Digital Footprint
In the context of cybersecurity, a digital footprint refers to the trail of data that an individual or organization leaves behind through their online activities. Every action taken in the digital realm—from browsing websites and posting on social media to sending emails and making online purchases—contributes to this footprint. This data can be both actively shared (information that an individual intentionally posts) and passively collected (data gathered without the individual's explicit knowledge).
There are two main types of digital footprints:
Active Digital Footprint: This includes data that an individual or organization intentionally creates and shares. Examples include:
Social Media Posts: Comments, photos, videos, and profile information shared on platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, or LinkedIn.
Online Registrations: Information provided when signing up for websites, newsletters, online services, or apps (e.g., name, email address, date of birth).
Email Correspondence: The content of emails, including attachments and metadata.
Forum and Blog Comments: Contributions to online discussions or articles.
Publicly Accessible Documents: Resumes, portfolios, or research papers uploaded to the internet.
Passive Digital Footprint: This refers to data collected about an individual or organization without their active participation or explicit knowledge. Examples include:
IP Addresses: Your device's unique identifier when connecting to the internet, which can reveal your general location.
Browse History: Websites visited, search queries, and time spent on pages, often tracked by cookies.
Location Data: Information collected from mobile devices or GPS-enabled apps.
Device Information: Details about the type of device, operating system, and browser being used.
Online Transactions: Records of purchases, financial activities, and payment details.
Website Analytics: Data gathered by websites to understand user behavior, often without direct user interaction.
Why is a Digital Footprint Important in Cybersecurity?
Understanding and managing one's digital footprint is paramount in cybersecurity for several reasons:
Attack Surface Expansion: A larger or less controlled digital footprint increases an individual's or organization's attack surface, creating more potential entry points for malicious actors.
Reconnaissance for Attackers: Cybercriminals often use an organization's or individual's digital footprint to gather information for social engineering attacks (like phishing or pretexting), target specific vulnerabilities, or craft highly personalized attacks. For example, knowing an employee's role from their LinkedIn profile could make a spear-phishing email more convincing.
Data Leakage: Sensitive information, such as intellectual property, employee details, or proprietary business processes, can inadvertently become part of the digital footprint if not correctly secured or managed.
Reputational Risk: Negative or inappropriate content in an individual's or organization's digital footprint can damage their reputation, affecting trust and public perception.
Compliance and Privacy Concerns: Regulations such as GDPR or CCPA emphasize data privacy, making it crucial for organizations to manage the digital footprints of their users and ensure compliance.
Credential Exposure: Passwords, API keys, or other sensitive credentials accidentally committed to public code repositories or shared online become part of the digital footprint and can be easily discovered by attackers.
Effectively managing a digital footprint involves regularly reviewing privacy settings, being mindful of what information is shared online, deleting old accounts, and using tools to monitor for exposed data. For organizations, this also extends to diligent asset discovery, vulnerability management, and employee training on secure online practices.
ThreatNG is an all-in-one solution designed to help organizations understand and manage "Your True External Attack Surface," gain "The Attacker's View of Your Attack Surface," and uncover "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally." It achieves this through its robust capabilities in external discovery, external assessment, reporting, continuous monitoring, investigation modules, and intelligence repositories. ThreatNG performs purely external unauthenticated discovery, meaning it sees the true attack surface as an attacker would, without internal blind spots caused by connector limitations.
Here's a detailed explanation of how ThreatNG helps:
ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery, which is crucial for understanding "Your True External Attack Surface" and "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally". This approach allows ThreatNG to map out an organization's digital presence from an attacker's vantage point, identifying all publicly exposed assets and potential entry points without relying on internal connectors that might introduce blind spots. ThreatNG's ability to perform this unauthenticated discovery is crucial in uncovering shadow IT or misconfigured resources that internal tools might overlook.
