Administration Email Accounts

In the context of cybersecurity, administration email accounts are non-human email addresses used to manage and maintain an organization's IT infrastructure, systems, and security. Unlike a personal email account tied to a specific individual, an administration email account is often generic (e.g., admin@company.com, security@company.com) and used by a group of administrators or an automated system to receive alerts, handle system access, and manage configurations. These accounts are essential for the smooth operation of networks, servers, and security tools.

From a cybersecurity perspective, these accounts are considered high-value targets because they typically have elevated privileges. An attacker who compromises an administration email account could gain broad control over critical systems, allowing them to escalate privileges, access sensitive data, deploy malware, or disrupt operations. These accounts often present a significant security blind spot, as they may not be subject to the same security scrutiny as regular user accounts, such as mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) or regular password changes. The lack of individual accountability also complicates incident response, making it difficult to determine who performed a specific action and when.

ThreatNG can significantly enhance the security of administration email accounts by providing a crucial external perspective on their exposure and vulnerabilities. These accounts are high-value targets, and ThreatNG's capabilities help to discover, assess, monitor, and report on risks that are often missed by internal security tools.

External Discovery and Assessment

ThreatNG's platform performs unauthenticated, purely external discovery to find publicly exposed email addresses without needing any internal access. It groups these under the "NHI Email Exposure" category, with specific labels like Admin and Security. The external assessments then evaluate the security posture of these accounts from the perspective of an attacker.

• Data Leak Susceptibility: This assessment is based on ThreatNG's Dark Web Presence and Compromised Credentials findings. It checks if an administration email account has been exposed in a data leak. For example, ThreatNG might discover security@example.com on a publicly exposed subdomain. It would then check its compromised credential database and find that the email and its password were part of a recent data breach, leading to a high data leak susceptibility score.

• BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This score is derived from Domain Intelligence, which provides Email Intelligence capabilities, including email security presence and format prediction. For example, ThreatNG could discover a publicly listed admin@example.com and assess its DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records. If these records are weak or absent, it will flag the account as highly susceptible to phishing and spoofing.

• Cyber Risk Exposure: This assessment considers factors such as sensitive ports, vulnerabilities, and compromised credentials identified on the dark web. If an administration email is linked to a system with a known vulnerability, it contributes to this score.

Continuous Monitoring and Reporting

ThreatNG offers continuous monitoring of an organization's external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. This is crucial for administration accounts, as it ensures that if an email is newly exposed on the dark web or in a code repository, it is flagged in real-time.

The platform provides a variety of reports, including Executive, Technical, and Prioritized. These reports detail the identified risks, their severity (High, Medium, Low, or Informational), and offer actionable recommendations.

• Example: A prioritized report would classify an exposed admin@example.com email as a "High" priority risk, providing details on where it was found and offering a recommendation to change the password or remove the account from the public source.

Investigation Modules and Intelligence Repositories

ThreatNG's investigation modules offer detailed context about the discovered emails. The Sensitive Code Exposure module searches public code repositories for emails like admin or security that might be embedded in configuration files along with sensitive data. This is a critical method for identifying hard-coded credentials that can be exploited. The Dark Web Presence module is essential for tracking organizational mentions and compromised credentials, providing crucial insights into whether an administration email has been compromised and is being traded on the dark web.

ThreatNG's intelligence repositories, branded as DarCache, provide a continuously updated source of threat data.

• DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials) allows ThreatNG to cross-reference any discovered administration email to see if it has been part of a previous data breach.

• DarCache Vulnerability provides intelligence on vulnerabilities, including links to verified Proof-of-Concept exploits. This can demonstrate how a system managed by an administrative email account could be exploited.

Complementary Solutions

ThreatNG's external focus can work in conjunction with complementary solutions to provide a more comprehensive security strategy.

• With an Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution: When ThreatNG identifies an admin email that has been compromised on the dark web, it can trigger an automated action in a complementary IAM solution. This action could immediately disable the account or force a password reset, preventing an attacker from using the exposed credentials for lateral movement.

• With a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system: A high-risk alert from ThreatNG about an exposed admin email could be ingested by a SIEM. The SIEM could then correlate this external finding with internal logs to look for any suspicious login attempts or unauthorized activities from that specific account.

• With a Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platform: A SOAR platform can be configured to take a high-priority alert from ThreatNG and automatically initiate a playbook. This could involve creating an incident ticket, notifying the IT team, and automatically removing the exposed email from the public source where it was found.