Imagine you're sifting through alerts and notice an unusual login from an unfamiliar IPv6 address linked to a known company user. At first glance, it seems suspicious—a login from a public hosting IP outside regular geolocations without historical usage patterns.
This describes an alert that Dropzone’s AI SOC analyst investigated recently. Saving ~15 minutes that a human analyst would have spent investigating, Dropzone AI methodically peeled back each layer to reveal a familiar yet elusive culprit—Apple Private Relay. Join us in exploring how Dropzone AI approached this alert, navigating anonymized IP complexities to arrive at a decisive conclusion.
Unusual Login Alert: Benign or Malicious?
The alert initiated when spotting an uncommon IPv6 login action from the user [User: ke****.com] via a federated authentication system. To kick off the investigation, Dropzone AI focused on the IP address 2a09:bac2:****:20d, flagged as a non-US origin based on initial analysis. For each alert, Dropzone AI creates hypotheses for why the alert might be benign or malicious, then formulates investigation steps needed to validate those hypotheses. The question to answer for this alert: Was this a case of unauthorized access or legitimate user activity?
Alert Investigation Steps
In the initial assessment, Dropzone AI sought to uncover detailed contextual information about the IP address. Through IP enrichment techniques, it quickly became clear that the address was managed by Cloudflare London, LLC, a known hosting and CDN provider frequently associated with anonymization services. Digging deeper, Dropzone AI identified the crucial connection—the IP address belonged to Apple Private Relay, a privacy-focused proxy service provided by iCloud+ that anonymizes user traffic through major hosting providers' infrastructure.
The investigation then shifted gears into historical analysis. Dropzone AI reviewed Auth0 logs to contextualize this event, checking whether the user [User: ke****.com] had previously interacted with the IP address at hand. Surprisingly, no historical login attempts from this specific IPv6 were found, raising further initial suspicion. Dropzone AI then expanded the analysis, reviewing the user's broader historical patterns over the past 30 days.
Through careful evaluation, Dropzone AI established that while the user had not previously accessed resources via the exact IP in question, there was indeed usage of similar IPv6 addresses—all tied back to Apple Private Relay's anonymized IP service. Thus, the AI SOC analyst established this pattern as typical behavior for anonymized Apple device traffic, eliminating initial concerns associated with the new IP appearance.
With IP analysis thorough enough to dispel most suspicion, Dropzone AI turned its attention to user agent patterns. The user agent string, "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_4 like Mac OS X)," confirmed an iPhone device—a known compatibility match with Apple Private Relay. The presence of an iPhone user agent added a significant indicator corroborating benign activity.
Next, Dropzone AI asked: Did other accounts within the system utilize the same IP? The contextual search within Auth0 logs showed zero other logins associated with this IP address. While unique usage could be alarming in other scenarios, in this case, it simply affirmed the typical behavior of Apple's randomized assignment of proxy IPs to anonymize single-user traffic sessions.
After weighing each bit of evidence—the IP enrichment, historical context of user activity, and typical Apple Private Relay behaviors—Dropzone AI confidently categorized the alert as benign. The initially suspicious details perfectly fit the known benign behavior connected to Apple’s anonymizing proxy service, especially when coupled with the typical iPhone user agent.
Takeaways for the SOC
This alert neatly demonstrated how Dropzone AI eliminates false indicators, navigating nuances inherent in modern cybersecurity investigations. Traffic anonymization services such as Apple Private Relay can act as red herrings, drawing analysts down paths that do not end with a security incident. Instead of raising unnecessary red flags, Dropzone AI recognized patterns indicative of legitimate behavior and recorded those findings along with a conclusion for the human analyst, saving them time they would have spent investigating on their own.
Interested in seeing how Dropzone AI tackles other types of alerts? Check out Dropzone AI's demo gallery showcasing investigations spanning diverse cybersecurity incidents. Gain insight and sharpen your approach to alert handling today.
