Abandoned Asset

In cybersecurity, an abandoned asset refers to a digital resource, system, or component that is neglected, forgotten, or left unattended within an organization's network infrastructure. These assets were typically deployed for a legitimate purpose but are no longer actively maintained, monitored, or utilized due to changes in business needs, technology upgrades, organizational restructuring, or simply due to oversight.

While they may be dormant or inactive in terms of their intended use, abandoned assets can still be operational and connected to the network, making them a significant cybersecurity risk.

Here's a detailed breakdown:

Characteristics of Abandoned Assets in Cybersecurity:

• Lack of Maintenance: They do not receive regular security updates, patches, or upgrades, leaving them vulnerable to known exploits and newly discovered flaws.

• Unmonitored Access: Access controls and monitoring may be lax, outdated, or non-existent, making it easier for unauthorized individuals to gain access.

• Outdated Technology: They often rely on older operating systems, software versions, or protocols that may have known security weaknesses or be incompatible with modern security standards.

• Unknown Inventory: Organizations may lack a complete and accurate inventory of their digital assets, making it challenging to identify and track abandoned ones.

• Still Connected: Crucially, even if no longer "used," they can still be connected to the network, making them accessible to attackers.

Examples of Abandoned Assets:

• Decommissioned Servers: Servers that were taken out of active use but still contain sensitive data or are connected to the network.

• Unused Websites and Web Applications: Old websites or web apps that are no longer supported but remain online.

• Outdated Software and Operating Systems: Applications or OS instances that are no longer receiving vendor support or security patches.

• Forgotten Cloud Instances/Storage: Cloud virtual machines, S3 buckets, or other storage accounts that were created for a project but never properly decommissioned. These can still contain sensitive data or be leveraged for malicious purposes.

• Inactive Network Devices: Routers, switches, or other network hardware that are no longer actively managed but remain connected to the network.

• Forgotten Subdomains: Subdomains that are no longer actively used or linked but may still point to vulnerable or outdated content.

• Expired Domain Names: Domains that were once tied to an organization's infrastructure but have expired and can be re-registered by malicious actors.

Cybersecurity Risks and Impact of Abandoned Assets:

• Easy Entry Points (Initial Attack Vectors): Abandoned assets often present an easy target for cyber attackers. They can be exploited as a foothold into the organization's network, even if they don't contain sensitive data directly.

• Unpatched Vulnerabilities: Due to a lack of updates, these assets are vulnerable to known security flaws that attackers can readily exploit.

• Data Breaches: Sensitive data stored on abandoned assets can be easily accessed and exfiltrated by attackers.

• Malware Infections: Abandoned assets can be infected with malware, which can then spread to other, more critical systems within the network.

• Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks: Compromised abandoned assets can be used as launchpads for DoS attacks against other systems or organizations.

• Supply Chain Attacks: Attackers can hijack abandoned assets within a software supply chain (e.g., outdated libraries, unmaintained repositories) to inject malicious code into widely used applications.

• Reputational Damage: The discovery of a breach originating from an abandoned asset can severely damage an organization's reputation and erode customer trust.

• Compliance Violations: Abandoned assets may not comply with regulatory requirements (e.g., data retention and security standards), resulting in fines and legal penalties.

• Resource Drain: While not a direct security risk, abandoned assets can also silently drain IT budgets through unnecessary licensing, hosting, and energy consumption.

Mitigating the Risk:

Effective cybersecurity asset management is crucial for identifying, tracking, and securing all digital assets throughout their lifecycle. This includes:

• Comprehensive Asset Inventory: Maintaining an up-to-date and accurate inventory of all hardware, software, and cloud assets.

• Regular Audits and Scans: Periodically scanning the network for unknown or unmanaged assets and assessing their security posture.

• Decommissioning Procedures: Implementing strict and transparent procedures for securely decommissioning assets when they are no longer needed, ensuring data erasure and proper network disconnection.

• Vulnerability Management: Regularly patching and updating all active assets.

• External Attack Surface Management (EASM): Using tools and practices to discover and monitor an organization's internet-facing assets, including those that might be abandoned.

