SharePoint

SharePoint is a web-based platform developed by Microsoft that helps organizations manage content, collaborate on projects, and share information. It offers features like:

• Document libraries and version control

• Team sites and wikis

• Workflow automation

• Integration with other Microsoft Office applications

SharePoint is widely used within organizations for internal collaboration. However, organizations must identify and track all externally identifiable SharePoint implementations connected to their operations. It includes:

• Public-Facing SharePoint Sites: Some organizations might have public-facing SharePoint sites accessible to external users or partners.

• Subsidiaries and Affiliates: There could be separate SharePoint sites for different branches or connected companies, potentially creating data-sharing points.

• Third-Party Vendors and Suppliers: Many vendors might use SharePoint for collaboration within their teams when working with your organization, creating potential data exchange points.

• Shadow IT: Employees might use unauthorized personal or external SharePoint sites for work, introducing security risks.

Understanding the entire SharePoint ecosystem is critical for cybersecurity reasons:

• Attack Surface Expansion: Every connected SharePoint site represents a potential entry point for attackers. Vulnerabilities in a third-party's SharePoint setup could be exploited to access your organization's data on the site.

• Data Leakage: SharePoint sites often store sensitive information like project details, documents, and credentials. A compromised site can expose this data and lead to breaches.

• Misconfigured Permissions: Improper access controls on SharePoint sites can grant unauthorized users access to sensitive information.

• Compliance Issues: Regulations like GDPR and HIPAA have strict data security requirements. Organizations must know where their data resides and how it flows through connected SharePoint sites to ensure compliance.

By comprehensively mapping their SharePoint ecosystem, organizations can proactively manage security risks and protect their data from unauthorized access within their network and their partners.

ThreatNG fortifying your SharePoint Ecosystem

ThreatNG, with its external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings capabilities, can significantly enhance an organization's cybersecurity posture, especially when considering a platform like SharePoint.

External Discovery: ThreatNG's ability to perform purely external, unauthenticated discovery is crucial for SharePoint. It can identify publicly exposed SharePoint instances, including those that might be unknown to internal IT teams (shadow IT), development or testing environments, or misconfigured sites that are unintentionally accessible from the internet. This "attacker's view" ensures no vulnerable SharePoint entry points are overlooked. For example, ThreatNG might discover a SharePoint site hosted on a forgotten subdomain that was set up for a temporary project and never taken down, which an attacker could then target.

External Assessment: ThreatNG performs numerous external assessments that are highly relevant to SharePoint security:

• Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: ThreatNG analyzes external parts of a web application to identify potential entry points for attackers. This could involve a publicly accessible SharePoint login page that is vulnerable to clickjacking or has outdated components, which ThreatNG would flag.

• Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates a website's subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. If a SharePoint instance is hosted on a subdomain, ThreatNG could identify if its DNS record points to a deprovisioned service, making it vulnerable to a subdomain takeover. An attacker could then claim the subdomain and potentially host malicious content or launch phishing campaigns disguised as the legitimate SharePoint site.

• BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: ThreatNG assesses susceptibility based on sentiment, financial findings, domain intelligence, and presence on the dark web. It could reveal that an organization's email intelligence (DMARC, SPF, DKIM records) is weak for a domain associated with a publicly accessible SharePoint instance, making it easier for attackers to spoof emails to trick users into revealing SharePoint credentials. It might also find compromised credentials for employees on the dark web, which could be used to access SharePoint.

• Brand Damage Susceptibility: Derived from attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG violations, and sentiment/financials, ThreatNG can detect if an organization's brand, often associated with its SharePoint presence, is being used in malicious domain permutations for phishing or scams that could lead to brand damage.

• Data Leak Susceptibility: ThreatNG identifies data leak susceptibility through cloud and SaaS exposure, dark web presence, and domain intelligence. For instance, if a SharePoint site is integrated with a cloud storage service like Amazon S3 and an S3 bucket is unintentionally left open, ThreatNG could detect this exposure, indicating a potential data leak from SharePoint content. It could also find SharePoint user credentials on the dark web.

• Cyber Risk Exposure: ThreatNG considers certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, sensitive ports, code secret exposure, and compromised credentials. If a SharePoint server has an exposed sensitive port, a known vulnerability in its web server software, or if sensitive API keys for integrated applications are found in public code repositories, ThreatNG would highlight these as cyber risks.

• ESG Exposure: ThreatNG rates an organization based on the severity of discovered ESG violations. While not directly tied to SharePoint's technical configuration, a public violation (e.g., related to data privacy practices that involve how data is handled in SharePoint) could be identified, impacting the organization's overall risk profile.

