Creative and Portfolio Sites
Creative and Portfolio sites are digital platforms designed for users to showcase their original work, collaborate on projects, and engage with professional or amateur communities centered on media creation, such as art, design, writing, and music. In the context of cybersecurity, these sites are significant sources of risk because they are frequently abused by threat actors for phishing, malware distribution, intellectual property theft, and social engineering, often leveraging the platform's focus on user-generated content and high-trust domains.
Design & Art Sites
Creators use these platforms to display visual assets, software interfaces, or physical prototypes.
Cybersecurity Context:
Phishing & Credential Theft: Malicious actors may create accounts on sites like Dribbble or Behance to impersonate legitimate clients or recruiters, linking to fake job applications or contests designed to steal sensitive data or credentials.
Malware Disguise: Files shared for download—such as design resources on Brusheezy, mockups from Figma, or template files from ThemeForest and TemplateMonster—can be disguised as legitimate assets but contain malware or exploit kits hidden within zip archives.
IP Theft: The primary risk is the theft of digital assets (e.g., high-resolution artwork, custom software themes, or photography from Dreamstime and iStock), leading to financial loss or brand damage.
Examples: A user downloads a "free Photoshop brush pack" from a resource site like CreativeMarket or 3ddd only to find that the installation script executes a keylogger alongside the intended files. A threat actor might compromise a profile on Artstation to host a link to a Browser-in-the-Browser (BITB) phishing page disguised as a licensing agreement.
Writing & Publishing Sites
These platforms facilitate the sharing of long-form text, documents, presentations, and serialized stories.
Cybersecurity Context:
Malware Hosting & C2: High-trust document sharing sites like Issuu, Scribd, and SlideShare are often used to host malicious content. Attackers upload a document that contains a link or a malicious embedded object, and because the site itself is trusted, the link often bypasses corporate email filters. These sites can also serve as covert Command-and-Control (C2) channels, where instructions for compromised internal systems are hidden in public posts on platforms like Blogger or Teletype.
Doxing and Data Leaks: Users posting sensitive information or PII inadvertently expose it on platforms like Contently (writing portfolios) or personal blogs (Diary.ru, Blogger).
Examples: A threat group uploads a "Quarterly Financial Report" PDF to Edocr or Studfile that contains a hyperlink to a credential-harvesting site. Alternatively, an author on ArchiveOfOurOwn or Wattpad could embed a tiny, hard-to-spot image that acts as a web beacon, allowing an attacker to track the IP addresses of readers who view the page.
Music & Audio Sites
These sites allow artists and users to upload, stream, and catalogue music, audio files, and sound effects.
Cybersecurity Context:
Malware in Audio Files: While less common, malicious payloads can be steganographically hidden within the metadata or data streams of audio files on sites like SoundCloud or Freesound. A more direct threat is the distribution of music software bundles or tracks accompanied by an executable file that installs malware.
Account Takeover: Credential stuffing attacks often target platforms like Bandcamp or last.fm to gain access to accounts that may use the same credentials for more sensitive services, a risk amplified by the large user bases on MixCloud and Smule.
Copyright Fraud & Infringement: Fake accounts or compromised official accounts on Discogs or Rate Your Music can be used to disseminate fraudulent merchandise links or promote scams.
A music producer's ReverbNation account is compromised and used to message fans with a malicious link claiming it's a "free download for my new album," leading to a drive-by download attack. The public-facing API of a cataloging site like MusicBrainz or YandexMusic could be abused if not adequately secured. However, the direct risk to consumers primarily arises from social engineering.
ThreatNG provides an essential outside-in security perspective to address the risks posed by Creative and Portfolio sites by focusing on external exposure that arises from their use in phishing, content hosting, and data leaks.
External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG's External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring capabilities automatically map an organization's digital footprint across the public web, directly addressing how Creative and Portfolio sites might be used against them.
Archived Web Pages: This module constantly searches for archived content across the internet, including files or directories that may have been temporarily posted on writing platforms or design portfolios. It specifically looks for sensitive artifacts like API keys, document files, user names, and emails within HTML, JSON, and Txt files. For instance, if a developer mistakenly embedded an API key to manage their Figma account in a code snippet posted to a forum or a draft on a Blogger site, ThreatNG would discover the archived version of that page and alert the security team to the leak.
Technology Stack: ThreatNG identifies and monitors all technologies an organization uses, including content management systems (CMSs) and digital content publishing tools. Detecting the use of WordPress or similar platforms helps prioritize the security assessment, as these are common targets for compromise that could lead to malware being hosted or distributed via their blogging functionality.
