Service Account Exposure
Service account exposure is a cybersecurity issue that occurs when the credentials or access information for a non-human identity are inadvertently made public or are improperly secured. These service accounts are used by applications and automated processes to run tasks and access resources, and they are not associated with a specific human user. Because they often have elevated privileges and are not monitored as closely as human user accounts, they are a primary target for attackers.
Common Causes of Exposure
Service account exposure can happen in several ways:
Credential Leakage: A developer might accidentally hardcode a service account's API key, token, or password directly into an application's source code, which is then made public in a repository like GitHub.
Misconfiguration: Service accounts might be created with default passwords that are never changed, or they may be given more permissions than they need to perform their job, violating the principle of least privilege.
Improper Storage: Credentials might be stored in plain text files on a public server, making them easily discoverable by attackers.
Lack of Lifecycle Management: When an application is decommissioned, its service account might be forgotten and not properly deleted, creating a dormant, unmonitored account that an attacker can hijack.
The Dangers of Exposure
A compromised service account can lead to devastating consequences for an organization:
Lateral Movement: An attacker can use a compromised service account to move laterally across a network, accessing various systems and resources without being detected by traditional monitoring tools.
Privilege Escalation: Since many service accounts have elevated privileges, their compromise can allow an attacker to escalate their access and gain control over critical systems, leading to a complete network takeover.
Undetected Access: Because service accounts are not associated with a human user, their malicious activity can fly under the radar for weeks or months, as it can be difficult to distinguish from normal automated behavior.
ThreatNG helps with Service Account Exposure by providing an external, attacker-centric view of an organization's public-facing assets, specifically identifying and assessing exposed non-human identities (NHIs) and other sensitive data. It finds and highlights credentials that have been inadvertently leaked, allowing an organization to take proactive measures before they are exploited.
ThreatNG’s external discovery capabilities are foundational to addressing service account exposure. It performs unauthenticated reconnaissance to find all of an organization's public-facing assets, including those that are forgotten or unknown to the security team. This can lead to the discovery of a misconfigured cloud service or a subdomain for a retired application that still hosts a publicly accessible API key, which is a key source of service account exposure.
For example, a DevOps team might have deployed a test server on a subdomain with a service account that has access to production data. If this subdomain remains exposed and unmonitored, ThreatNG can detect it and flag the associated risk.
ThreatNG's external assessment capabilities transform raw data into actionable intelligence about service account exposure. It uses various ratings and scores to highlight specific risks.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This is a core assessment for finding exposed service accounts. ThreatNG discovers public code repositories and checks them for exposed credentials and secrets. It can detect hardcoded API keys, cloud credentials (such as AWS Access Key IDs), and security credentials (like PGP private keys or SSH private keys), all of which are commonly used as non-human identities.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates an organization's use of cloud services and SaaS solutions. It can identify open, exposed cloud buckets on platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, which may contain service account credentials or other sensitive data.
ThreatNG's reporting capabilities provide the necessary context to address service account exposures effectively. The Prioritized Report is beneficial, as it categorizes risks as high, medium, low, and informational. This helps security teams focus on the most critical exposures, such as a compromised service account with administrative privileges found on the dark web, rather than being overwhelmed by less critical findings.
ThreatNG provides continuous monitoring of an organization’s external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. This is vital for addressing service account exposure because credentials can be leaked at any time and remain active for long periods. Continuous monitoring ensures that if a service account credential is compromised in a new breach or accidentally exposed in a code repository, the organization is promptly alerted, enabling a timely response.
ThreatNG's investigation modules allow for a detailed examination of service account exposures.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module is highly relevant to service account exposure as it explicitly finds hardcoded credentials in public code repositories. For example, it can find a hardcoded AWS Access Key ID in a public GitHub repository, which an attacker could use to access the organization's cloud infrastructure.
Domain Intelligence: This module can uncover forgotten domains or subdomains used for automated services. It can also identify publicly exposed API endpoints or other service-related subdomains that may be a source of exposure.
NHI Email Exposure: This feature specifically groups discovered email addresses associated with non-human identities (e.g., "svc," "devops," or "admin"). By highlighting these emails, ThreatNG provides a focused view of high-value targets that could be used to impersonate a service account.
ThreatNG’s continuously updated intelligence repositories, known as DarCache, provide the data essential for identifying and contextualizing service account exposure.
DarCache Rupture focuses on Compromised Credentials. If a batch of credentials from a third-party breach includes NHIs like service accounts or API keys, ThreatNG can use this data to assess the risk to an organization.
DarCache Vulnerability includes data from NVD, EPSS, and KEV, which helps to determine the exploitability and real-world impact of vulnerabilities. If an exposed service account is linked to a known vulnerability that is being actively exploited, this repository provides the context to prioritize remediation efforts.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external perspective on service account exposure can be enhanced by complementary solutions that provide internal visibility and control.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions: If ThreatNG discovers an exposed NHI with high privileges, a PAM solution can be used to rotate that credential and enforce stricter access policies automatically. This synergy enables a quicker and more effective response.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Platforms: ThreatNG's findings can be integrated into an IAM system to provide a more complete picture of an organization’s identity landscape. For example, suppose ThreatNG identifies a service account credential exposed in a public code repository. In that case, the IAM system can automatically revoke that credential and provision a new one, mitigating the threat.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems: ThreatNG can feed its external intelligence into a SIEM. For instance, if ThreatNG flags a publicly exposed database port, the SIEM can correlate this with internal logs to detect any unauthorized login attempts to that database from the exposed port, providing a unified view of the threat.
