DevOps
DevOps (Development and Operations) is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. In the context of cybersecurity, the integration of security practices throughout the entire DevOps pipeline is known as DevSecOps—making security a shared, automated responsibility.
The cybersecurity focus in DevOps is on shifting security left (earlier in the cycle) to embed checks and guardrails into automated processes, rather than treating security as a bottleneck at the end.
CI/CD & Source Control
This category involves the automated processes and tools used to manage, build, test, and deploy code, along with the repositories where the source code lives.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): The pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) that automatically trigger builds and deployment when code changes are committed.
Source Control (Code Repositories): Systems (e.g., Git, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket) that track and manage changes to code, including application source code, infrastructure as code (IaC), and configuration files.
Cybersecurity Focus:
Protecting the integrity and confidentiality of the code and the pipeline itself, ensuring that only approved, secure code makes it to production.
Specific Cybersecurity Risks:
Code Secret Exposure: Hardcoding sensitive credentials (API keys, database passwords, cloud tokens) directly into the source code, which can then be accidentally exposed in public repositories or logs.
Pipeline Hijacking: Exploiting vulnerabilities in the CI/CD tools or build agents to inject malicious code, tamper with the build process, or steal credentials that the pipeline uses for deployment.
Insecure Dependencies: Including third-party or open-source libraries with known vulnerabilities (CVEs) in the application build, which introduces flaws directly into the final product.
Lack of Branch Protection: Allowing critical code branches to be merged without requiring mandatory security reviews or automated code scans.
Monitoring & Observability
This category includes the tools and practices used to collect, analyze, and visualize data about the performance, health, and activity of applications and infrastructure in real-time.
Tools: Logging, metrics, and tracing platforms (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk).
Cybersecurity Focus:
Detecting security incidents, anomalies, and active threats in production environments quickly, facilitates a fast and effective response.
Specific Cybersecurity Risks:
Insufficient Logging: Not collecting critical security events (e.g., failed logins, unauthorized access attempts, system errors) from applications, making post-incident investigation difficult or impossible.
Alert Fatigue/Noise: Generating too many low-value alerts, which causes security teams to miss critical, high-fidelity signals that indicate a real compromise.
Data Tampering: Logs and audit trails are being stored insecurely, allowing an attacker who gains access to the system to modify or delete evidence of their activity.
Testing & Quality Assurance (QA)
This includes the methodologies and tools applied to assess the functionality, performance, and security of the application before deployment.
Security Testing: Integrating security testing tools directly into the development and CI/CD process.
Cybersecurity Focus:
Automating security checks to find and fix vulnerabilities early and affordably, before they reach the production environment.
Specific Cybersecurity Risks:
Over-reliance on Manual Testing: Security testing (like penetration tests) is being performed too infrequently or only at the end of the development cycle, leading to high costs and delays when critical bugs are found.
Ignoring SAST/DAST Results: Failing to configure or integrate security testing tools properly:
SAST (Static Application Security Testing): Scanning source code for vulnerabilities without executing the code.
DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing): Testing the running application from the outside (like an attacker would) to find runtime flaws.
Untested Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Not validating security best practices (e.g., secure network rules, least-privilege configuration) within IaC templates (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation), leading to insecure cloud deployments.
Configuration & Feature Management
This category manages how applications are configured, how infrastructure is provisioned, and how new features are released to users.
Tools: Configuration Management (e.g., Ansible, Chef), Secrets Management (e.g., HashiCorp Vault), Feature Flags.
Cybersecurity Focus:
Ensuring secure, consistent, and traceable management of infrastructure and application settings, especially sensitive credentials and access keys.
Specific Cybersecurity Risks:
Secrets Sprawl: Storing passwords and keys in multiple insecure locations (e.g., environment variables, plaintext files), bypassing dedicated secrets management tools.
Inconsistent Configuration: Manually applying security configurations to production infrastructure, leading to drift, misconfigurations, and non-compliance.
Weak Access Control on Configuration Tools: If the configuration management tool is compromised, an attacker gains immediate, privileged access to deploy malicious changes across the entire infrastructure.
ThreatNG's external focus is critical for securing the entire DevOps lifecycle (DevSecOps) by addressing the risks that originate outside the secure pipeline but can compromise it. It provides the necessary visibility into the public exposure of sensitive artifacts, such as code secrets, development environments, and critical infrastructure, that bypass internal controls in the CI/CD, Monitoring, Testing, and Configuration phases.
ThreatNG’s External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG performs purely external unauthenticated discovery to map and monitor the organization's outward-facing assets that underpin the DevOps environment.
Continuous Monitoring: Since DevOps environments are constantly changing (new servers, new API endpoints, new cloud services), ThreatNG provides continuous monitoring. Suppose a developer spins up a temporary test environment or a public cloud storage bucket (for Monitoring & Observability logs). In that case, ThreatNG detects it immediately, preventing temporary assets from becoming permanent security liabilities.