• Digital Risk Protection (DRP): Proactively identifying and mitigating digital risks, including those associated with abandoned assets.

Abandoned assets are often "blind spots" in an organization's cybersecurity defenses, presenting a significant and usually overlooked attack surface for cybercriminals. Identifying and addressing them is a fundamental step in maintaining a secure and resilient network infrastructure.

ThreatNG, as an all-in-one external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings solution, would significantly help in addressing the challenge of abandoned assets by providing comprehensive external visibility and assessment capabilities.

External Discovery

ThreatNG excels at performing purely external, unauthenticated discovery without requiring any connectors. This is crucial for identifying abandoned assets because these assets are often forgotten or unmanaged internally. By scanning from an attacker's perspective, ThreatNG can uncover publicly exposed resources that an organization may no longer be actively monitoring, such as forgotten servers, outdated websites, or cloud instances that were never properly decommissioned.

External Assessment

ThreatNG's external assessment capabilities can identify various susceptibilities and exposures related to abandoned assets. Here's how it helps, with detailed examples:

• Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: ThreatNG analyzes web application components accessible from the outside world to identify potential entry points for attackers. For an abandoned web application, this assessment would pinpoint vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to hijack the application, even if it's no longer in use by the organization. For example, it might detect an outdated content management system (CMS) on a forgotten subdomain, revealing known vulnerabilities that could be exploited.

• Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: This assessment evaluates a website's susceptibility to subdomain takeover by analyzing subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. Abandoned subdomains often point to services that have been decommissioned but still retain DNS records. ThreatNG would identify such a subdomain and flag it if its DNS record points to a service that can be claimed by an attacker, allowing them to host malicious content or launch phishing attacks using the organization's legitimate subdomain. For instance, if an organization had a marketing campaign subdomain campaign.example.com that was decommissioned but its DNS record (e.g., a CNAME record) still points to a service that is no longer active, an attacker could register an account on that service and claim the subdomain.

• BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: Derived from domain intelligence and dark web presence, this assessment can identify susceptibility to Business Email Compromise (BEC) and phishing attacks. If an abandoned asset, such as an old email server or an unmonitored domain, is still exposing email addresses or has compromised credentials on the dark web, ThreatNG would highlight this, indicating a potential avenue for phishing attacks against the organization or its employees.

• Brand Damage Susceptibility: This assessment considers attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, and sentiment to identify factors that could lead to brand damage. An abandoned, vulnerable asset could be exploited, leading to a public breach or defacement, which ThreatNG would help uncover by detecting the underlying exposure. For example, if an old, unsecured API endpoint on an abandoned server allows unauthorized access to customer data, the brand damage susceptibility score would reflect this risk.

• Data Leak Susceptibility: ThreatNG assesses data leak susceptibility based on cloud and SaaS exposure, presence on the dark web, and domain intelligence. An abandoned cloud storage bucket (e.g., an S3 bucket) that was never properly secured or emptied, containing sensitive data, would be identified by ThreatNG as a data leak risk. It would also detect if compromised credentials related to abandoned accounts are found on the dark web.

• Cyber Risk Exposure: This assessment considers factors like certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, sensitive ports, code secret exposure, and compromised credentials on the dark web. An abandoned asset with an expired certificate, an exposed sensitive port (like an open database port), or a code repository containing hardcoded API keys would directly contribute to a higher cyber risk exposure score, indicating a critical security gap.

• ESG Exposure: ThreatNG rates an organization based on the discovery of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) violations through its external attack surface and digital risk intelligence findings. While less direct, an abandoned system could, for instance, be linked to non-compliant data handling, which would indirectly affect the ESG score. For example, if an abandoned server stores old customer data in a way that violates data privacy regulations, this could contribute to an ESG violation.

• Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure: This is derived from domain intelligence (vendor technology enumeration) and cloud and SaaS exposure. If an organization has terminated its relationship with a third-party vendor but a system related to that vendor remains exposed on their network, ThreatNG could identify this as a supply chain risk. For example, an old, forgotten integration with a third-party payment processor that is no longer active but still has exposed APIs.

• Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This assessment utilizes domain intelligence (exposed sensitive ports, private IPs, vulnerabilities), dark web presence (compromised credentials, ransomware events), and sentiment and financial analysis. An abandoned server with an exposed sensitive port and known vulnerabilities would significantly increase an organization's susceptibility to a breach or ransomware attack. ThreatNG would identify these specific weaknesses.

• Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG assesses the exposure of an organization's mobile apps by identifying them in marketplaces and analyzing their content for access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers. If an organization has an old or abandoned mobile app still available in an app store that contains hardcoded API keys or other sensitive information, ThreatNG would detect this exposure, helping to prevent unauthorized access to backend systems.

Reporting

ThreatNG provides various reports, including Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, and Informational), Security Ratings, Inventory, Ransomware Susceptibility, U.S. SEC Filings, and External GRC Assessment Mappings (PCI DSS and POPIA). These reports are invaluable for highlighting identified abandoned assets and their associated risks to different stakeholders within an organization. For instance, the "Prioritized" report would list abandoned assets with critical vulnerabilities as "High" risk, prompting immediate attention. The "Inventory" report would provide a clear list of discovered assets, including potentially abandoned ones, helping organizations reconcile their known assets with their actual external attack surface.

Continuous Monitoring

ThreatNG offers continuous monitoring of an organization's external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. This continuous oversight is vital for managing abandoned assets. Even if an asset is initially missed, ongoing monitoring ensures that any forgotten or dormant asset that suddenly becomes active or exposes a new vulnerability will be detected and flagged. This helps prevent new abandoned assets from falling through the cracks over time.

Investigation Modules

ThreatNG's investigation modules allow for detailed exploration of discovery and assessment results:

• Domain Intelligence: This module provides a comprehensive examination of an organization's digital presence.

  • DNS Intelligence helps identify abandoned domains or subdomains through domain record analysis, revealing forgotten DNS entries that may still point to defunct services.

  • Subdomain Intelligence can identify abandoned subdomains by analyzing HTTP responses, header analysis (e.g., deprecated headers), server technologies, and content identification (e.g., admin pages, development environments). For example, if a subdomain resolves to an empty HTTP/HTTPS response or a generic error page, it could indicate an abandoned asset. It also helps detect sensitive ports (such as exposed database ports) and known vulnerabilities on these subdomains, which are common in unmaintained systems.

• Sensitive Code Exposure: This module identifies public code repositories and detects digital risks, including exposed access credentials, security credentials, database exposures, and application data exposures. An abandoned code repository on GitHub, for instance, might contain hardcoded API keys or sensitive configuration files that ThreatNG would identify, directly exposing an organization's internal systems.

• Mobile Application Discovery: ThreatNG discovers an organization's mobile apps in marketplaces and identifies the presence of access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers within them. An old, unmaintained mobile app in an app store could contain hardcoded secrets that, if discovered by ThreatNG, would highlight a significant security vulnerability stemming from an effectively "abandoned" software asset.

• Search Engine Exploitation: This includes the discovery of robots.txt and security.txt files, and helps investigate an organization's susceptibility to exposing sensitive information via search engines. An abandoned directory or file on a web server that is not excluded robots.txt could expose sensitive data via search engines, which ThreatNG would identify as a risk.

• Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This module identifies sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services, cloud service impersonations, and open exposed cloud buckets. It also covers various SaaS implementations. ThreatNG would identify abandoned cloud instances (e.g., an AWS EC2 instance that is still running but forgotten) or unmanaged SaaS accounts (e.g., an old project's Slack workspace) that could pose a security risk.

• Online Sharing Exposure: ThreatNG checks for the presence of organizational entities on online code-sharing platforms, such as Pastebin and GitHub Gist. If an employee shared sensitive information on one of these platforms related to a now-abandoned project, ThreatNG would detect this exposure.