External Assessment for Creative Site Risks
ThreatNG's External Assessment scores quantify the risks posed by the content-rich, publicly exposed nature of Creative and Portfolio sites.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This score is highly relevant, as Creative and Portfolio sites are shared hosts for phishing campaigns. ThreatNG checks for Homograph Attacks, Domain Squatting, and External Links to Malicious Content. For example, if a threat actor creates a compelling, but fake, "licensing portal" for an organization on a free blog platform like Blogger or a seemingly legitimate design portfolio on Behance, and then uses that link in a spear-phishing email, ThreatNG's monitoring of lookalike domains and external links helps flag this activity, directly lowering the organization's phishing susceptibility score.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: ThreatNG checks for misconfigurations and data leaks across public cloud and SaaS services, which often underpin these creative platforms. A vulnerability or misconfiguration found on a hosting provider used by a design firm for their ThemeForest assets would increase this exposure score, indicating a potential supply chain risk.
Code Secret Exposure: This specifically targets credentials and sensitive files hidden in code. Suppose an engineer working on a project uses a platform like GitHub to back up or share code containing Security Credentials for an application or a secret key for a service like CreativeMarket or rapidapi.com. In that case, ThreatNG will find and flag the exposed secret.
Investigation Modules and Username Exposure
ThreatNG's Investigation Modules enable granular analysis of specific entities, with the Social Media Investigation Module particularly crucial for Creative and Portfolio sites.
Social Media Investigation Module - Username Exposure
The Username Exposure module is instrumental in identifying accounts that have been compromised or impersonated across these platforms, which are often the source of social engineering:
Passive Reconnaissance: The module performs broad checks for an organization's key personnel and brand names across thousands of external sites. By finding usernames on sites like Artstation, Dribbble, Wattpad, or SoundCloud, ThreatNG can confirm if an account is taken, active, or potentially malicious.
Example: A graphic designer at a target company has a profile on 99designs.com and Figma. ThreatNG discovered that this employee's username was leaked in a separate breach and is also registered on a high-risk forum where exploits are traded. This finding allows the security team to proactively alert the employee to change their passwords on all creative platforms, mitigating a potential risk where the employee's public profile on Behance could be compromised and used to distribute malware to clients.
Intelligence Repositories and Reporting
ThreatNG uses its internal and external Intelligence Repositories to add context and urgency to findings from Creative and Portfolio sites:
DarCache Dark Web and DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials): If a threat group is discussing or selling a bulk list of credentials stolen from a music platform like last.fm or a writing site like Wattpad, ThreatNG would correlate this activity with organizational mentions. If an employee's leaked credentials are found, the DarCache Rupture flags them and demands immediate password resets.
DarCache Vulnerability (KEV, EPSS, PoC Exploits): This repository alerts the organization to actively exploited vulnerabilities. If a zero-day is discovered in the WordPress platform (a content management system) or a common theme from ThemeForest, ThreatNG will instantly flag the associated assets as exposed to a Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV), raising their patching priority.
ThreatNG's Reporting then translates these raw findings—such as a malicious link found on a Studfile document or a leaked key on a Contently profile—into clear, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low) and Technical reports. This is enhanced with MITRE ATT&CK Mapping, which correlates the observation (e.g., file hosting on Issuu) with specific adversary tactics such as "Initial Access" or "Defense Evasion."
ThreatNG with Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external threat intelligence can be used to enhance the effectiveness of a security ecosystem by working with complementary solutions:
Integration with a Web Application Firewall (WAF) Complementary Solution: ThreatNG's BEC & Phishing Susceptibility module identifies a malicious link hosted on a file-sharing site (SlideShare or ArchiveOfOurOwn) being used in a targeted spear-phishing campaign. This finding, including the malicious URL, is automatically pushed to a WAF complementary solution. The WAF can then instantly update its rules to block all traffic originating from that specific malicious link, regardless of where the employee encounters it, providing immediate defense against the external threat.
Integration with an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Complementary Solution: ThreatNG's DarCache Vulnerability alerts to a newly exploited Proof-of-Concept (PoC) targeting the version of Figma or WordPress used internally. This intelligence, including the exploit signature, is immediately relayed to an EDR complementary solution deployed on all endpoints. The EDR solution can then use this signature to proactively hunt for any attempts to execute the specific exploit code, even before a formal patch is released, turning an external finding into an internal preventative action.
