Attacker-Centric Discovery
Attacker-centric discovery is a proactive cybersecurity strategy that focuses on understanding and simulating the reconnaissance and information-gathering techniques an attacker would likely employ to identify vulnerabilities and potential targets within an organization's digital environment. Instead of solely focusing on internal assets and their known weaknesses, this approach adopts the perspective of a malicious actor.
Here's a breakdown of the concept in detail:
Core Principle: To think and act like an attacker to uncover security weaknesses from their vantage point.
Key Characteristics:
External Perspective: It emphasizes viewing the organization's attack surface as an outsider would. This includes considering publicly accessible information, exposed services, and any digital footprint visible beyond the internal network.
Simulation of Attacker Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs): It involves actively mimicking an attacker's steps during the initial stages of an attack. This can include:
Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Gathering: Collecting publicly available information about the organization, its employees, technologies used, and potential entry points. This might involve searching social media, company websites, public records, and domain registration information.
Network Scanning and Enumeration: Identifying active hosts, open ports, and services running on publicly facing infrastructure. Tools like Nmap are commonly used for this purpose.
Web Application Reconnaissance: Analyzing website structure, identifying technologies used, looking for publicly accessible files or directories, and probing for common web vulnerabilities.
Email Harvesting: Attempting to identify valid email addresses within the organization, which can be used for phishing attacks.
DNS Enumeration: Gathering information about the organization's DNS infrastructure, which can reveal subdomains and other potential targets.
Focus on Attack Paths: It aims to identify potential chains of exploitation that an attacker could follow to gain access to sensitive data or critical systems. This involves understanding how seemingly minor vulnerabilities can be chained together to create a significant security risk.
Proactive Identification of Blind Spots: By adopting an attacker's mindset, organizations can uncover security weaknesses they might not be aware of through traditional internal vulnerability assessments. This can include misconfigurations, exposed sensitive information, or overlooked attack vectors.
Continuous Process: Attacker-Centric Discovery isn't a one-time activity. The external attack surface constantly evolves, so this process should be performed regularly to understand potential threats accurately.
Benefits of Attacker-Centric Discovery:
Improved Threat Intelligence: Provides valuable insights into how an attacker might target the organization, allowing for better prioritization of security efforts.
Early Identification of Vulnerabilities: Helps discover weaknesses before malicious actors can exploit them.
Enhanced Security Posture: Leads to a more robust security environment by addressing vulnerabilities from an attacker's perspective.
More Realistic Risk Assessment: Provides a clearer understanding of the organization's actual risks.
Better Allocation of Security Resources: Enables security teams to focus on the most likely attack vectors.
Validation of Existing Security Controls: Helps assess the effectiveness of current security measures against real-world attack techniques.
How it Differs from Traditional Security Assessments:
Traditional security assessments often focus on internal systems, known vulnerabilities, and compliance requirements. While crucial, they may not always consider the external attack surface and the specific tactics an attacker would employ. Attacker-Centric Discovery complements these traditional approaches by providing an outside-in perspective.
Attacker-Centric Discovery is about proactively understanding your organization's security posture through the eyes of your adversary. By simulating their reconnaissance efforts, you can gain valuable insights into potential attack vectors and strengthen your defenses accordingly.
Here’s how ThreatNG addresses Attacker-Centric Discovery:
ThreatNG excels in external discovery by performing "purely external unauthenticated discovery using no connectors".
This capability is crucial for Attacker-Centric Discovery because it mirrors how an attacker starts their reconnaissance: from the outside, without any prior access.
For example, ThreatNG can discover subdomains, exposed ports, and web applications that an organization might not be fully aware of, revealing potential entry points for attackers.
In synergy with complementary solutions like network mappers, ThreatNG's broad discovery could feed into those tools for deeper scanning and analysis. ThreatNG identifies the targets; the network mapper performs the detailed probing.
ThreatNG provides a wide array of external assessment capabilities, directly aligning with Attacker-Centric Discovery by evaluating vulnerabilities and risks from an attacker's perspective:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: ThreatNG analyzes externally accessible parts of web applications to pinpoint potential hijack entry points. An attacker would look for these weaknesses to take control of the application.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: It assesses websites' susceptibility to subdomain takeovers by analyzing subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. This is a common attacker tactic for gaining control of a domain.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: ThreatNG predicts susceptibility using various intelligence sources, including Domain Intelligence and Dark Web Presence. Attackers often use phishing as an initial attack vector.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: It assesses factors like ESG violations and negative news, which attackers can exploit for reputational damage.
Data Leak Susceptibility: ThreatNG identifies potential data leaks by analyzing Cloud and SaaS Exposure and Dark Web Presence. Attackers seek out these leaks to steal sensitive information.
Cyber Risk Exposure: It considers domain intelligence parameters like certificates and vulnerabilities to determine cyber risk. This helps prioritize the most critical weaknesses from an attacker's viewpoint.