• Archived Web Pages: This module analyzes archived web pages for sensitive content, including API documentation, login pages, and various file types. An old, archived version of a website that contains sensitive information (e.g., an admin login page or API keys) for a system that is now considered abandoned could be a significant risk, and ThreatNG would bring this to light.

• Dark Web Presence: ThreatNG monitors for organizational mentions, associated ransomware events, and compromised credentials on the dark web. If credentials for an abandoned system were compromised and leaked, ThreatNG would detect this, indicating a potential access point for attackers.

• Technology Stack: This provides a comprehensive list of technologies used by the organization. This can help in identifying abandoned technologies (e.g., an old, unsupported version of a CMS or database) that are still present on exposed assets, enabling targeted remediation efforts.

Intelligence Repositories

ThreatNG's intelligence repositories, branded as DarCache, provide continuously updated data crucial for understanding and prioritizing risks associated with abandoned assets:

• Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web): Continuously updated intelligence on the dark web, including Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture) and Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware). If credentials for an abandoned system appear on the dark web, or if a ransomware group claims to have accessed an organization's network via a neglected entry point, DarCache would provide this critical information.

• Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): This repository provides a holistic view of external risks and vulnerabilities. It includes:

  • NVD (DarCache NVD): Offers detailed information on known vulnerabilities, including attack complexity, impact scores, and CVSS scores. This helps prioritize remediation for abandoned assets that harbor severe unpatched vulnerabilities.

  • EPSS (DarCache EPSS): Provides a probabilistic estimate of the likelihood of a vulnerability being exploited. This is vital for prioritizing which abandoned assets with vulnerabilities need immediate attention, focusing on those most likely to be weaponized.

  • KEV (DarCache KEV): Identifies vulnerabilities actively being exploited in the wild. If an abandoned asset has a KEV-listed vulnerability, it signifies an immediate and proven threat that requires urgent action.

  • Verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits (DarCache eXploit): Direct links to PoC exploits facilitate a deeper understanding of how a vulnerability can be exploited. This allows security teams to quickly reproduce and assess the real-world impact of vulnerabilities found on abandoned assets.

Complementary Solutions

While ThreatNG is a comprehensive solution, it can work synergistically with other security tools to provide an even more vigorous defense against abandoned assets:

• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) / Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Systems: ThreatNG's external discovery and assessment findings, particularly those identifying abandoned assets and their vulnerabilities, can be fed into a SIEM for correlation with internal logs and events. For example, if ThreatNG identifies an abandoned server with an exposed port, and the SIEM detects unusual traffic to that server, it could trigger an automated response through a SOAR playbook to isolate the server or generate an alert.

• Vulnerability Management Platforms: ThreatNG's external view complements internal vulnerability scanners. ThreatNG identifies externally exposed vulnerabilities on abandoned assets, and these findings can be integrated with an internal vulnerability management platform to prioritize patching efforts. For instance, ThreatNG might identify an unpatched, internet-facing Apache Struts vulnerability on an old, forgotten web server; an internal vulnerability scanner might then confirm the internal presence of that server and its unpatched status, allowing for coordinated remediation.

• Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) / Asset Management Systems: ThreatNG's external asset discovery can enrich an organization's existing CMDB or asset management system. This helps fill gaps in asset inventory, specifically by identifying assets that were forgotten or never officially decommissioned. For example, ThreatNG might discover an AWS EC2 instance that is running and exposed, but not listed in the CMDB. This discrepancy can then be reconciled, ensuring the asset is either properly decommissioned or brought under management.

• Incident Response Platforms: When ThreatNG identifies a critical vulnerability or a potential data leak on an abandoned asset, these findings can be directly integrated into an incident response platform. This would initiate a predefined incident response playbook, allowing security teams to quickly investigate, contain, and remediate the threat. For instance, if ThreatNG detects compromised credentials for an abandoned cloud storage account on the dark web, the incident response platform could automatically trigger a password reset for associated accounts and an audit of the storage bucket.

By combining ThreatNG's unique external perspective with the internal visibility and response capabilities of complementary solutions, organizations can establish a robust defense against the risks posed by abandoned assets.