Forum and Community Sites
Forum and Community sites are online platforms that facilitate public, user-generated discussions, news aggregation, and community building across diverse topics, from general interests to specialized hobbies. In the context of cybersecurity, these sites pose a multifaceted threat as centers of disinformation, malware distribution, social engineering, and user data leakage. They provide a high-traffic, low-scrutiny environment for threat actors to operate.
General Forums
These platforms, such as Reddit, 9GAG, Wykop, and Fark, cover a wide range of topics and often function as significant sources of news and internet culture.
Cybersecurity Context:
Disinformation and Brand Attack: High-traffic forums can be used for influence operations against organizations. Threat actors create fake accounts to spread false or damaging information (e.g., about a product flaw, a financial crisis, or a data breach) to manipulate stock prices, damage brand reputation, or erode customer trust. Gab and similar platforms are also vectors for the spread of extremist content and related cyberthreats.
Phishing and Malicious Link Sharing: Due to the volume of links shared on platforms like Reddit and Slashdot, malicious links can easily be hidden among legitimate content. Attackers use comments or posts to direct users to phishing sites or pages that execute drive-by downloads.
Leakage of Internal Information: Employees or former employees may inadvertently or maliciously post sensitive internal information or documents on large, anonymous platforms such as Pikabu or Eksisozluk, thereby increasing the risk of corporate espionage.
Examples: An attacker creates a widely used template on a general forum like Disqus that contains a web beacon, allowing them to track the IP addresses and browsing habits of all users who view the comment section on various sites. A group discussing financial news on Hotcopper or Weforum promotes a fraudulent stock scheme that involves links to a malicious credential-harvesting site.
Niche/Hobby Forums
These communities are focused on specialized topics, such as gaming (forums.bulbagarden.net, Pathofexile), fitness (BodyBuilding), or lifestyle (7dach).
Cybersecurity Context:
Malware Distribution (Gaming and Software): Forums dedicated to games or software are frequently targeted for distributing malware disguised as "cheats," "cracks," "mods," or "custom tools." Users download what they believe is a game utility for Warface or Pathofexile, but which actually installs a keylogger or ransomware.
Targeted Credential Theft: Attackers target niche communities where users often use the same, simple username and password for both the forum and their high-value game accounts (e.g., PerfectWorldForum). A breach of the forum can lead to a direct compromise of the user's primary game account, which is often linked to payment information.
Insider Information Theft: Specialized technical or hobby forums (Toster, forums.drom.ru) can contain precise troubleshooting information that, when combined with other data, can help an attacker compromise a system.
Examples: A user on a technical forum like Toster or a hobby site like BoardGameGeek asks a question that reveals a specific vulnerability in their home setup or a component of their software. An attacker reads this post and targets the user. A file shared on a forum like forums.majorgeeks.com that claims to offer a free utility is actually a trojanized version of the software.
ThreatNG is highly effective at managing risks from Forum and Community sites by focusing on external indicators of compromise: disinformation, data leakage, and the distribution of malicious content targeting organizations and their personnel.
External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG's External Discovery process continuously maps an organization's exposure across the vast landscape of public forums, serving as an automated intelligence-gathering tool. Continuous Monitoring ensures threats are detected the moment they appear on these highly active sites.
Dark Web Presence: ThreatNG constantly monitors high-risk and general forums for Organizational mentions and associated Compromised Credentials. If a threat actor posts a thread on a forum like Gab or Reddit discussing an exploit against the organization, or if a credential dump from a compromised gaming forum like Pathofexile or forums.serebii.net contains employee corporate email addresses, ThreatNG detects this exposure.
Archived Web Pages: ThreatNG searches archived content across the internet for files that may have been posted on general forums like 9GAG or Pikabu. It looks for sensitive items like Document Files, Emails, and Text Files. For example, if an employee posted a support ticket or configuration details on a technical discussion board like Toster or forums.opera.com and then deleted it, ThreatNG can discover the archived copy of the text and flag a data leak.
Technology Stack: ThreatNG identifies the technologies an organization is using. Detecting the use of specific forums (such as Discourse instances, which underpin many communities, like forum.blackmagicdesign.com) helps prioritize monitoring these platforms for targeted threats and social engineering attempts.
