attacks are getting faster and more effective with even bigger financial ramifications.

While there has also been an increasing trend in the last year of improved cross-border law enforcement, the efficacy of these efforts remains to be seen as cybercriminal gangs are also getting more resilient and professionalized. They are building better back-up systems and infrastructure as well as more multi-national networks and supply chains.

Security teams need to prepare for the rise of AI agents and multi-agent systems

Throughout 2024, we’ve seen major announcements about advancements in AI agents from the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft, Salesforce, and more. In 2025, we’ll see increasing innovation in and adoption of AI agents as well as the emergence of multi-agent systems (or “agent swarms”), where groups of autonomous agents work together to tackle complex tasks.

The rise of AI agents and multi-agent systems will introduce new challenges in cybersecurity, including new attack vectors and vulnerabilities. Security teams need to think about how to protect these systems to prevent data poisoning, prompt injection, or social engineering attacks.

One benefit of multi-agent systems is that agents can autonomously communicate, collaborate, and interact. However without clear and distinct boundaries and explicit permissions, this can also pose a major data privacy risk and avenue for manipulation. These issues cannot be addressed by traditional application testing alone. We must ensure these systems are secure by design, where robust protective mechanisms and data guardrails are built into the foundations.

Threat actors will be the earliest adopters of AI agents and multi-agent systems

We’ve already seen how quickly threat actors have been able to adopt generative AI for tasks like email phishing and reconnaissance. The next frontier for threat actors will be AI agents and multi-agent systems that are specialized in autonomous tasks like surveillance, initial access brokering, privilege escalation, vulnerability exploitation, data summarization for smart exfiltration, and more. Because they have no concern for safe, secure, accurate, and responsible use, adversaries will adopt these systems faster than cyber defenders.

We could also start to see use cases emerge for multi-agent systems in cyber defense – with potential for early use cases in incident response, application testing, and vulnerability discovery. On the whole, security teams will be slower to adopt these systems than adversaries because of the need to put in place proper security guardrails and build trust over time.

There is heightened supply chain risk for Large Language Models (LLMs)

Training LLMs requires a lot of data, and many experts have warned that world is running out of quality data for that training. As a result, there will be an increasing reliance on synthetic data, which can introduce new issues of accuracy and efficacy. Moreover, data supply chain risks will be an Achilles heel for organizations, with the potential interjection of vulnerabilities through the data and machine learning providers that they rely on. Poisoning one data set could have huge trickle-down impacts across many different systems. Data security will be paramount in 2025.

The race to identify software vulnerabilities intensifies

The time it takes for threat actors to exploit newly published CVEs is getting shorter, giving defenders an even smaller window to apply patches and remediations. A 2024 report from Cloudflare found that threat actors quickly weaponized proof of concept exploits in attacks as quickly as 22 minutes after the exploits were made public.

At the same time, 2024 also saw the first reports from researchers across academia and the tech industry using AI for vulnerability discovery in real-world code. With threat actors getting faster at exploiting vulnerabilities, defenders will need to use AI to identify vulnerabilities in their software stack and to help identify and prioritize remediations and patches.

Insider threat risks will force organizations to evolve zero trust strategies

In 2025, an increasingly volatile geopolitical situation and the intensity of the AI race will make insider threats an even bigger risk for businesses, forcing organizations to expand zero-trust strategies. The traditional zero-trust model provides protection from external threats to an organization’s network by requiring continuous verification of the devices and users attempting to access critical business systems, services, and information from multiple sources. However, as we have seen in the more recent Jack Teixeira case, malicious insiders can still do significant damage to an organization within their approved and authenticated boundary.

To circumvent the remaining security gaps in a zero-trust architecture and mitigate increasing risk of insider threats, organizations will need to integrate a behavioral understanding dimension to their zero-trust approaches. The zero-trust best practice of “never trust, always verify” needs to evolve to become “never trust, always verify, and continuously monitor.”

Identity remains an expensive problem for businesses

2024 saw some of the biggest and costliest attacks – all because the attacker had access to compromised credentials. Essentially, they had the key to the front door. Businesses still struggle with identity and access management (IAM), and it’s getting more complex now that we’re in the middle of a massive Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) migration driven by increasing rates of AI and cloud use across businesses.

