Non-Human Identity
In cybersecurity, a Non-Human Identity (NHI) refers to any entity interacting with IT systems, applications, data, or network resources without direct human intervention. These identities are essentially digital personas or credentials used by automated processes, machines, software, or devices to authenticate, authorize, and access resources. As organizations increasingly rely on automation, cloud infrastructure, and interconnected systems, NHIs have become ubiquitous, and their secure management is a critical aspect of modern cybersecurity.
Here's a detailed breakdown of NHIs:
Characteristics of Non-Human Identities:
Automated Operation: An NHI's defining characteristic is its ability to operate autonomously without human input for each action.
Programmatic Access: NHIs typically access resources programmatically through APIs, scripts, or automated protocols.
Diverse Form Factors: They exist in various forms, from simple API keys to complex service accounts, machine certificates, and cloud roles.
High Volume and Velocity: Modern IT environments can have thousands or even millions of NHIs, making their management at scale a significant challenge.
Specific Purpose: Each NHI is usually created for a particular task or set of functions, though their permissions can sometimes be overly broad.
Categories and Examples of Non-Human Identities:
NHIs can be broadly categorized based on their function and where they operate:
Workload Identities: These are assigned to software components and applications, enabling them to communicate and perform tasks.
Examples:
Microservices: Identities used by individual services in a microservices architecture to authenticate and authorize interactions with other services or databases.
Containers: Credentials assigned to containerized applications (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes pods) to access storage, networks, or external APIs.
Serverless Functions: Identities granted to serverless compute functions (e.g., AWS Lambda, Azure Functions) to execute code and interact with other cloud services.
Application Programming Interface (API) Keys/Tokens: Credentials one application uses to authenticate and access functionalities exposed by another application's API.
Machine Identities: These represent physical or virtual machines, allowing them to authenticate to networks, services, and other machines.
Examples:
Servers (Physical & Virtual): Identities (e.g., machine accounts, certificates) for servers to join a domain, establish secure communication channels, or access network resources.
Network Devices: Identities for routers, switches, firewalls, and load balancers to authenticate to management systems or other network infrastructure.
Internet of Things (IoT) Devices: Identities for smart sensors, industrial control systems, cameras, or other connected devices to transmit data or receive commands.
Service Accounts: These are dedicated user accounts designed for applications, services, or automated tasks to run processes or access system resources. They are distinct from individual human user accounts.
Examples:
Database Service Accounts: Applications applications use to connect to and query databases.
Automation Script Accounts: Accounts used by scripts that perform routine tasks like data backups, log collection, or system updates.
Code and Infrastructure-as-Code Identities: These identities are used by automated development and deployment pipelines or infrastructure management tools.
Examples:
CI/CD Pipeline Credentials: Credentials used by Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment pipelines to access code repositories, build artifacts, deploy applications, or configure infrastructure.
Cloud Service Principals/Roles: Identities within cloud platforms (e.g., AWS IAM Roles, Azure AD Service Principals) that define permissions for cloud resources, often used by automation tools like Terraform or Ansible.
Version Control System (VCS) Accounts: Tokens or keys used by automated processes to interact with platforms like GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket.
Cybersecurity Implications of Non-Human Identities:
The proliferation of NHIs introduces significant cybersecurity challenges:
Expanded Attack Surface: Every NHI represents a potential entry point for attackers if its credentials are stolen or its permissions are exploited.
Lack of Visibility and Control: Organizations often struggle to track all their NHIs, understand their purpose, and manage their permissions, leading to "shadow NHIs" or unknown risks.
Over-Privileging: NHIs are frequently granted excessive permissions (more than they need), making them high-value targets for attackers seeking to escalate privileges or move laterally.
Credential Sprawl: NHIs use various credential types (API keys, certificates, secrets, tokens, passwords), leading to a complex landscape of credentials that are difficult to manage and secure.
Lifecycle Management Challenges: Provisioning, deprovisioning, and rotating credentials for NHIs at scale can be complex and often neglected, leaving stale or compromised credentials active.
Lateral Movement: If an NHI's credentials are compromised, attackers can use them to penetrate the network, access sensitive data, or launch further attacks.
Compliance Gaps: Without proper controls, auditing and proving compliance with the actions and access of numerous NHIs can be challenging.
Securing Non-Human Identities:
Adequate NHI security requires a dedicated approach that often mirrors, but also diverges from, human identity management:
Discovery and Inventory: Continuously discover and maintain a comprehensive inventory of all NHIs, their purpose, and their associated permissions.
Least Privilege: Enforce the principle of least privilege, ensuring NHIs have only the minimum necessary permissions to perform their specific tasks. Regularly review and adjust these permissions.
Strong Authentication: Use robust authentication methods, such as mutual TLS (mTLS), machine certificates, and short-lived, dynamically generated tokens, rather than long-lived static credentials.
Secrets Management: Use centralized secrets management solutions to securely store, distribute, and automatically rotate credentials used by NHIs. Avoid hardcoding credentials in code.
Lifecycle Management: Implement automated processes for the provisioning, deprovisioning, and regular review of NHIs and their credentials.
