NHI Email Posture
In the context of cybersecurity, External NHI Email Posture refers to an organization's overall security status regarding the discoverability, categorization, and risk profile of email addresses tied to its Non-Human Identities (NHIs) across its entire external attack surface. It provides a comprehensive, outside-in view of how these non-human communication channels are exposed to the public internet and potential threats.
This posture is not just about whether an NHI-related email exists, but about a detailed assessment of its security. It encompasses:
Visibility and Inventory: Knowing which email addresses associated with NHIs (e.g., admin@, devops@, system@) are publicly visible and where they can be found (e.g., in DNS records, public code repositories, or data leaks).
Risk Categorization: Evaluating the potential impact of each exposed NHI email based on its perceived role. An email for a high-privilege NHI like jenkins-ci@ would be categorized as a higher risk than a general info@ email.
Vulnerability Assessment: Analyzing the email-related security configurations of the associated domain (e.g., SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records) to understand the susceptibility of the NHI email to spoofing and phishing attacks.
Threat Intelligence Integration: Correlating discovered NHI emails with threat intelligence sources, such as dark web forums and breach dumps, to determine if their associated credentials have been compromised.
Continuous Monitoring: Actively and continuously monitoring the external attack surface for any new or changing NHI email exposures, ensuring that new vulnerabilities are detected as soon as they appear.
An organization with a strong External NHI Email Posture has a comprehensive understanding of these factors, allowing it to manage the risks posed by its non-human digital footprint proactively.
ThreatNG, an all-in-one solution for external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings, would significantly aid an organization in managing its External NHI Email Posture. This posture focuses on the discoverability, categorization, and risk profile of emails associated with non-human identities (NHIs). It accomplishes this by providing a comprehensive, outside-in view of where these communication channels are exposed to the public internet and potential threats.
ThreatNG's Role in Managing External NHI Email Posture:
1. External Discovery: ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery to find NHI emails. Its capabilities in this area are critical for establishing the initial inventory of an organization's External NHI Email Posture:
Domain Intelligence: ThreatNG's Domain Intelligence, specifically its Email Intelligence, finds "Harvested Emails" and provides an assessment of email security presence (DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records) and format predictions. It also uses WHOIS Intelligence to find other domains and emails owned by the organization.
Search Engine Exploitation: ThreatNG discovers emails listed in website control files, such as robots.txt and security.txt. These files often contain emails for administrative or security roles that may be associated with NHIs.
Archived Web Pages: ThreatNG can find emails that have been archived on an organization’s online presence.
Online Sharing Exposure: ThreatNG can identify emails associated with NHI roles on online code-sharing platforms, including Pastebin, GitHub Gist, and others.
Example of External Discovery Helping with External NHI Email Posture: ThreatNG's Email Intelligence discovers the email
jenkins@example.com during a DNS analysis. This discovery identifies a key NHI email and is the first step in assessing its security posture.
2. External Assessment: ThreatNG's assessments directly help an organization understand the specific risks associated with its External NHI Email Posture:
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This score is derived from Domain Intelligence (including DNS and Email Intelligence) and Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials). ThreatNG's analysis of an NHI email's security presence (DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records) helps determine its vulnerability to spoofing.
Example: ThreatNG assesses that security@example.com, an NHI email for automated alerts, lacks a DMARC record. This weakness contributes to a higher "BEC & Phishing Susceptibility" score because an attacker could more easily spoof this email to send fake security notifications.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This assessment is based on external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, including Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials). If ThreatNG finds a specific NHI email in a list of compromised credentials on the dark web, it indicates a high risk of a data leak.
Sensitive Code Exposure: ThreatNG discovers public code repositories and investigates their contents for sensitive data, including access credentials. NHI emails and their associated credentials can be hard-coded in these repositories, directly contributing to this exposure score.
Example: A scan of a code repository reveals api-access@example.com (an NHI email) embedded in a configuration file along with a plaintext API key. This contributes to a high "Code Secret Exposure" score, highlighting a critical risk for this NHI.
Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates an organization’s mobile apps for the presence of access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers. NHI emails can be embedded within the application's code for backend services or API access.