ThreatNG provides comprehensive external assessment ratings, giving organizations a detailed understanding of their vulnerabilities from an attacker's perspective. This includes:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This score is derived from external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, including Domain Intelligence, by analyzing web application components accessible from the outside world to identify potential entry points for attackers. For example, ThreatNG would assess public-facing web applications for misconfigurations in server headers or exposed administrative interfaces that could lead to hijacking.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG utilizes external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, incorporating Domain Intelligence, to assess this susceptibility. This intelligence includes a comprehensive analysis of the website's subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. ThreatNG would, for instance, identify subdomains with outdated DNS records pointing to non-existent services, making them vulnerable to takeover.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This rating is derived from Sentiment and Financials Findings, Domain Intelligence (including Domain Name Permutations, Web3 Domains, and Email Intelligence for security presence and format prediction), and Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials). ThreatNG could identify if an organization's domain is frequently impersonated in phishing campaigns or if employee email addresses are present in compromised credential dumps on the dark web.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: This score is derived from attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG Violations, Sentiment and Financials (Lawsuits, SEC filings, SEC Form 8-Ks, and Negative News), and Domain Intelligence (Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains). ThreatNG can identify public records of lawsuits or negative news associated with the organization, as well as similar-sounding domains that could be used for brand impersonation.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This is derived from external attack surface and digital risk intelligence based on Cloud and SaaS Exposure, Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials), Domain Intelligence (DNS Intelligence capabilities, Domain Name Permutations, Web3 Domains, and Email Intelligence), and Sentiment and Financials (Lawsuits and SEC Form 8-Ks). An example includes ThreatNG identifying publicly exposed cloud storage buckets containing sensitive data or finding organizational credentials on the dark web that could lead to data exfiltration.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This considers parameters covered by the Domain Intelligence module, including certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports, to determine cyber risk exposure. ThreatNG may flag expired SSL certificates or publicly accessible sensitive ports (such as RDP or SSH) that increase cyber risk. Code Secret Exposure is also factored into the score, as it identifies code repositories and their exposure levels, and investigates their contents for sensitive data. This means it could expose API keys or database credentials that have been accidentally committed to public code repositories. Cloud and SaaS Exposure evaluates cloud services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. Additionally, the score considers the organization's compromised credentials on the dark web, which increases the risk of successful attacks.
ESG Exposure: ThreatNG rates the organization based on discovered environmental, social, and governance (ESG) violations through its external attack surface and digital risk intelligence findings. It analyzes and highlights areas such as Competition, Consumer, Employment, Environment, Financial, Government Contracting, Healthcare, and Safety-related offenses. For example, ThreatNG could identify public reports of environmental violations or labor disputes associated with the organization.
Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure: This is derived from Domain Intelligence (Enumeration of Vendor Technologies from DNS and Subdomains), Technology Stack, and Cloud and SaaS Exposure. ThreatNG would identify third-party services and technologies used by an organization and assess their associated risks from an external perspective.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This is calculated based on external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, which includes domain intelligence (exposed sensitive ports, exposed private IPs, and known vulnerabilities), dark web presence (compromised credentials and ransomware events and gang activity), and sentiment and financials (SEC Form 8-Ks). ThreatNG could identify if an organization has exposed private IP addresses that could facilitate internal network mapping by attackers, or if their credentials have been observed in ransomware gang communications on the dark web.
Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates the exposure of an organization’s mobile apps through their discovery in marketplaces and the presence of various access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers within their contents. This means ThreatNG can uncover if a publicly available mobile application in an app store contains hardcoded API keys or other sensitive information, contributing to "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally."
ThreatNG identifies and highlights an organization's security strengths, detecting the presence of beneficial security controls and configurations, such as Web Application Firewalls or multi-factor authentication. It validates these positive measures from the perspective of an external attacker, providing objective evidence of their effectiveness. Ultimately, this capability provides a more balanced and comprehensive view of an organization's security posture, explaining the specific security benefits of these positive measures. For example, ThreatNG might identify the presence and proper configuration of a WAF protecting a web application, indicating a strong defense against common web attacks.
