Most cyber attacks do not begin with a breach notification, a ransom note, or a service outage. They begin quietly.
Before malware gets delivered or systems are compromised, attackers need to get their setup ready. They turn on the servers, start scanning, and test how they can exploit them. This initial stage is usually hidden from organizations, but it’s where smart, data-driven protection can really make a difference by stopping campaigns before they even get to the users or applications.
We’ve noticed some early signs of this activity recently, as seen in our protective DNS and IP telemetry.
Over a short observation window, ThreatSTOP identified a sudden, synchronized surge in blocked traffic originating from a clustered set of IP addresses. Each source followed the same pattern:
Looking at the numbers, activity from these sources jumped by about 1,500 percent in just one period. This consistent increase suggests that the infrastructure is being activated in a coordinated way, rather than just being a result of regular internet activity.
The traffic originated from tightly grouped IP ranges rather than randomly distributed addresses. Indicators in this example:
These patterns are more typical of attacker-controlled infrastructure found in data centers or leased spaces, rather than on devices that have been compromised by consumers. The uniformity across different ranges indicates that it might be a single operator or a group of operators using a similar set of tools and methods to deploy their systems.
The detection signals associated with these IPs reinforce that assessment. Blocks were triggered by multiple independent categories tied to:
This wasn’t just one technique or a false positive popping up over and over. It was a layered signal that seemed like attackers were getting ready to hit their targets later on.
Even though this activity showed up at the same time for several ThreatSTOP-protected customers, one customer’s environment had the most of it. In that environment, blocked requests from these IPs jumped by several hundred events per source, way more than what we saw elsewhere.
This is usually what happens when campaigns start. Attackers often check out lots of places to see if they’re open or working, and then they focus on where they think they can get away with something. The fact that we saw smaller but happening at the same time across other customers means this wasn’t just one customer’s problem; it was a campaign that did a big scan and then picked a few spots to go after.
The good news is, no customer had any trouble with their service or security. The activity was stopped before the attackers could even check if they were getting a response or move forward.
A lot of security tools only kick in when attackers start delivering or exploiting something. By then, defenders are already scrambling to respond. But when attackers are just getting started, there’s a chance to catch them off guard.
When threat infrastructure is identified as it comes online, defenders can:
In this case, the attackers never reached that next step.
ThreatSTOP’s Security, Intelligence, and Research team is always on the lookout, analyzing threat infrastructure using tons of intelligence feeds—both from other sources and our own. This intelligence helps us create protections that customers can use to block many campaigns without anyone noticing.
This particular campaign didn’t go anywhere. That’s not just luck; it’s because we’ve put in place proactive protection to catch threats early on.
The best security results are often the ones we don’t even see.
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