Code Secret Exposure: ThreatNG discovers code repositories and their exposure levels, including sensitive data. Attackers often target exposed code repositories to find credentials or vulnerabilities.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: It evaluates cloud services and SaaS solutions, identifying potential misconfigurations or vulnerabilities.
Supply Chain & Third-Party Exposure: ThreatNG analyzes vendor technologies and cloud/SaaS exposure to assess supply chain risks. Attackers frequently target weaker links in the supply chain.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: It assesses the likelihood of breaches and ransomware attacks based on external attack surface and dark web presence.
Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates an organization’s mobile app exposure in marketplaces, looking for credentials and identifiers.
Positive Security Indicators: ThreatNG uniquely identifies security strengths, validating security controls from an external attacker's perspective. This provides a balanced view of the security posture.
For example, ThreatNG's ability to discover exposed credentials in code repositories directly emulates an attacker's search for initial access points.
Complementary solutions like vulnerability scanners could use ThreatNG's findings to perform deeper, authenticated scans of identified systems. ThreatNG pinpoints the exposed asset; the vulnerability scanner identifies specific flaws.
3. Reporting
ThreatNG provides various reports, including executive, technical, and prioritized reports.
These reports can present findings that highlight the attacker's potential path and the impact of vulnerabilities, aiding in understanding the risks from an attacker-centric view.
The knowledge base embedded in the reports provides risk levels, reasoning, recommendations, and reference links. This context is invaluable for security teams to understand the "why" behind vulnerabilities and prioritize remediation efforts, mirroring how an attacker would prioritize targets.
Complementary solutions like SIEMs could ingest ThreatNG's reports to correlate external vulnerabilities with internal events, providing a more complete threat picture. ThreatNG identifies the external threat; the SIEM correlates it with internal activity.
ThreatNG's continuous monitoring of the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings aligns with the dynamic nature of Attacker-Centric Discovery.
Attackers constantly scan for new opportunities; continuous monitoring helps organizations keep pace.
For instance, ThreatNG can alert security teams to newly exposed subdomains or changes in security headers, prompting immediate investigation.
Complementary solutions like intrusion detection systems (IDS) can benefit from ThreatNG's continuous monitoring by focusing on the externally exposed services and potential entry points identified by ThreatNG. ThreatNG identifies the high-risk areas; the IDS provides real-time tracking.
ThreatNG's investigation modules provide in-depth capabilities to analyze discovered assets, crucial for understanding potential attack vectors:
Domain Intelligence: Provides detailed information about domains, DNS records, email intelligence, and WHOIS information. This helps in understanding an attacker's initial reconnaissance.
Subdomain Intelligence: Analyzes subdomains for various attributes, including takeover susceptibility, content identification, and exposed ports. This helps identify potential entry points and vulnerable services.
IP Intelligence: Provides information about IPs, ASNs, and country locations. This aids in tracing potential attackers and understanding the network footprint.
Certificate Intelligence: This analyzes TLS certificates for status and associated organizations. It can reveal misconfigurations or potential phishing risks.
Social Media: Monitors social media posts for potential brand damage or information leakage.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This involves discovering exposed code repositories and sensitive information within them. It is critical for identifying potential credential leaks and vulnerabilities.
Mobile Application Discovery: Discovers mobile apps and analyzes them for sensitive information.
Search Engine Exploitation: Helps investigate an organization’s susceptibility to information exposure via search engines.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: Identifies sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services and potential misconfigurations.
Online Sharing Exposure: Monitors code-sharing platforms for organizational entity presence.
Sentiment and Financials: Analyzes lawsuits, layoff chatter, SEC filings, and ESG violations.
Archived Web Pages: Retrieves archived web pages for potential sensitive information.
Dark Web Presence: Monitors for mentions of the organization, ransomware events, and compromised credentials.
Technology Stack: Identifies the technologies used by the organization.
For example, the Sensitive Code Exposure module directly emulates an attacker's tactic of searching code repositories for exposed credentials.
Complementary solutions like penetration testing tools can use the information from ThreatNG's investigation modules to focus their efforts on the most promising attack vectors. ThreatNG provides reconnaissance and penetration testing, including exploitation.
6. Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
ThreatNG's intelligence repositories (DarCache) provide continuously updated information on various aspects of threat intelligence.
These repositories provide valuable context for understanding attacker motivations and capabilities.
For example, DarCache includes information on compromised credentials, ransomware groups, vulnerabilities, and dark web activity.
Complementary solutions like threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) can integrate with DarCache to enrich their threat feeds and provide a more comprehensive view of the threat landscape. ThreatNG provides external attack surface context; the TIP provides broader threat intelligence.
ThreatNG offers a robust platform for Attacker-Centric Discovery with its external discovery, assessment, reporting, continuous monitoring, and investigation modules. Its capabilities align with the principles of understanding and simulating attacker behavior to identify and mitigate security risks proactively. The potential synergies with complementary solutions can further enhance its effectiveness in providing a comprehensive security posture.
