Toxic Combinations
In the context of cybersecurity, "toxic combinations" refer to a set of individually seemingly minor or acceptable security issues, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or access privileges that, when present together in a particular pattern, create an exponentially amplified and significant security risk. The combined effect of these elements is far greater than the sum of their impacts, providing a determined attacker with a clear and often undetected path to compromise high-value resources or sensitive data.
Here's a detailed breakdown of toxic combinations in cybersecurity:
1. The Core Concept:
Synergy of Weaknesses: The fundamental idea is that different security weaknesses, which might be low-priority on their own, can interact in unexpected ways. This interaction creates a more potent and exploitable vulnerability that traditional, siloed security assessments often miss.
Attack Path Creation: Toxic combinations typically highlight a "path to compromise." This means an attacker can chain together these seemingly disparate issues to achieve their objective, whether it's unauthorized access, privilege escalation, data exfiltration, or system compromise.
Elevated Risk: The risk associated with a toxic combination is significantly higher than that of its components. It can lead to severe consequences, including significant data breaches, financial losses, legal repercussions, regulatory fines, and reputational damage.
2. Common Examples and Scenarios:
Privilege Combinations (Toxic Role Combinations): This is a prevalent type of toxic combination. It occurs when a single individual, system, or account is granted multiple access rights or roles that, when combined, create an excessive level of privilege. For example:
An employee with access to both financial systems and customer data can manipulate records and steal information.
An administrator who also oversees security, potentially enabling them to change logs or security settings undetected.
A user with both "front-end write" privileges (modifying financial information) and "back-end" access (seeing underlying data) creates a potential for monetary fraud.
Vulnerability Chaining: Multiple vulnerabilities in different components of a system are being exploited sequentially. For instance:
A web application with a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability, combined with a weak password policy, allows an attacker to inject malicious scripts and compromise user accounts.
A device with an unpatched critical vulnerability that also lacks endpoint protection and is owned by an admin who has failed phishing tests.
Misconfigurations and Weak Security Posture:
A cloud storage bucket with public access combined with sensitive data stored without encryption, exposing confidential information to anyone.
An identity using the same weak password across multiple critical applications, coupled with the absence of multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Outdated access permissions for an employee that are not revoked after a role change, combined with insufficient activity monitoring.
Data Co-location (Toxic Data Combinations): When multiple types of sensitive information are stored together in the exact location (e.g., a database table, a document), it unnecessarily elevates the data risk profile. For example, having credit card numbers, names, and addresses co-located. If this location is breached, the impact is magnified.
3. Why Toxic Combinations are Difficult to Detect:
Siloed Security Tools: Traditional security tools often operate independently, flagging individual issues as isolated, low-risk incidents. They lack the contextual awareness to correlate these seemingly benign alerts and recognize the potential for a high-risk scenario when they combine.
Complexity of Modern Environments: The increasing complexity of cloud, SaaS, and AI environments, with their interconnected systems and services, makes it challenging to map out all possible interactions and identify these hidden risks.
Manual Effort: Identifying toxic combinations often requires extensive manual analysis of attack patterns, understanding how different parts of a network interact, and correlating data from various siloed sources. This is a time-consuming and prone-to-error process.
"Below the Radar" Issues: Individual elements of a toxic combination may not trigger high-severity alerts on their own, meaning they can easily be overlooked or de-prioritized.
4. Impact of Toxic Combinations:
Amplified Data Breaches: A single breach can lead to the exposure of a vast trove of critical data when highly sensitive information is co-located.
System Compromise: Attackers can gain unauthorized access, escalate privileges, and take control of critical systems, disrupting operations and impacting business continuity.
Financial Losses: Due to data breaches, fraud, and the cost of remediation.
Legal and Regulatory Penalties: Non-compliance with data protection regulations and industry standards.
Reputational Damage: Loss of customer trust, investor confidence, and market share.
5. Mitigating Toxic Combinations:
Holistic Risk Assessment: Move beyond individual vulnerability scanning to analyze relationships between different types of risks and how they might combine.
Contextual Awareness: Use security solutions that can connect disparate alerts and identify the "toxic" nature of combined risks. Security Command Center Enterprise, for instance, is designed to detect such combinations through attack path simulations.
Principle of Least Privilege: Enforce strict access controls and regularly review who has access to what data and why, ensuring that users only have the minimum permissions necessary for their job functions.
Segregation of Duties: Clearly define and separate user identities, roles, and access privileges to ensure no individual has conflicting responsibilities that could create a conflict of interest or opportunity for abuse.
Data Classification and Governance: Understand what sensitive data you have, where it's stored, and how it's handled to prevent toxic data co-location. Implement strict data access policies.
Continuous Monitoring: Implement constant monitoring of security controls, user behavior, and system configurations to detect anomalous activities that might indicate a toxic combination being exploited.
Automated Solutions: Use advanced security platforms (like some Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) solutions) that can intelligently connect seemingly disparate alerts and identify toxic combinations of risks before they can be exploited.
Regular Audits and Reviews: Conduct regular audits of access privileges, system configurations, and data storage practices to identify and remediate potential toxic combinations proactively.
