Adversary View Validation
"Adversary View Validation" in cybersecurity refers to the critical process of testing and confirming the exploitability and security risks of an organization's digital assets from the perspective of a real-world attacker.
It is a core component of modern security programs, particularly in Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), and moves beyond simply identifying vulnerabilities to determining the actual risk they pose.
Key Principles and Components
Outside-In Perspective: The validation is conducted externally and unauthenticated, replicating the reconnaissance and initial access steps an attacker would take. This contrasts with traditional internal scanning, which often assumes a degree of trust or existing access.
Exploitability Confirmation: The process is not satisfied with a vulnerability's existence; it must verify whether the exposure can be leveraged to mount a successful attack. This often involves techniques like:
Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS): Safely running automated attack scenarios against live systems to test security controls.
Penetration Testing (Ethical Hacking): Manual or automated attempts to exploit misconfigurations or vulnerabilities.
Risk Prioritization: Validation provides the evidence needed to prioritize exposures accurately. An exposure that an attacker can successfully validate and exploit is assigned a significantly higher risk score than one that is technically present but unexploitable from the outside.
Security Control Effectiveness Measurement: By simulating attacks, the process provides a definitive answer as to whether existing security controls (e.g., firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, Web Application Firewalls) would successfully detect, block, or prevent the attack chain.
Contextual Mapping: Findings are often mapped to industry-standard frameworks, such as the MITRE ATT&CK matrix, to provide context on the adversary's Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) used or that could be used. This helps security teams understand not just the "what" (the vulnerability), but the "how" (the attack path).
In summary, Adversary View Validation closes the gap between theoretical vulnerabilities and practical, business-relevant risk, ensuring security teams focus their limited resources on exposures that are truly exploitable and critical.
Adversary View Validation is the process of confirming the exploitability and actual risk of a security exposure from the perspective of an external attacker. ThreatNG is purpose-built to execute this validation by continuously mapping and testing the external attack surface using unauthenticated methods.
Here is a detailed explanation of how ThreatNG helps with Adversary View Validation, highlighting its specific modules and capabilities:
1. External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring (The Adversary's Initial Reconnaissance)
ThreatNG initiates Adversary View Validation using its External Discovery capabilities, which perform a purely external, unauthenticated reconnaissance with no internal connectors. This mirrors the initial step an attacker takes to build a target list. Continuous Monitoring ensures the discovered attack surface inventory is constantly validated.
Example of ThreatNG Helping: An organization implements new cloud services, resulting in a forgotten S3 bucket that is unintentionally left public. ThreatNG automatically discovers this asset, effectively validating the attacker's initial reconnaissance phase and immediately bringing this external exposure into the validation scope.
2. External Assessment (Validating Exploit Paths and Risk)
ThreatNG’s External Assessment performs the actual validation by scoring exposures based on attacker likelihood, directly supporting the core goal of Adversary View Validation.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This assessment confirms that misconfigured, exposed sensitive ports identified by Domain Intelligence are accessible from the outside.
Example: ThreatNG finds an external-facing server with an open RDP port (a sensitive port) and confirms that Compromised Credentials associated with the company are circulating on the Dark Web. By combining these findings, ThreatNG validates a complete attack chain: an attacker has the necessary credentials and a path to use them, confirming the exploitability and elevating the risk score.
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This assesses the susceptibility of assets to malicious exploitation, drawing on External Attack Surface and Digital Risk Intelligence.
Example: ThreatNG validates the existence of a retired subdomain where the DNS record points to an expired external service (validated Domain Intelligence). This confirms a Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility, validating an attacker's potential ability to seize control of that endpoint for phishing or distribution.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This assessment validates the organization's attractiveness as a target based on exposed assets and observed threat actor activity.
Example: ThreatNG validates the exposure of a highly prioritized vulnerability on a public-facing asset and correlates this with findings from DarCache Ransomware indicating that a specific ransomware gang is actively targeting that exact vulnerability. This correlation validates the exposure as a critical, imminent threat.
3. Investigation Modules (Deep Validation and Evidence Gathering)
The Reconnaissance Hub provides the detailed, on-demand tools security teams need to actively validate and gather evidence of an exposure, completing the validation step.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module directly validates the presence of leaked secrets, which attackers commonly use for initial access.
Example: An analyst uses the Code Repository Exposure module to confirm that a public code repository associated with the company contains a plaintext Stripe API Key and a database connection string. This finding is the ultimate form of validation—providing the literal key to an attacker—and requires immediate key revocation.
Domain Intelligence (Subdomain Intelligence): This module helps validate exposed administrative or development interfaces.
Example: Subdomain Intelligence is used to confirm that an exposed Development Environment subdomain, running outdated software, has an accessible Admin Page that is not protected by strong authentication. This validates a transparent, low-effort attack vector.
External Adversary View/MITRE ATT&CK Mapping: This capability assesses risk by mapping exposure to attacker techniques.
Example: After discovering an exposed API and a corresponding entry for Compromised Credentials, ThreatNG automatically maps this risk to the MITRE ATT&CK technique "Valid Accounts" (T1078), validating that the exposure directly facilitates a known adversary TTP.
4. Intelligence Repositories (Prioritizing Validated Risk)
The Intelligence Repositories (DarCache) provide the external threat context to turn validated exposures into prioritized actions.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): This fuses intelligence streams, including NVD, EPSS, and KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities), to score and prioritize validated findings.
Example of ThreatNG Helping: An exposure is validated via an External Assessment. ThreatNG uses DarCache to confirm that the associated CVE is on the KEV list (actively exploited) and has a high EPSS score. This intelligence ensures that the security team prioritizes this validated, exploitable exposure over other non-exploited vulnerabilities.
5. Reporting and Mobilization
The Reporting capability facilitates the transition from validation to mobilization. Reports provide the necessary evidence for action.
Example of ThreatNG Helping: The security team uses the External GRC Assessment Mappings report to present findings where a validated misconfiguration violates a regulatory requirement (e.g., HIPAA). This external, validated regulatory risk drives immediate mobilization of remediation efforts.
Cooperation with Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's role is to provide high-fidelity Adversary View Validation data, which internal solutions use to execute remediation and defense steps.
ThreatNG and a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Solution:
Cooperation: ThreatNG provides external validation of a threat actor's potential entry point.
Example: ThreatNG validates the existence of a large number of Compromised Credentials on the Dark Web. This specific list of credentials is sent to the SIEM, allowing it to treat them as high-priority Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and immediately alert on any internal login attempt using those credentials, verifying whether the external validation has become an internal breach attempt.
ThreatNG and a Vulnerability and Patch Management (VPM) Tool:
Cooperation: ThreatNG provides a validated, risk-based prioritization of only the most exploitable external vulnerabilities.
Example: ThreatNG performs External Assessment and Overwatch analysis to validate that a specific, exposed server is vulnerable to an actively exploited CVE (confirmed by DarCache KEV). The VPM tool can use this validated, highest-priority list to override its scheduled patching cycles and immediately push a patch to that one specific external asset, ensuring the most dangerous validated exposure is addressed first.