• Supply Chain & Third-Party Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates vendor technologies and cloud/SaaS exposure. If a third-party vendor providing a SharePoint add-on or service has known vulnerabilities in their technology stack, ThreatNG could identify this indirect exposure to the organization's SharePoint environment.

• Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This assessment considers exposed sensitive ports, private IPs, known vulnerabilities, and dark web presence. ThreatNG might detect that a publicly accessible SharePoint server has an exposed private IP or an unpatched vulnerability, making it a high-value target for ransomware groups whose activities are tracked by DarCache Ransomware.

• Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG discovers mobile apps in marketplaces and examines their content for credentials and identifiers. If an organization has a custom mobile app that connects to SharePoint and this app contains hardcoded SharePoint API keys or user credentials, ThreatNG would detect these, presenting a direct path for attackers.

Reporting: ThreatNG offers a range of reports, including Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, and Informational), and Security Ratings (A through F). These reports would clearly articulate the external risks identified for SharePoint instances, allowing an organization's leadership to understand the overall security posture (e.g., an "F" rating due to multiple critical SharePoint vulnerabilities), for technical teams to get detailed vulnerability information and remediation steps, and to prioritize fixes for the most essential issues impacting SharePoint. The External GRC Assessment Mappings for PCI DSS and POPIA would also help an organization demonstrate compliance related to their SharePoint data.

Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG continuously monitors the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. For SharePoint, this means that if a new vulnerability is discovered in a publicly exposed SharePoint server, or if a configuration change accidentally exposes a previously private SharePoint site, ThreatNG would promptly detect and alert the organization to this new risk, providing ongoing visibility into the evolving external threat landscape.

Investigation Modules: ThreatNG's investigation modules allow for deep dives into specific findings relevant to SharePoint:

• Domain Intelligence:

  • DNS Intelligence: ThreatNG can analyze DNS records associated with SharePoint domains, identify vendors and technologies used (e.g., detecting specific web server technologies hosting SharePoint, such as IIS), and flag domain name permutations that could be used for phishing attacks against SharePoint users.

  • Subdomain Intelligence: This module can identify specific SharePoint subdomains, analyze their HTTP responses and headers for security issues or deprecated technologies, and discover exposed administrative pages or development environments of SharePoint instances. It can also detect exposed sensitive ports on SharePoint servers, such as SQL Server ports if integrated, or remote access services like RDP if improperly configured.

  • Email Intelligence: This helps assess the security presence of email (DMARC, SPF, DKIM records) for domains used for SharePoint login or communication, directly impacting the susceptibility to BEC and phishing attacks targeting SharePoint users.

• Sensitive Code Exposure:

  • Code Repository Exposure: ThreatNG discovers public code repositories and investigates their content for sensitive data. If developers accidentally committed SharePoint-related API keys, connection strings, or credentials to public GitHub repositories, ThreatNG would detect these, preventing potential unauthorized access to SharePoint.

• Mobile Application Discovery: ThreatNG discovers an organization's mobile apps in marketplaces and analyzes their contents. Suppose a custom mobile app that connects to SharePoint contains hardcoded access credentials or security keys. In that case, ThreatNG identifies these, preventing attackers from extracting them and gaining unauthorized access to SharePoint data.

• Search Engine Exploitation:

  • Robots.txt: ThreatNG analyzes the robots.txt file of SharePoint sites to identify if sensitive directories (e.g., admin pages, development resources, ticket systems) are inadvertently being exposed to search engines.

  • Search Engine Attack Surface: This facility helps organizations investigate their susceptibility to exposing sensitive information via search engines. ThreatNG could reveal if error messages, user data, or privileged folders related to SharePoint are indexed by search engines, making them discoverable by attackers.

• Cloud and SaaS Exposure: ThreatNG identifies both sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services, as well as open, exposed cloud buckets. It can specifically identify if SharePoint Online implementations are associated with the organization and assess their exposure. For instance, if an organization has misconfigured external sharing settings in SharePoint Online, leading to publicly accessible documents, ThreatNG would detect this.

• Online Sharing Exposure: ThreatNG checks for an organization's presence on code-sharing platforms, such as Pastebin and GitHub. If SharePoint configuration files, user lists, or sensitive data snippets are accidentally pasted onto these platforms, ThreatNG would identify these leaks.