Understanding and addressing toxic combinations requires a shift in perspective from focusing on individual weaknesses to recognizing how multiple minor issues can conspire to create a critical security vulnerability. It's about seeing the bigger picture of interconnected risks within a complex digital environment.
ThreatNG, as an all-in-one external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings solution, offers comprehensive capabilities to help organizations identify and mitigate toxic combinations in their cybersecurity posture.
Here's how ThreatNG can help, with detailed examples:
External Discovery
ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery, meaning it operates like an attacker would, without needing any connectors or internal access. This allows it to find assets and exposures that might be unknown to the organization, which is crucial for uncovering the components of a toxic combination.
Example: ThreatNG might discover an old, forgotten subdomain (e.g., dev.oldcompanywebsite.com) that is still live but unmonitored. This unauthenticated discovery is the first step in identifying a potential ingredient for a toxic combination.
External Assessment
ThreatNG provides a range of external assessments that are vital for pinpointing individual weaknesses that could form toxic combinations. These assessments offer an outside-in view, similar to how an attacker would perceive an organization's vulnerabilities.
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This assessment analyzes parts of a web application accessible from the outside world to identify potential entry points.
Example: ThreatNG could identify a web application with an outdated content management system (CMS) that has known vulnerabilities, indicating susceptibility to hijack. This vulnerability, while problematic on its own, becomes "toxic" when combined with other factors.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates a website's susceptibility to subdomain takeover by analyzing subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses.
Example: ThreatNG might discover that
support.yourcompany.compoints to an external service that has been decommissioned, making it vulnerable to a subdomain takeover. If an attacker takes over this subdomain and combines it with a phishing campaign, it creates a toxic combination for brand damage and credential theft.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: Derived from sentiment, financial findings, domain intelligence (including DNS intelligence like domain name permutations and Web3 domains), and dark web presence (compromised credentials).
Example: ThreatNG could identify that common permutations of your domain name (e.g.,
yourcornpany.cominstead ofyourcompany.com) are available and taken by malicious actors, alongside discovering compromised credentials for some of your employees on the dark web. This forms a toxic combination, enabling highly effective Business Email Compromise (BEC) or phishing attacks, as attackers can impersonate your brand and use stolen credentials.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: This score is derived from attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG violations, sentiment and financials (like lawsuits and negative news), and domain intelligence.
Example: ThreatNG might uncover negative news articles about a recent data incident (Sentiment and Financials) alongside the discovery of multiple imposter domains (Domain Intelligence). This toxic combination significantly increases the organization's susceptibility to brand damage, as attackers can leverage the negative press and fake domains to erode public trust further.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This is derived from external attack surface and digital risk intelligence based on cloud and SaaS exposure, dark web presence, domain intelligence, sentiment, and financials.
Example: ThreatNG could detect an open AWS S3 bucket (Cloud and SaaS Exposure) containing unencrypted customer data, combined with evidence of compromised employee credentials on the dark web. This is a critical toxic combination, as an attacker could use the compromised credentials to access the already exposed bucket and exfiltrate sensitive data.
Cyber Risk Exposure: Considers certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports, factoring in code secret exposure, cloud/SaaS exposure, and compromised credentials on the dark web.
Example: ThreatNG might identify an exposed sensitive port (e.g., an unprotected database port) on a server that also hosts an application with known vulnerabilities, and further discover that developer credentials related to this application are available on the dark web. This toxic combination provides a direct path for an attacker to gain access to the database, potentially leading to a complete system compromise and data breach.
ESG Exposure: Rates an organization based on discovered environmental, social, and governance (ESG) violations, highlighting areas like competition, consumer, employment, and environmental offenses. While not directly a "technical" toxic combination, it highlights risks that can impact public perception and regulatory scrutiny.
Example: ThreatNG identifies a public lawsuit related to data privacy (Sentiment and Financials) combined with publicly accessible internal documents from an archived webpage containing consumer data. This highlights a toxic combination of poor data governance leading to regulatory and reputational risk.
Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure: Derived from domain intelligence (enumeration of vendor technologies from DNS and subdomains), technology stack, and cloud/SaaS exposure.
Example: ThreatNG might identify that a critical third-party vendor uses an outdated version of a widely-used technology (Technology Stack) and also has an exposed cloud service. If your organization heavily relies on this vendor, this creates a toxic combination for supply chain attacks, where a compromise of the vendor directly impacts your security.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: Calculated based on domain intelligence (exposed sensitive ports, exposed private IPs, and known vulnerabilities), dark web presence (compromised credentials and ransomware events), and sentiment and financials (SEC Form 8-Ks).
Example: ThreatNG could detect exposed sensitive ports and known vulnerabilities on your external network, alongside intelligence about recent ransomware events targeting organizations in your industry and compromised credentials of your employees found on the dark web. This constitutes a highly toxic combination, indicating a very high susceptibility to a ransomware attack.
Mobile App Exposure: Evaluates how exposed an organization’s mobile apps are through discovery in marketplaces and checks for access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers within their contents.