Monitoring and Auditing: Continuously monitor NHI activity for anomalous behavior, unauthorized access attempts, or deviations from their intended function. Log all NHI actions for auditing and forensic analysis.
Segmentation: Isolate NHIs and the resources they access into segmented network zones to limit the impact of a potential compromise.
Code Scanning: Integrate security scanning into development pipelines to detect hardcoded NHIs and other sensitive information.
Behavioral Analytics: Identify deviations from typical NHI patterns that could indicate a compromise.
NHIs are the backbone of modern automated systems, but their machine-driven nature and sheer volume make them a prime target for attackers. A robust cybersecurity strategy must include comprehensive management and security measures tailored to these non-human actors.
ThreatNG is an extremely valuable tool for establishing and maintaining Non-Human Identity (NHI) Security because it specializes in the external, unauthenticated discovery of the exposed secrets and credentials that pose the most immediate risk to these machine identities. By focusing on what is visible to attackers, ThreatNG helps organizations prioritize mitigation and maintain a secure posture.
ThreatNG's Role in Enhancing NHI Security
External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG’s foundation is purely external, unauthenticated discovery, which is the methodology for finding exposed static NHI credentials (such as API keys and service account tokens) that an attacker could use. This agentless approach is critical because it identifies credentials that are outside of internal monitoring. The platform provides Continuous Monitoring of the external attack surface, ensuring that the security team is immediately alerted when a new NHI credential is accidentally exposed in a public repository or a misconfigured asset, preventing unmonitored backdoors.
External Assessment and Examples
ThreatNG provides a direct, quantifiable measure of the risk posed by poor NHI security:
Non-Human Identity (NHI) Exposure Security Rating: This critical governance metric (A–F scale) quantifies the organization's vulnerability to threats originating from high-privilege machine identities. The rating is determined by continuously assessing exposure vectors, including Sensitive Code Exposure and misconfigured Cloud Exposure.
Example: If ThreatNG discovers a publicly exposed AWS Access Key ID in a code repository or a Mailgun API Key in a configuration file, this finding instantly degrades the NHI Exposure Security Rating because these are high-privilege NHI secrets that grant unauthorized programmatic access, violating secure credential management policies.
Investigation Modules and Examples
The investigation modules provide the essential granular findings on NHI credential exposure:
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module directly addresses the insecure storage and hardcoding of credentials, a critical failure in NHI Security. The Code Repository Exposure submodule finds Access Credentials and Security Credentials in public code repositories.
Example: ThreatNG identifies a public repository containing a hardcoded PGP private key block or an SSH DSA Private Key, which are NHI secrets that should be stored securely and never exposed.
It also looks for specific cloud and API credentials, such as Google Cloud Platform OAuth, Twilio API Key, and MailChimp API Key.
Mobile Application Discovery: This module scans mobile apps for hardcoded NHI credentials.
Example: ThreatNG discovers a hardcoded Square OAuth Secret or Heroku API Key within the application content, revealing exposed NHI credentials.
NHI Email Exposure: This feature identifies and groups exposed role-based email addresses (like system, svc, devops, jenkins, and service) that are typically tied to unmonitored NHI service accounts. Example: An attacker can target a discovered
svc@company.comemail address for compromise to gain control of the associated service account.Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This module identifies the infrastructure on which NHIs operate, including Unsanctioned Cloud Services. NHI security must encompass all services, whether sanctioned or not.
Intelligence Repositories and Reporting
ThreatNG enhances NHI security by providing threat intelligence and high-certainty reporting:
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): If ThreatNG discovers an exposed NHI credential, this repository immediately checks whether the same credential has been found in dark web dumps. This linkage confirms active compromise risk, which escalates the severity of the NHI Exposure Security Rating.
Context Engine™: The engine delivers Legal-Grade Attribution, converting chaotic technical findings (such as a publicly exposed service account key) into irrefutable evidence. This certainty is crucial for justifying the immediate, high-priority remediation needed to fix a poor NHI security posture.
Reporting: The NHI Exposure Security Rating is presented clearly on the A-F scale. The Prioritized Reports (High, Medium, Low) ensure that teams focus first on the most severe and exposed NHI credentials, facilitating rapid governance action.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external NHI findings can be integrated with internal systems to enforce the core strategies of NHI security, such as secure storage and lifecycle management:
Secrets Management Solutions: When ThreatNG discovers a hardcoded credential (e.g., a Mailgun API Key), this external alert can be automatically sent to the organization's Secrets Management tool. The tool can then use this alert to revoke the exposed key and enforce the secure retrieval of the new credential from the vault, mitigating the security risk and ensuring safe storage.
Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) Tools: The discovery of a critical cloud credential leakage (e.g., AWS Access Key ID) is shared with a CIEM tool. The CIEM tool can then use this external finding to perform an authenticated internal analysis to determine the actual Privilege Level of the exposed key and automatically enforce the Principle of Least Privilege by revoking any unnecessary permissions or triggering a key rotation.
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: A critical alert from ThreatNG regarding a significant NHI Exposure can trigger a SOAR platform. The SOAR platform can automatically use this external finding to open a high-priority incident ticket, notify the security operations center (SOC), and initiate automated steps to quarantine the exposed code or asset, ensuring prompt governance and control.
