Service Email Accounts
In the context of cybersecurity, a service email account is a non-human account created to allow applications, services, and automated processes to communicate and perform actions without direct human involvement. Unlike a user account tied to a specific person, a service account provides an identity for a program or IT service. These accounts are crucial for running automated tasks, such as those used by databases, web servers, and other critical business applications.
Service accounts can pose significant cybersecurity risks due to their non-human nature and potential for elevated privileges. They are often not subject to the same security controls as human user accounts, such as regular password changes or multi-factor authentication (MFA). This can leave them vulnerable to credential theft and lateral movement attacks, where a compromised account is used to gain further access to a network. Because they run continuously in the background, a compromised service account can provide an attacker with persistent, undetected access. Organizations also face challenges in managing and inventorying service accounts, which can lead to a lack of visibility and the existence of forgotten, over-privileged accounts long after they were initially used.
ThreatNG provides a robust approach to helping organizations manage and secure service email accounts by leveraging its core capabilities.
External Discovery and Assessment
ThreatNG's external discovery engine, which requires no connectors, continuously crawls the internet to find exposed email addresses on an organization's external attack surface. It groups these emails into a dedicated "NHI Email Exposure" category, which includes those identified for specific roles and functions, such as admin, devops, git, jenkins, and saas.
ThreatNG’s external assessment capabilities provide several ways to evaluate the risk associated with these accounts:
Data Leak Susceptibility: The assessment factors in ThreatNG’s Dark Web Presence, which looks for compromised credentials, to determine if a service email has been exposed in a data leak.
Example: If ThreatNG discovers
billing-svc@example.comin a list of compromised credentials on the dark web, it indicates a high risk of a data leak.
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This score analyzes parts of a web application accessible from the outside world to identify potential entry points for attackers. Service email addresses can be found in publicly accessible areas, raising this risk.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This assessment is derived from Domain Intelligence, which includes email security presence and format prediction.
Example: ThreatNG can identify an exposed service email account and assess whether it has proper email authentication protocols (such as DMARC, SPF, and DKIM), which helps reduce the risk of spoofing or phishing attacks.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This considers factors like vulnerabilities and sensitive ports. A service email account might be linked to a known vulnerability. ThreatNG also factors in compromised credentials on the dark web, which increases the risk of successful attacks.
Code Secret Exposure: The system discovers code repositories and investigates them for sensitive data.
Example: A scan of a public code repository might reveal a service email like
api-access@example.comembedded in a configuration file along with a plaintext API key, which would contribute to a "Code Secret Exposure" score and highlight a critical risk.
Investigation and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG provides continuous monitoring of an organization's external attack surface, offering real-time updates and alerts on discovered risks. This ensures that new exposures of service emails, such as their sudden appearance in a new dark web data dump, are detected immediately.
The platform's investigation modules, such as Domain Intelligence and Sensitive Code Exposure, are key to understanding the context of these findings.
Domain Intelligence: ThreatNG can detect domain name permutations that could be used for phishing against service accounts. It can also use Email Intelligence to provide details about email security presence and format predictions.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module is crucial for identifying service emails hard-coded into public code repositories, alongside credentials or other sensitive information, thereby highlighting a significant security risk.
Reporting and Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG provides various reports, including Executive, Technical, and Prioritized, which detail all identified service email addresses, their location, and associated risk levels. For example, a technical report would list a service email found in a publicly exposed code repository as a "High" priority risk, including reasoning and recommendations for remediation.
ThreatNG can work in conjunction with complementary solutions to enhance the security posture.
For security awareness training: ThreatNG can identify a specific service email exposed in a breach and automatically assign a targeted phishing awareness training module through a connected security awareness platform.
For identity and access management (IAM): When ThreatNG detects an exposed service email account, it can automatically trigger a password reset or enable multi-factor authentication through an integrated IAM solution, strengthening the account's security.
For threat intelligence: ThreatNG can use a threat intelligence feed to learn that a phishing campaign is targeting a specific exposed service email. This allows ThreatNG to prioritize monitoring and mitigation actions for that email address.