ThreatNG provides various types of reports to help organizations understand and act on their security posture, including Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, and Informational), Security Ratings, Inventory, Ransomware Susceptibility, and U.S. SEC Filings. These reports enable executives to quickly grasp the overall security rating, while technical teams can drill down into prioritized vulnerabilities with detailed information on high-risk issues. Reports also include a Knowledge Base with risk levels, reasoning, recommendations, and reference links to help organizations prioritize their security efforts and make informed decisions.
ThreatNG offers continuous monitoring of external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings for all organizations. This ensures that as an organization's digital footprint changes or new vulnerabilities emerge, ThreatNG can detect and report on them in real-time, providing an always-up-to-date "Attacker's View of Your Attack Surface."
Investigation Modules
ThreatNG includes robust investigation modules that allow for deep dives into discovered information, uncovering "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally":
Domain Intelligence: Provides a comprehensive overview of digital presence, including Microsoft Entra Identification and Domain Enumeration, Bug Bounty Programs, and related SwaggerHub instances.
DNS Intelligence: Includes Domain Record Analysis (IP Identification, Vendors and Technology Identification), Domain Name Permutations (Taken and Available), and Web3 Domains (Taken and Available). For example, an organization could use this to identify all associated IP addresses, the technologies used by their vendors, and potential typosquatting domains.
Email Intelligence: Offers security presence (DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records), format predictions, and harvested emails. This could help an organization verify the proper configuration of its email security protocols and identify any publicly available employee email addresses.
WHOIS Intelligence: Provides WHOIS Analysis and Other Domains Owned. This helps identify the registered owner of a domain and potentially other domains they own, which could be part of "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally."
Subdomain Intelligence: Covers HTTP Responses, Header Analysis (Security Headers and Deprecated Headers), Server Headers (Technologies), Cloud Hosting providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Heroku, Pantheon, Vercel), Website Builders, E-commerce Platforms, Content Management Systems, and various other technologies. It also includes Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility, Content Identification (e.g., Admin Pages, APIs, Development Environments, VPNs, Empty HTTP/HTTPS Responses, HTTP/HTTPS Errors, Applications, Google Tag Managers, Javascript, Emails, Phone Numbers), and Ports (including IoT / OT, Industrial Control Systems, Databases, and Remote Access Services). For instance, ThreatNG could identify an exposed development environment on a subdomain or a publicly accessible database port, representing a significant risk to "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally."
IP Intelligence: Provides information on IPs, Shared IPs, ASNs, Country Locations, and Private IPs. This helps in understanding the network infrastructure and identifying any inadvertently exposed private IP addresses.
Certificate Intelligence: Focuses on TLS Certificates (Status, Issuers, Active, Certs without Subdomains, Subdomains without Certificates) and Associated Organizations. An organization can use this to identify expired SSL certificates or subdomains lacking proper certificate coverage, which may indicate potential man-in-the-middle attack opportunities.
Social Media: ThreatNG analyzes posts from the organization under investigation, breaking out content, hashtags, links, and tags. This could reveal sensitive information inadvertently shared on social media or identify attempts at brand impersonation.
Sensitive Code Exposure: Discovers public code repositories and uncovers digital risks including exposed access credentials (e.g., API keys, access tokens, generic credentials), cloud credentials (e.g., AWS Access Key ID, AWS Secret Access Key), security credentials (e.g., cryptographic private keys, SSH private keys), configuration files (e.g., application configurations, system configurations, network configurations), database exposures (e.g., database files, database credentials), application data exposures (e.g., remote access files, encryption keys, Java keystores, git-credential-store files), activity records (e.g., command history, logs, network traffic captures), communication platform configurations, development environment configurations, security testing tools data, cloud service configurations (e.g., S3cmd configuration file, AWS CLI credentials file) , remote access credentials, system utilities, personal data, and user activity. For example, ThreatNG could discover a publicly accessible GitHub repository containing an organization's AWS secret access key, which represents a critical security flaw in "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally."
Mobile Application Discovery: Discovers mobile apps related to the organization in marketplaces (e.g., Amazon Appstore, Google Play, Apple App Store) and analyzes their contents for access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers. This allows organizations to identify if their publicly available mobile applications are leaking sensitive information, contributing to "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally."
