With a background in tracking sophisticated threat actors and analyzing network infrastructure vulnerabilities, Dominic Jainy has become a leading voice in cybersecurity. We sat down with him to discuss the recent, large-scale campaign targeting Palo Alto Networks’ GlobalProtect portals, a situation that has put thousands of organizations on high alert. Our conversation explores the attackers’ operational sophistication, the anatomy of their multi-stage intrusions, the strategic objectives behind targeting enterprise VPNs, and the critical shift from legacy security models to a zero-trust architecture.
We’re seeing reports of this GlobalProtect campaign originating from over 7,000 IPs. Beyond the scale, what does this distributed approach suggest about the attackers’ infrastructure and sophistication? Please walk us through the operational security benefits they gain from using residential proxies and compromised VPS instances.
What we’re seeing with the 7,000+ IPs is a clear indicator of a well-resourced and patient adversary. This isn’t some smash-and-grab operation; it’s an industrialized attack campaign. Using such a vast and varied infrastructure, from residential proxies to compromised servers across continents, provides them with incredible resilience and anonymity. It turns a single fire hose of malicious traffic into a thousand scattered sprinklers, making it nearly impossible for defenders to simply block a list of IPs. This distribution means their true origin is completely obscured, and their scanning activity can be easily mistaken for benign internet noise, allowing them to probe networks for weaknesses over long periods without raising alarms.
The report mentions attackers chaining exploits like CVE-2024-3400 with misconfigurations. Can you describe the step-by-step process an attacker might follow, from their initial anomalous UDP traffic on port 4501 to successfully exfiltrating session tokens for lateral movement within a network?
It’s a classic, multi-stage playbook that demonstrates a methodical approach. It begins with broad, noisy reconnaissance—those anomalous UDP traffic spikes to port 4501 are the attackers knocking on tens of thousands of doors at once to see who’s home. Once they get a response, they move to the next stage, sending HTTP requests to specific endpoints like /global-protect/login.urd to confirm it’s a GlobalProtect portal. This is where they start looking for the chink in the armor. If they find an unpatched system, they can deploy an exploit for a critical vulnerability like CVE-2024-3400. If the system is patched, they pivot to hunting for misconfigurations—exposed admin portals or default credentials they can brute-force. The final prize is the session token. Once they exfiltrate that, they have effectively stolen a legitimate user’s identity and can walk right into the corporate network to begin moving laterally.
While attribution isn’t confirmed, groups like UNC4841 are noted for similar tactics. Based on your experience, what are the primary strategic goals when state-affiliated actors target enterprise VPNs, and what kind of high-value data or access are they typically seeking once inside?
When you see tactics this persistent and sophisticated, especially those linked to groups like UNC4841, the objective is rarely immediate financial gain. State-affiliated actors are playing a much longer game. Enterprise VPNs are the keys to the kingdom; they are the primary gateway into a target’s most sensitive environments. Their goal is establishing a long-term, persistent foothold for intelligence gathering. They’re after the crown jewels: intellectual property, strategic business plans, government communications, or access to critical infrastructure. Getting inside and exfiltrating session tokens is just the first step. The real goal is to remain undetected for months, or even years, quietly siphoning data and mapping out the network for future operations.
Palo Alto and CISA are urging immediate action like patching and MFA. For a security team on the ground, how would you prioritize these fixes against more complex controls like zero-trust segmentation? Please share some metrics they should monitor to confirm their mitigations are effective.
For a team in the trenches, it’s about triage. You have to stop the bleeding first. Patching known critical vulnerabilities and enforcing multi-factor authentication are non-negotiable, immediate actions. You can’t start building a new wall while the front gate is wide open. CISA’s directive for agencies to patch within 72 hours underscores this urgency. These are the tactical fixes that buy you time. Zero-trust segmentation is the strategic solution, the architectural redesign that prevents this from happening again, but it takes time and planning. To verify their immediate actions are working, teams must watch their logs like a hawk. They should see a dramatic drop in anomalous UDP traffic to port 4501 and a significant increase in blocked login attempts. Most importantly, they need to be actively hunting for any signs of beaconing to command-and-control servers, which would indicate a breach has already occurred.
What is your forecast for the future of remote access security, given these industrialized attack campaigns?
My forecast is that this incident will be seen as a major inflection point, accelerating the death of the traditional, internet-facing VPN portal. The “castle-and-moat” security model, where you build a strong perimeter but trust everyone inside, is fundamentally broken. This campaign highlights its fragility perfectly. Attackers know that if they can find one crack in that perimeter, they gain broad access. The future is zero-trust. It’s a paradigm shift where trust is never assumed and access is continuously verified for every single user, device, and application. We’re going to see a rapid move toward solutions that eliminate the public attack surface entirely, making portals invisible to the internet. The industrialized nature of these attacks means we can no longer afford to have a publicly accessible front door, no matter how many locks we put on it.