3. Reporting: ThreatNG provides various reports, including Executive, Technical, and Prioritized. These reports would detail all identified NHI emails, their locations (e.g., in a public DNS record or a code repository), and their associated risk levels based on ThreatNG’s assessments.
Example of Reporting Helping with External NHI Email Posture: A Technical Report from ThreatNG would list the NHI email admin-api@example.com found in a publicly exposed code repository as a "High" priority risk. The report would include the specific reasoning and recommendations for remediation.
4. Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG offers continuous monitoring of the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings of all organizations. This is vital for NHI Email Posture because it allows for:
Proactive Detection: ThreatNG detects new NHI emails appearing in public sources, such as code pushes or DNS record changes.
Real-time Risk Updates: If an NHI email is suddenly found in a new dark web dump, ThreatNG's continuous monitoring would detect this and update the risk rating in real-time.
Example of Continuous Monitoring Helping with External NHI Email Posture: An organization's new automation-alerts@example.com email is inadvertently published in a misconfigured configuration file. ThreatNG's continuous monitoring detects this new exposure and immediately alerts the security team, preventing the NHI email from becoming a long-term blind spot.
5. Investigation Modules: ThreatNG's investigation modules provide the tools to deep dive into NHI Email Posture:
Domain Intelligence: Its Email Intelligence capability finds harvested emails and analyzes their security posture. This module would allow an investigator to look into the specifics of a discovered NHI email.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module is explicitly designed to find code repositories and investigate their contents for sensitive data, including access credentials. This is the primary location for finding NHI emails that have been hard-coded or leaked in development environments.
Mobile Application Discovery: This module discovers mobile apps and their contents, including access and security credentials, which may be associated with NHI emails.
Dark Web Presence: The Dark Web Presence module finds compromised credentials and organizational mentions on the dark web, directly helping to identify if an NHI email has been compromised.
Example of Investigation Modules Helping with External NHI Email Posture: An investigation using the "Sensitive Code Exposure" module reveals that jenkins-build@example.com (an NHI email) is present in a publicly accessible Jenkins credentials file. This allows the security team to pinpoint the exact location and context of the exposed NHI email for remediation.
6. Intelligence Repositories (DarCache): ThreatNG's continuously updated intelligence repositories provide critical context for NHI Email Posture:
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): This repository is a direct source of information on compromised credentials. If an NHI email is part of a newly discovered data breach, this repository would contain that information, providing immediate actionable intelligence.
Mobile Apps (DarCache Mobile): This repository indicates if access credentials or security credentials, which could include NHI emails, are present within mobile apps.
Example of Intelligence Repositories Helping with External NHI Email Posture: DarCache Rupture flags db-sync@example.com (an NHI email) as part of a list of compromised credentials recently found on the dark web. This allows the organization to immediately invalidate any credentials associated with this NHI email and investigate further.
Synergies with Complementary Solutions:
Other security solutions can powerfully complement ThreatNG's external focus on NHI Email Posture:
Complementary Solutions: Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM) Systems: ThreatNG's discovery of exposed NHI emails provides crucial external visibility. An IAM system can use this information to ensure these NHIs are properly governed and by a PAM solution to enforce stricter controls like just-in-time access or mandatory credential rotation for highly privileged NHI roles.
Complementary Solutions: Email Security Gateways (ESG) and DMARC/SPF/DKIM Management Tools: ThreatNG's Email Intelligence, which assesses the security presence of discovered emails, can provide valuable data to these solutions. Suppose ThreatNG finds an NHI email with a weak security configuration. In that case, the ESG can be configured to block emails spoofing that address, and the DMARC/SPF/DKIM management tool can be used to strengthen the email authentication records.
Complementary Solutions: Secrets Management Solutions: ThreatNG's discovery of NHI emails and their associated credentials in public code repositories provides concrete evidence for the need to use a secrets management solution. This allows organizations to move hard-coded NHI credentials into secure vaults, where they can be managed and rotated securely.
Complementary Solutions: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: ThreatNG's alerts on newly discovered NHI email exposure or compromised credentials can be ingested by a SIEM for consolidated logging. A SOAR platform could then use this information to automate response actions, such as isolating compromised assets or triggering a credential rotation process based on the detected risk.