Code Secret Exposure Discovery: This is a direct attack on the CI/CD & Source Control category. ThreatNG actively discovers and investigates exposed code repositories (e.g., public GitHub/GitLab Code) associated with the organization. This module hunts explicitly for hard-coded credentials, such as API keys, database credentials, cloud service tokens, and configuration files that can be used to deploy applications or access production data.
External Assessment Capabilities
ThreatNG’s External Assessment assigns risk scores that quantify the likelihood of an attacker compromising the DevOps environment through external exposures.
Code Secret Exposure Score: A high score here directly indicates risk to CI/CD & Source Control.
Example: ThreatNG identifies a public repository containing a live, non-expired Stripe API Key intended for a development environment. An attacker could use this key to make fraudulent transactions or steal customer data, completely bypassing the secure configuration of the production application.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This score addresses weaknesses in Configuration & Feature Management (Infrastructure as Code) and Testing & Quality Assurance environments. It considers exposed sensitive ports and known vulnerabilities.
Example: ThreatNG detects an exposed SSH port on a cloud-hosted build server used by the CI/CD pipeline. If the server's operating system has an unpatched, high-severity vulnerability, the high score flags an immediate risk of compromise that could halt or infect the entire deployment pipeline.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This applies directly to logs and metrics managed in Monitoring & Observability and sensitive code in CI/CD & Source Control. The score rises if ThreatNG finds compromised credentials or exposed cloud storage.
Example: The assessment identifies a publicly accessible cloud storage bucket (used to store archived logs or test data) that contains PII or production database backups, indicating a misconfiguration in the deployment process.
Investigation Modules and Technology Identification
ThreatNG’s Investigation Modules provide the granular detail needed to track down the specific source of exposure within the DevOps toolchain.
Technology Identification (Domain and Subdomain Intelligence): This identifies the external presence of specific DevOps-related technologies.
Example: For CI/CD & Source Control, it can identify the presence of open-source CI tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab Runners) or specific Monitoring & Observability software (e.g., Prometheus) through exposed administrative interfaces or specific web headers. This allows the security team to correlate the asset with known vulnerabilities.
Example: The intelligence can identify specific Secrets Management or Configuration Management portals, and subsequently check the security of their login pages and certificates.
Archived Web Pages: This feature is helpful for Testing & Quality Assurance and Configuration Management.
Example: ThreatNG discovers an archived login page for a legacy or forgotten Staging/QA environment that may still be running with outdated software and weak credentials. This vulnerability, which was removed from the current CI/CD pipeline, represents a backdoor into the infrastructure.
Search Engine Exploitation: This is a key check for Monitoring & Observability and Configuration Management.
Example: The module detects that a search engine has indexed a folder containing configuration files or internal monitoring dashboard URLs that were not adequately protected by a robots.txt or other access controls, exposing internal architecture details to attackers.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
The Intelligence Repositories provide the external threat context necessary to prioritize and remediate risks found in the DevOps environment.
DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials): This directly addresses the weakest link in CI/CD & Source Control—the human developer. It alerts the organization if Developer Console Credentials or Source Control Access Tokens are found on the Dark Web, necessitating an immediate password change and token revocation to prevent a Pipeline Hijacking event.
DarCache Vulnerability (NVD, EPSS, KEV, eXploit): This ensures that the team focuses on critical patches. For CI/CD servers or Testing & QA infrastructure, a vulnerability is prioritized if it is on the KEV list, guiding the operations team to patch only the most actively exploited flaws first.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external visibility creates powerful synergies when combined with internal DevSecOps tools:
Static/Dynamic Application Security Testing (SAST/DAST) Synergies: SAST/DAST tools (for Testing & Quality Assurance) find flaws inside the code. ThreatNG’s Code Secret Exposure module finds secrets outside the code (leaked in repos or configuration files). The combination ensures that both internal code vulnerabilities and external deployment secrets are secured. If ThreatNG finds an exposed API endpoint (DAST target), the SAST/DAST team can use that information to prioritize security scanning on the specific code that powers that endpoint.
Secrets Management (e.g., HashiCorp Vault) Synergies: The primary function of Secrets Management (in Configuration & Feature Management) is to prevent credentials from being hard-coded. When ThreatNG's Code Secret Exposure module flags a leaked production key, this intelligence can be used to trigger an automated rotation and immediate revocation of that key within the Secrets Management platform.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) / Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR): ThreatNG's high-fidelity findings (e.g., a critical exposed Testing & QA server or a compromised CI/CD credential from DarCache) are ingested into SIEM/SOAR systems. This external intelligence is used to automate response actions, such as automatically isolating the exposed testing server or creating a high-priority ticket for the operations team to investigate potential Data Tampering in logs identified via Monitoring & Observability exposure.