• Archived Web Pages: ThreatNG can discover archived web pages of an organization's online presence. This means if sensitive SharePoint pages, such as old login portals with known vulnerabilities or development pages containing credentials, were archived, ThreatNG could find these, revealing past exposures that could still be exploited.

• Dark Web Presence: ThreatNG monitors the dark web for mentions of organizations, ransomware events, and compromised credentials. Suppose SharePoint user accounts or administrator credentials are found on dark web forums or marketplaces. In that case, ThreatNG provides this critical intelligence, enabling the organization to force password resets and mitigate the risk of account takeover.

Intelligence Repositories (DarCache):

ThreatNG's continuously updated intelligence repositories provide vital context:

• DarCache Dark Web, Rupture (Compromised Credentials), and Ransomware: These repositories provide intelligence on compromised credentials and ransomware gang activities. If SharePoint credentials are found in DarCache Rupture, or if an organization's external-facing SharePoint instance exhibits characteristics targeted by ransomware groups tracked in DarCache Ransomware, ThreatNG provides this actionable intelligence.

• DarCache Vulnerability (NVD, EPSS, KEV, eXploit): This repository provides a holistic view of vulnerabilities, their exploitability, likelihood, and impact. For a SharePoint server, ThreatNG would use DarCache NVD to understand the technical details and severity of any identified CVEs affecting SharePoint. DarCache EPSS would provide a probabilistic estimate of whether a SharePoint vulnerability is likely to be exploited shortly, aiding prioritization. DarCache KEV would highlight if a vulnerability in a SharePoint component is actively being exploited in the wild, indicating an immediate threat. DarCache eXploit would provide direct links to Proof-of-Concept exploits for SharePoint vulnerabilities, allowing security teams to understand and reproduce the exploit to verify its impact.

• DarCache Mobile: This repository specifically details if access or security credentials are found within mobile applications. If an organization's mobile app connecting to SharePoint has hardcoded sensitive information, DarCache Mobile provides this granular detail.

Complementary Solutions:

ThreatNG's external focus can be synergistically combined with various complementary solutions to create a more robust security ecosystem for SharePoint:

• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Solutions: ThreatNG identifies external vulnerabilities and risks. A SIEM solution (e.g., Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel) can ingest logs from SharePoint and other internal systems to monitor for internal malicious activity, unauthorized access attempts, or data exfiltration that ThreatNG might flag as a potential external vector. For example, ThreatNG might report an exposed SharePoint login page with a weak password policy, and the SIEM could then correlate failed login attempts from unusual IP addresses against that SharePoint instance.

• Vulnerability Management Platforms (VMPs): While ThreatNG focuses on external, unauthenticated vulnerabilities, VMPs (e.g., Tenable, Qualys) perform deep, authenticated scans of internal SharePoint servers and applications. ThreatNG can identify an externally exposed SharePoint service; a VMP can then conduct a detailed scan of that specific server for internal misconfigurations or patch levels that ThreatNG cannot detect. The combination provides a holistic view of both external and internal vulnerabilities for SharePoint.

• Identity and Access Management (IAM) Solutions: ThreatNG might identify instances of compromised credentials for SharePoint users on the dark web (via DarCache Rupture). An IAM solution (e.g., Azure Active Directory, Okta) can enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) and conditional access policies for SharePoint, directly mitigating the risk of credential compromise. ThreatNG alerts on external credential exposure, and the IAM solution enforces controls to prevent their misuse for SharePoint access.

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Solutions: ThreatNG can detect instances of sensitive SharePoint data exposed publicly (e.g., in open cloud buckets or code repositories). A DLP solution, deployed within SharePoint or integrated with Microsoft 365, can prevent such data from being shared inappropriately, both internally and externally. ThreatNG identifies an existing leak, while DLP works to prevent future leaks from SharePoint.

• Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Tools: For organizations using SharePoint Online, CSPM tools (e.g., Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Wiz) can continuously monitor the cloud configuration of the SharePoint environment for misconfigurations and compliance deviations. ThreatNG's Cloud and SaaS Exposure module might identify an unsanctioned SharePoint site in a cloud environment, and a CSPM tool could then provide granular details on its specific misconfigurations within that cloud provider.

• Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): While ThreatNG has its intelligence repositories (DarCache), integrating with a broader TIP could enrich ThreatNG's findings with additional context on emerging threats, specific attacker tactics targeting SharePoint, or new exploit kits. For instance, if a TIP identifies a new phishing campaign specifically targeting SharePoint users, this intelligence could enhance ThreatNG's ability to assess BEC & Phishing Susceptibility.