This challenge is going to be exacerbated in 2025 by a few global and business factors. First, there is an increasing push for digital identities, such as the rollout of the EU Digital Identity Framework that is underway, which could introduce additional attack vectors. As they scale, businesses are turning more and more to centralized identity and access solutions with decentralized infrastructure and relying on SaaS and application-native security.

Increasing vulnerabilities at the edge

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations had to stand-up remote access solutions quickly – in a matter of days or weeks – without the high level of due diligence that they require to be fully secured. In 2025, we expect to see continued fall-out as these quickly spun-up solutions start to present genuine vulnerability to businesses. We’ve already seen this start to play out in 2024 with the mass-exploitation of internet-edge devices like firewalls and VPN gateway products.

By July 2024, Darktrace’s threat research team observed that the most widely exploited edge infrastructure devices were those related to Ivanti Connect Secure, JetBrains TeamCity, FortiClient Enterprise Management Server, and Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS. Across the industry, we’ve already seen many zero days and vulnerabilities exploiting these internet-connected devices, which provide inroads into the network and store/cache credentials and passwords of other users that are highly valuable for threat actors.

Hacking Operational Technology (OT) gets easier

Hacking OT is notoriously complex – causing damage requires an intimate knowledge of the specific systems being targeted and historically was the reserve of nation states. But as OT has become more reliant and integrated with IT systems, attackers have stumbled on ways to cause disruption without having to rely on the sophisticated attack-craft normally associated with nation-state groups. That’s why some of the most disruptive attacks of the last year have come from hacktivist and financially-motivated criminal gangs – such as the hijacking of internet-exposed Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) by anti-Israel hacking groups and ransomware attacks resulting in the cancellation of hospital operations.  

In 2025, we expect to see an increase in cyber-physical disruption caused by threat groups motivated by political ideology or financial gain, bringing the OT threat landscape closer in complexity and scale to that of the IT landscape. The sectors most at risk are those with a strong reliance on IoT sensors, including healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing sectors.

Securing space infrastructure and systems becomes a critical imperative

The global space industry is growing at an incredibly fast pace, and 2025 is on track to be another record-breaking year for spaceflight with major missions and test flights planned by NASA, ESA, CNSA as well as the expected launch of the first commercial space station from Vast and programs from Blue Origin, Amazon and more. Research from Analysis Mason suggests that 38,000 additional satellites will be built and launched by 2033 and the global space industry revenue will reach $1.7 trillion by 2032. Space has also been identified as a focus area for the incoming US administration.

In 2025, we expect to see new levels of tension emerge as private and public infrastructure increasingly intersect in space, shining a light on the lack of agreed upon cyber norms and the increasing challenge of protecting complex and remote space systems against modern cyber threats.  Historically focused on securing earth-bound networks and environments, the space industry will face challenges as post-orbit threats rise, with satellites moving up the target list.

The EU’s NIS2 Directive now recognizes the space sector as an essential entity that is subject to its most strict cybersecurity requirements. Will other jurisdictions follow suit? We expect global debates about cyber vulnerabilities in space to come to the forefront as we become more reliant on space-based technology.

Preparing for the future

Whatever 2025 brings, Darktrace is committed to providing robust cybersecurity leadership and solutions to enterprises around the world. Our team of subject matter experts will continue to monitor emerging threat trends, advising both our customers and our product development teams.

And for day-to-day security, our multi-layered AI cybersecurity platform can protect against all types of threats, whether they are known, unknown, entirely novel, or powered by AI. It accomplishes this by learning what is normal for your unique organization, therefore identifying unusual and suspicious behavior at machine speed, regardless of existing rules and signatures. In this way, organizations with Darktrace can be ready for any developments in the cybersecurity threat landscape that the new year may bring.

Discover more about Darktrace's predictions on the AI and cybersecurity landscape for 2025 by joining the upcoming webinar on December 12, 2024 at 10:00am EST/3:00pm GMT. Register here.

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