Reconnaissance Equalizer
The Reconnaissance Equalizer is a cybersecurity concept, primarily associated with Digital Risk Protection (DRP) solutions, that describes a security capability designed to level the playing field between defenders and attackers during the reconnaissance phase of a cyberattack.
An attacker's advantage during reconnaissance is their stealth and focus on external exposure, which enables them to collect intelligence to build a detailed attack blueprint covertly. The Reconnaissance Equalizer flips this advantage by allowing the defending organization to see its own digital presence and attack surface through the same "outside-in," unauthenticated lens that an adversary uses.
How It Works
The equalizer function is achieved through continuous monitoring and analysis of external data sources, effectively turning the attacker's covert intelligence-gathering phase into the defender's early warning system.
Comprehensive Mapping: It performs systematic discovery and mapping of all internet-facing assets—including forgotten subdomains, cloud resources, and IP addresses—that an attacker would uncover through passive techniques such as DNS enumeration and OSINT.
Adversary Mimicry: It uses techniques that mirror an attacker's own, such as actively searching for the organization's leaked credentials on dark web markets and forums, or analyzing domain records for typosquatting threats.
Proactive Mitigation: By identifying vulnerabilities and exposures before they are weaponized, defenders can preemptively shield their digital assets and fortify weak links.
Key Benefits
The goal is to move detection of an intrusion from the noisy, later stages (like malware execution) back to the quiet, early stages of intelligence gathering, providing maximum time to respond:
Early Detection: It helps security teams detect and analyze suspicious activities as early as possible, preventing attackers from building their maps undetected.
Attack Surface Visibility: It provides deep visibility into the entire digital footprint—including areas often overlooked, such as third-party apps and cloud assets—exposed to the internet.
Actionable Intelligence: It translates generic external data into high-fidelity, context-rich threat intelligence, allowing security teams to prioritize threats based on what an adversary is actively targeting.
ThreatNG functions as a Reconnaissance Equalizer by giving the defending organization the same comprehensive, external, and unauthenticated view of its digital assets and exposures that an attacker uses during the intelligence-gathering phase. By discovering and prioritizing these blind spots, ThreatNG enables the organization to remediate them before they can be weaponized in a targeted attack.
ThreatNG's Role as a Reconnaissance Equalizer
External Discovery
ThreatNG's core is to perform purely external unauthenticated discovery using no connectors. This is the fundamental equalizer, as it closes the gap between what defenders know (internal assets) and what attackers see (external exposures).
Example of ThreatNG Helping: An attacker performing DNS enumeration (a key reconnaissance technique) looks for forgotten or misconfigured assets. ThreatNG's discovery process identifies all associated subdomains and their hosting environments, including those hosted on unmonitored services, immediately eliminating this reconnaissance blind spot for defenders.
External Assessment
ThreatNG translates raw discovery data into quantified security ratings, which prioritize the exposures an attacker would find most useful.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility (A-F): This assessment checks for "dangling DNS" by identifying CNAME records that point to inactive or unclaimed third-party vendor resources.
Example in Detail: An attacker's passive reconnaissance would find a dangling CNAME record. ThreatNG's assessment finds that the subdomain docs.company.com points to an old, unclaimed Heroku service in its Cloud & Infrastructure vendor list. By flagging this high-risk susceptibility, ThreatNG equals the attacker's intelligence, allowing the defender to fix the CNAME record before an attacker can claim the subdomain for a malicious attack.
Cyber Risk Exposure (A-F): This rating is based on findings like Sensitive Code Discovery and Exposure (code secret exposure) and WHOIS records (missing DNSSEC and WHOIS privacy).
Example in Detail: An attacker's reconnaissance includes searching public code repositories. ThreatNG identifies an exposed configuration file containing an API Key or a lack of WHOIS privacy on the domain. These findings reveal exploitable information and the domain owner's identity, respectively. ThreatNG's rating highlights this as a severe exposure that an attacker could use for initial access or social engineering.
Reporting
The reporting capabilities ensure that the critical exposures found by the "equalizer" are communicated effectively to decision-makers.
MITRE ATT&CK Mapping: ThreatNG automatically translates raw findings (like open ports or leaked credentials) into a strategic narrative by correlating them with specific MITRE ATT&CK techniques, such as Initial Access. This provides the business context needed to justify immediate remediation efforts to the boardroom.
External GRC Assessment: This maps exposed assets and digital risks directly to compliance frameworks like PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, NIST CSF, and POPIA. This allows security leaders to prioritize threats that affect compliance.
Continuous Monitoring
Continuous Monitoring of the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings prevents the reconnaissance advantage from ever returning to the attacker.
Example of ThreatNG Helping: A new partner is added to the organization's supply chain. Continuous monitoring immediately identifies the new Technology Stack of the partner's public-facing assets, providing real-time awareness of any weaknesses an attacker could exploit to pivot to the organization (Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure).
Investigation Modules
The Investigation Modules provide the deep-dive tools needed to act on the intelligence from the reconnaissance equalizer.
Domain Intelligence / Domain Name Permutations: This detects and groups subtle manipulations and additions of a domain (like bitsquatting or homoglyphs) that an attacker would use to launch a perfect phishing attack.
Example in Detail: ThreatNG finds that the domain permutation cornpany.com (using 'rn' for 'm') is available. An attacker performing passive reconnaissance would identify this available typosquatting domain. By using this module, the defender can preemptively register the domain, neutralizing the attacker's phishing reconnaissance effort.
Social Media / Username Exposure: This module conducts Passive Reconnaissance across numerous social media and high-risk forums (like GitHub and Pastebin) to find valid employee usernames.
Example in Detail: An analyst uses this module to discover a key developer's alias is active on a Code & Repository site. This is high-value intelligence for an attacker's reconnaissance. ThreatNG surfaces this identity exposure, allowing the security team to advise the employee to increase account security, thus evening the playing field.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
The intelligence repositories provide the real-world threat context that empowers the equalizer function.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): This repository is the definitive source for cross-referencing all discovered emails and usernames against known data breaches. If an attacker's reconnaissance yields a valid email, this cache confirms if they already have the password.
Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web): This provides an early warning system by grouping Organizational mentions and Associated Ransomware Events on underground forums. This is the ultimate equalizer for intent, revealing the attacker's plans and focus area before the attack even begins.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's role as a Reconnaissance Equalizer is enhanced when its external intelligence informs internal security processes.
Cooperation with SIEM/SOAR: When ThreatNG's external discovery finds an exposed Private IP address on a subdomain, this high-fidelity finding can be sent to a complementary SIEM/SOAR solution. The SIEM can then be configured to generate a high-priority alert for any internal traffic related to that IP, while the SOAR can automatically execute a defensive playbook, such as applying a temporary network segmentation rule at the firewall for that IP, effectively thwarting the active reconnaissance step that would follow the passive discovery.
Cooperation with Vulnerability & Risk Management (VRM) Tools: When ThreatNG's Subdomains Intelligence or Technology Stack modules identify an asset running a technology with an associated KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerability), this prioritized, external threat context can be shared with a complementary VRM tool. The VRM solution can then skip its usual internal scanning queue and immediately push a remediation order to patch that specific vulnerability, prioritizing external risk over general internal vulnerability scores.
