Cloud Infrastructure
Cloud Infrastructure, in the context of cybersecurity, refers to the essential components (hardware, network, operating systems, and applications) delivered as a service over the internet by a third-party provider. The cybersecurity challenge is focused on managing the Shared Responsibility Model, where the provider secures the infrastructure of the cloud, and the customer secures everything in the cloud (data, applications, operating systems, and access).
The risk landscape is broad, covering everything from simple misconfigurations to sophisticated supply chain attacks. The core goal of cloud cybersecurity is to ensure the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) of the data and resources residing in this distributed and dynamic environment.
Cloud Service Providers (CSPs)
This category focuses on the major public cloud platforms that offer foundational infrastructure services (Infrastructure as a Service - IaaS, and often Platform as a Service - PaaS) that organizations use to build and run applications.
Examples: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Cybersecurity Focus:
The primary focus is on Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Network Segmentation, as well as understanding the limits of the Shared Responsibility Model.
Specific Cybersecurity Risks:
Over-Privileged Access (The #1 Risk): Misconfigured IAM policies are the leading cause of cloud breaches. Granting permissions that are too broad (e.g., giving an application "administrator" rights when it only needs "read-only" access to a specific database) allows an attacker who compromises one resource to move laterally and access or exfiltrate all data.
Misconfigured Storage: Leaving data storage services (like AWS S3 buckets or Azure Blob Storage) open to the public internet, often by accident, leads to massive, highly publicized data leaks of sensitive information and backups.
Insecure APIs and Management Interfaces: Attackers target the exposed management endpoints or APIs of the CSP to gain control. Poor security of these interfaces, such as weak or compromised API keys, grants the ability to spin up, modify, or delete critical resources.
Failure to Patch Customer-Managed Components: In IaaS deployments (e.g., virtual machines), the customer is responsible for patching the guest operating system and applications. Failure to do so leaves the environment vulnerable to common, known exploits.
Lack of Network Segmentation: Placing highly sensitive resources in the same virtual network as less critical services, allowing a breach in one area to spread throughout the entire cloud environment quickly.
Edge & Serverless Deployment
This category represents modern, decentralized compute models that push processing power closer to the users or devices (Edge Computing) or abstract away the infrastructure entirely, allowing execution based on events (Serverless Computing).
Examples: AWS Lambda, Azure Functions (Serverless); Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and IoT Gateways (Edge).
Cybersecurity Focus:
The focus shifts to securing the code/function itself and the data transit across highly distributed environments, often bypassing traditional perimeter defenses.
Specific Cybersecurity Risks:
Serverless Computing (FaaS - Function as a Service):
Insecure Code/Functions: Since the operating system is managed by the CSP, the customer's attack surface is reduced to their function code. Injection flaws or insecure logic within the function code (e.g., AWS Lambda, Azure Functions) can be exploited directly.
Over-Permissive Function Roles: Similar to CSP risks, granting a serverless function excessive IAM permissions means a minor code vulnerability can be quickly leveraged to compromise other, unrelated cloud services. For example, a function triggered by an image upload might be permitted to delete an entire production database.
Data Persistence in Runtime Environment: While serverless is stateless, data artifacts or temporary files left behind from previous executions can sometimes be accessed by subsequent, unauthorized function invocations (a container reuse risk).
Denial-of-Wallet: Misconfigurations or malicious loops in the function code can lead to uncontrolled execution costs, essentially a financial denial-of-service attack.
Edge Computing:
Physical Tampering and Supply Chain: Since Edge devices are physically outside of the secure data center (e.g., in a factory, retail store, or remote location), they are vulnerable to physical theft or tampering to extract secrets or alter behavior.
Insecure Device Management: Poor authentication or unpatched firmware on Edge devices (like routers, industrial controllers, or smart cameras) allows attackers to compromise them and use them as a pivot point into the central cloud infrastructure.
Data in Transit Exposure: Data is often collected and processed at the Edge before being sent to the core cloud. Securing the communication channel (e.g., ensuring proper use of TLS/SSL for encryption) is paramount to prevent eavesdropping or Man-in-the-Middle attacks.
Vulnerable Deployment Configuration: Pushing out configuration changes or code updates across thousands of distributed Edge devices introduces significant risk if the update process itself is not securely managed and validated.
ThreatNG is uniquely suited to address the cybersecurity challenges of Cloud Infrastructure, including Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and Edge & Serverless Deployment, because it provides the essential external, unauthenticated attacker’s perspective—precisely where most cloud misconfigurations and data leaks occur. It assesses the security of the components the customer is responsible for within the Shared Responsibility Model (e.g., configurations, code, network exposure).
ThreatNG’s External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG performs purely external unauthenticated discovery using no connectors to map the cloud environment's perimeter exposure.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure Identification: This is the most crucial capability for CSP security. ThreatNG actively scans for and identifies an organization’s exposed digital assets hosted on major platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP, including both sanctioned and unsanctioned Shadow IT services. It specifically hunts for publicly exposed cloud buckets (e.g., S3, Blob Storage) that are a common source of major data leaks, directly addressing the risk of Misconfigured Storage.