Search Engine Exploitation:
Website Control Files: Discovers the presence of robots.txt and security.txt files, identifying secure directories, user directories, email directories, and contact information.
Search Engine Attack Surface: Helps users investigate an organization’s susceptibility to exposing errors, sensitive information, privileged folders, public passwords, susceptible files, and user data via search engines. For instance, it could identify if search engines are indexing sensitive internal documents due to misconfigured robots.txt files.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: Identifies sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services, cloud service impersonations, and open exposed cloud buckets of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. It also identifies SaaS implementations associated with the organization, such as Looker, Salesforce, Slack, Splunk, Zoom, Atlassian, Box, SharePoint, Kustomer, JAMF, Workday, BambooHR, Azure Active Directory, Okta, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, Asana, and Monday.com. An example would be identifying an unlisted AWS S3 bucket with public read/write access.
Online Sharing Exposure: Identifies the presence of an organizational entity on online code-sharing platforms, including Pastebin, GitHub Gist, Scribd, Slideshare, and Prezi. This module could reveal if sensitive internal code snippets or documents have been inadvertently posted on public forums.
Sentiment and Financials: Identifies organizational-related lawsuits, layoff chatter, SEC Filings of Publicly Traded US Companies (especially their Risk and Oversight Disclosures), SEC Form 8-Ks, and ESG Violations. This helps in understanding the broader financial and reputational risks associated with the organization.
Archived Web Pages: Identifies archived versions of various files (e.g., API, BAK, CSS, Demo Pages, Document Files, Emails, Excel Files, HTML Files, Image Files, Javascript Files, JSON Files, JSP Files, Login Pages, PDF FIles, PHP Files, Potential Redirects, Python Files, Txt Files, XML Files, Directories, Subdomains, User Names, Admin Page) on the organization’s online presence. This could uncover historical data leaks or forgotten, vulnerable assets that contribute to "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally."
Dark Web Presence: Identifies organizational mentions of related or defined individuals, locations, or entities, as well as associated ransomware events and compromised credentials. This module would alert an organization if its brand or employee credentials are being discussed or sold on dark web forums.
Technology Stack: Identifies all technologies being used by the organization, including Accounting Tools, Analytics, API Management, Blogging / Microblogging, Booking, Content Delivery Network or Content Distribution Network (CDN), Content Management Systems (CMS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Databases, Developer Platforms, Digital Content Publishing, Ecommerce, Email, Helpdesk Software, Incident Management, Core JavaScript, JavaScript Libraries, JavaScript Frameworks, JavaScript Graphics Libraris, Marketing Automation, Media (Storage, Galleries, Livestreaming), Operating Systems, Point of Sale (POS) / Retail Management, Privacy, Project Management, Security, Shipping, Utilities, and Web Servers. This provides a comprehensive overview of the software and infrastructure components that contribute to the attack surface.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
ThreatNG maintains continuously updated intelligence repositories, branded as DarCache, which are crucial for understanding "The Attacker's View of Your Attack Surface" and "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally."
Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web): Provides insights into compromised credentials, ransomware groups, and activities.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): Contains a database of compromised credentials.
Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware): Tracks over 70 Ransomware Gangs.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): Offers a holistic and proactive approach to managing external risks and vulnerabilities by understanding their real-world exploitability, the likelihood of exploitation, and the potential impact. This understanding enables organizations to make smarter security decisions and allocate resources effectively to protect their digital assets. It is made up of the following:
NVD (DarCache NVD): Provides information including Attack Complexity, Attack Interaction, Attack Vector, Impact scores (Availability, Confidentiality, Integrity), CVSS Score, and Severity, offering a deep understanding of the technical characteristics and potential impact of each vulnerability.
EPSS (DarCache EPSS): The data provides a probabilistic estimate of the likelihood of a vulnerability being exploited shortly. Combining the "EPSS" score and "Percentile" with other vulnerability data enables a more forward-looking approach to prioritization, addressing not only severe vulnerabilities but also those that are likely to be weaponized.