External Assessment for Forum and Community Risks
ThreatNG's External Assessment quantifies the risk of forum abuse, particularly in social engineering and brand integrity.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This score is directly affected by impersonation and phishing activity originating from forum sites.
Example 1 (Brand Impersonation): ThreatNG detects the creation of fake company accounts or threads on major platforms like Reddit or Wykop that are using the organization's logo and messaging to promote a fraudulent investment scheme or a phony job opening. ThreatNG flags these instances of Brand Impersonation as a high-risk phishing vector, increasing the organization's BEC susceptibility score.
Example 2 (Malicious Links): The assessment constantly scans content on high-traffic, link-sharing forums like Slashdot and Fark for links to Malicious Content or newly registered typosquatting domains. If an attacker posts a link on forums.majorgeeks.com that leads to a drive-by download, ThreatNG's assessment highlights this external threat to the organization's users and partners.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This score rises whenever Associated Compromised Credentials are found on forums. A data leak from a large forum like Kaskus or Nairaland Forum containing employee PII or login credentials immediately elevates the data leak score due to the high probability of credential re-use.
Investigation Modules and Username Exposure
The Investigation Modules are key to linking anonymous or pseudonymized forum activity back to potential corporate risk.
Social Media Investigation Module - Username Exposure
This module is essential for mitigating the risks of targeted social engineering and identity theft prevalent on forums.
Passive Reconnaissance: The module performs wide-ranging searches for a specific organizational username or handle across thousands of forums and community sites. It explicitly targets general forums (Reddit, Weforum) and niche/hobby forums (BodyBuilding, BoardGameGeek).
Example: ThreatNG discovers that a high-value employee's primary online handle, used to log in to internal systems, is also registered and active on the gaming forums Warface and BleachFandom. A subsequent intelligence feed reveals that a recent data breach of a similar niche forum exposed passwords for that username. The Username Exposure module correlates this re-use and high-risk site presence with the internal email address, allowing the security team to immediately flag the employee for mandatory multi-factor authentication enrollment and password reset across corporate accounts.
Intelligence Repositories and Reporting
ThreatNG's Intelligence Repositories provide the crucial context that turns raw forum observations into high-priority security actions.
DarCache Dark Web and DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials): This tracks forum breaches. Suppose a threat actor publicly posts a list of credentials stolen from a forum like forums.drom.ru or Warrior Forum, and those credentials include corporate email addresses. In that case, DarCache Rupture flags them as Associated Compromised Credentials, demanding immediate action.
DarCache Vulnerability (KEV, EPSS, PoC Exploits): This tracks malware distribution on technical forums. Suppose an attacker posts a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploit for a zero-day vulnerability in a popular service on HackerNews or a technical forum like Toster. In that case, ThreatNG ingests this intelligence and flags the vulnerable asset as exposed to a Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV).
Reporting compiles all these findings—from the discovery of an internal document in an archived thread on Fark to a malware link on pr0gramm—into Prioritized reports. The MITRE ATT&CK Mapping automatically correlates forum activity (e.g., posting malicious links) with adversary tactics such as "Initial Access" or "Defense Evasion."
ThreatNG with Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's continuous stream of external intelligence from forums is highly valuable when integrated with complementary solutions.
Integration with a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Complementary Solution: ThreatNG's Archived Web Pages module discovers a section of a company's confidential customer list posted by an anonymous Reddit user. ThreatNG extracts unique PII characteristics (e.g., data format, specific headers) and shares this intelligence with a DLP complementary solution. The DLP solution can then immediately use this new signature to scan internal corporate file shares and email traffic, not only to ensure the leak is contained but also to identify the internal source of the document exfiltration.
Integration with a Security Awareness Complementary Solution: ThreatNG's BEC & Phishing Susceptibility module identifies a new social engineering technique using fake accounts on Wykop and Gab to recruit employees as "insiders." ThreatNG sends the details of the scam (the message content and the tactic) to a Security Awareness complementary solution (such as a training platform). This solution automatically sends a targeted alert or training module to all employees, educating them on the specific new threat observed on these forums, turning intelligence into proactive human defense.