Continuous Monitoring: Cloud infrastructure is highly dynamic, with resources constantly being spun up and down. ThreatNG provides constant monitoring of the external attack surface. Suppose an engineer accidentally makes a new development server or a serverless API gateway public. In that case, ThreatNG immediately detects this change in the external attack surface and updates the relevant risk scores, preventing persistent exposure.
Code Secret Exposure: This capability is vital for both CSP and Serverless security. ThreatNG discovers exposed code repositories (like GitHub) associated with the organization and searches their contents for sensitive data, such as Cloud API Keys (e.g., AWS API Key, Azure AD Secret), Access Tokens, or configuration files. The discovery of a hard-coded root key for an AWS account directly indicates a critical risk related to Insecure APIs and Management Interfaces and Over-Privileged Access.
External Assessment Capabilities
ThreatNG’s External Assessment assigns specific, risk-prioritized scores based on observed external data, directly correlating with cloud threats:
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This score is highly relevant to IaaS components managed by the customer. It factors in findings like Exposed Sensitive Ports and Exposed Private IPs on cloud-hosted virtual machines. A high score could result from an exposed RDP or SSH port on an AWS EC2 instance that hasn't been properly patched, creating a direct entry point for attackers to deploy ransomware.
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility & Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: This addresses publicly facing applications, API endpoints, or load balancers in the cloud. The assessment checks for vulnerabilities in the front-end components, which is critical for securing Edge services like CDNs and APIs that use cloud resources. A high susceptibility score could be triggered by an expired or "dangling" DNS record pointing to a cloud service that no longer exists, allowing an attacker to claim that endpoint and host a malicious page or API, demonstrating a failure in Data in Transit Exposure protection.
Data Leak Susceptibility: The score is substantiated by findings from Cloud and SaaS Exposure and DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials). Suppose credentials that could access the cloud control plane (like Azure or GCP Console credentials) are found on the Dark Web. In that case, the Data Leak Susceptibility score will be critically high, directly flagging the potential for Over-Privileged Access exploitation.
Investigation Modules and Technology Identification
ThreatNG’s Investigation Modules are key to identifying and verifying the specific technologies and misconfigurations that lead to cloud risk.
Domain and Subdomain Intelligence: This module is essential for Technology Stack identification. It identifies all cloud technologies and vendors in use by the organization's external footprint.
Examples of Identification: The platform can identify Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), which represent Edge Deployments (e.g., Cloudflare, Akamai) or specific cloud services through DNS records, IP lookups, and web headers. This allows security teams to verify if all Edge assets are secured.
Search Engine Exploitation: This module specifically searches for indicators of sensitive, customer-managed cloud files or directories that search engines have inadvertently indexed. This could reveal publicly accessible developer documentation, logs, or configuration files for Serverless Functions or virtual machines that were not adequately secured, exposing intellectual property or internal architecture.
Archived Web Pages: This feature can discover historical external login portals or test environments for cloud services that were shut down but not properly de-provisioned, leaving a lingering access point. For Serverless Deployment, this might reveal an old API endpoint that an attacker could still try to invoke.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
The Intelligence Repositories provide the external threat context necessary to prioritize remediation efforts across the cloud infrastructure.
DarCache Vulnerability (NVD, EPSS, KEV, eXploit): This data is used to prioritize patching efforts on customer-managed IaaS components. If an organization has an unpatched Linux server (identified via Technology Identification) that has an exposed port, and that vulnerability (CVE) is on the KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities) list, ThreatNG flags it with the highest priority, addressing the risk of Failure to Patch Customer-Managed Components.
DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials): This directly feeds the Data Leak Susceptibility score. It alerts the organization if Cloud Management Console Credentials or API Keys are discovered on the Dark Web, necessitating an immediate password change and rotation of keys before an attacker can use them to achieve Over-Privileged Access to the CSP environment.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external focus creates powerful synergies when combined with internal cloud security tools:
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP): CSPM tools monitor internal misconfigurations (e.g., an S3 bucket is set to be public). ThreatNG confirms the external impact (e.g., "Is that S3 bucket actually accessible and indexed by a search engine?"). The external validation from ThreatNG helps CSPM tools prioritize the few critical misconfigurations that truly expose the organization to the internet. For Serverless security, CWPP tools secure the runtime environment, while ThreatNG's Code Secret Exposure module finds secrets leaked outside the environment, providing a critical pre-exploitation alert.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Tools: ThreatNG's DarCache Rupture and Data Leak Susceptibility findings (e.g., exposed login credentials for a cloud administrator) can be automatically used to trigger multi-factor authentication (MFA) enforcement or automated credential rotation processes within the organization’s central IAM system, immediately mitigating the risk of Over-Privileged Access before it can be exploited.
WAF/CDN Solutions (Edge Security): ThreatNG's Web Application Hijack Susceptibility analysis and identification of Exposed Sensitive Ports provides intelligence that can be directly used to fine-tune the WAF (Web Application Firewall) or CDN rules. Suppose ThreatNG identifies a vulnerability in a publicly facing cloud API gateway. In that case, the intelligence can be delivered to the WAF to block specific malicious traffic patterns until the underlying Serverless function or application code can be patched.