KEV (DarCache KEV): Lists vulnerabilities that are actively being exploited in the wild with critical context for prioritizing remediation efforts on vulnerabilities that pose an immediate and proven threat.
Verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits (DarCache eXploit): Provides direct links to Proof-of-Concept (PoC) exploits on platforms like GitHub, referenced by CVE, which significantly accelerates the understanding of how a vulnerability can be exploited. This information is invaluable for security teams to reproduce the vulnerability, assess its real-world impact on their specific environment, and develop effective mitigation strategies.
ESG Violations (DarCache ESG): Covers Competition, Consumer, Employment, Environment, Financial, Government Contracting, Healthcare, and Safety-related offenses.
Bug Bounty Programs (DarCache Bug Bounty): Indicates In Scope and Out of Scope.
SEC Form 8-Ks (DarCache 8-K)
Bank Identification Numbers (DarCache BIN)
Mobile Apps (DarCache Mobile): Indicates whether Access Credentials, Security Credentials, and Platform-Specific Identifiers are present within Mobile Apps.
Synergy with Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's focus on "Your True External Attack Surface," "The Attacker's View of Your Attack Surface," and "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally" can be significantly enhanced when working with complementary solutions:
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) / Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Systems: ThreatNG's continuous monitoring and detailed external assessment findings can feed into SIEM/SOAR platforms. This allows for centralized logging, correlation of external attack surface data with internal network events, and automated response playbooks. For instance, if ThreatNG identifies a newly exposed sensitive port (e.g., an RDP port) during its unauthenticated external scan, a SOAR system could automatically trigger a review of a firewall rule or an alert to the network security team.
Vulnerability Management (VM) Solutions: While ThreatNG identifies external vulnerabilities, VM solutions often focus on internal network scans and patching workflows. The synergy lies in ThreatNG identifying critical external-facing vulnerabilities (like exposed sensitive ports or unpatched web applications from an attacker's perspective) that can then be fed into a VM solution's prioritization engine for remediation. This ensures that the most impactful external threats are addressed promptly alongside internal vulnerabilities.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): ThreatNG's DarCache provides rich threat intelligence, particularly on compromised credentials, ransomware activity, and actively exploited vulnerabilities (KEV). This data can be ingested by a TIP to enrich an organization's overall threat intelligence picture, enabling better proactive defense and incident response. For example, if DarCache Ransomware identifies a new ransomware gang targeting a specific industry, a TIP can disseminate this information to relevant security tools and teams.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Solutions: ThreatNG's findings on compromised credentials from the Dark Web (DarCache Rupture) can directly inform IAM solutions. Suppose ThreatNG discovers employee credentials on the dark web. In that case, the IAM system can immediately force password resets or elevate authentication requirements for those users, mitigating a significant external risk to "Your Complete Digital Footprint, Uncovered Externally."
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP):ThreatNG's Cloud and SaaS Exposure module identifies misconfigurations and exposed services in cloud environments from an external perspective. This external view can complement CSPM tools that continuously monitor cloud configurations and CWPPs that protect cloud workloads. For example, if ThreatNG identifies an open AWS S3 bucket, a CSPM tool can then provide remediation guidance and continuous monitoring for that specific cloud resource.
Digital Risk Protection (DRP) Platforms: ThreatNG is an all-in-one solution for external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings. For organizations with existing DRP tools, ThreatNG's specific strengths in external attack surface management, mobile app exposure, and detailed intelligence repositories (such as DarCache Dark Web and Sentiment and Financials) can augment their current capabilities, offering a more granular "Attacker's View of Your Attack Surface" of external threats.
Brand Protection Solutions: ThreatNG's Brand Damage Susceptibility and Domain Intelligence (Domain Name Permutations) can identify brand impersonation attempts or potential typosquatting domains. This information can be shared with dedicated brand protection solutions to initiate takedown procedures or closer monitoring of suspicious online activities.