Example: ThreatNG discovers a mobile app in a public marketplace that contains hardcoded API keys for a critical backend service (Access Credentials). If this backend service also has a misconfiguration that allows API key abuse, it forms a toxic combination, enabling an attacker to bypass authentication and access sensitive data.
Positive Security Indicators: Beyond vulnerabilities, ThreatNG identifies beneficial security controls like Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) or multi-factor authentication (MFA) from an external attacker's perspective. This helps to understand which positive controls are not present or are ineffective in mitigating potential toxic combinations.
Example: ThreatNG might identify that a WAF is present but misconfigured, allowing certain attack vectors to bypass it, or that MFA is not enforced on a critical externally exposed service. While seemingly a "positive" indicator, if the WAF is ineffective or MFA is absent where needed, it can contribute to a toxic combination.
Reporting
ThreatNG provides various reports, including Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, Informational), Security Ratings (A through F), Inventory, Ransomware Susceptibility, U.S. SEC Filings, and External GRC Assessment Mappings. These reports are critical for communicating the risks posed by toxic combinations to different stakeholders.
Example: An Executive Report could highlight a "C" security rating due to a critical toxic combination of an exposed cloud bucket with sensitive data and compromised employee credentials. The Technical Report would then detail the specific vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and compromised data that form this combination, allowing security teams to prioritize remediation based on the "High" risk level of the combined issue.
Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG continuously monitors external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. This is essential for detecting the emergence of new toxic combinations or changes that exacerbate existing ones.
Example: Continuous monitoring can alert an organization if a new unauthenticated service is spun up (external discovery) that inadvertently exposes an unpatched vulnerability (external assessment), and simultaneously, new compromised credentials for that service's administrator appear on the dark web. ThreatNG's continuous monitoring would detect this evolving toxic combination in near real-time.
Investigation Modules
ThreatNG's investigation modules allow for deep dives into discovered assets and risks, providing granular details necessary to understand the components of toxic combinations.
Domain Intelligence: This includes Domain Overview, DNS Intelligence, Email Intelligence, WHOIS Intelligence, Subdomain Intelligence, IP Intelligence, and Certificate Intelligence.
Example: ThreatNG's Subdomain Intelligence might identify an abandoned subdomain with an exposed admin directory and an outdated web server. Coupled with its DNS Intelligence showing a vulnerable DNS record, this creates a toxic combination ripe for subdomain takeover and potential website defacement or phishing.
Sensitive Code Exposure: Discovers public code repositories and investigates their contents for sensitive data like access credentials, security credentials, and configuration files.
Example: ThreatNG might find a public GitHub repository (Code Repository Exposure) containing hardcoded AWS access keys (Access Credentials) in an application's configuration file. Suppose this application is also found to be running on an externally accessible server with a vulnerability. In that case, it forms a toxic combination, allowing an attacker to gain access to your AWS environment.
Mobile Application Discovery: Discovers mobile apps in marketplaces and identifies sensitive content like access credentials and security credentials within them.
Example: ThreatNG discovers a publicly available mobile app that contains embedded API keys for a payment gateway (Access Credentials). If this payment gateway also has weak rate limiting or insufficient fraud detection, it creates a toxic combination, enabling an attacker to initiate fraudulent transactions.
Search Engine Exploitation: Helps investigate susceptibility to exposing errors, sensitive information, privileged folders, and user data via search engines.
Example: ThreatNG identifies that search engines are indexing a
robots.txtfile that explicitly disallows crawling of an "admin" directory, inadvertently highlighting its existence. If this "admin" directory is also found to have weak authentication, this forms a toxic combination, making it easy for attackers to locate and attempt to compromise the admin interface.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: Identifies sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services, impersonations, and open exposed cloud buckets. It also covers various SaaS implementations.
Example: ThreatNG discovers an unsanctioned cloud storage service (Unsanctioned Cloud Services) used by an employee, which also happens to be publicly accessible due to misconfiguration (Open Exposed Cloud Buckets). If sensitive company documents are stored there, this creates a severe toxic combination for data leaks, as the organization has no oversight or security controls over this shadow IT.
Online Sharing Exposure: Detects organizational entity presence in code-sharing platforms like Pastebin and GitHub Gist.
Example: ThreatNG finds a Pastebin entry containing internal network diagrams and credentials (Organizational Entity Presence) that a disgruntled former employee posted. This toxic combination provides an attacker with a blueprint of the internal network and potential access points.
Sentiment and Financials: Identifies lawsuits, layoff chatter, SEC filings, and ESG violations related to the organization.
Example: ThreatNG uncovers recent SEC Form 8-Ks detailing a cybersecurity incident (SEC Filings) and simultaneously identifies a surge in negative news mentions and social media chatter about the incident. This creates a toxic combination of public knowledge about a breach and negative sentiment, potentially attracting more attackers or impacting investor confidence.
Archived Web Pages: Discovers archived online presence, including various file types, login pages, and user/admin names.
Example: ThreatNG finds an archived version of a development environment's login page that explicitly states "default password is 'welcome123'" (Login Pages, User Names). Even if the current production environment is secure, combining this archived information with credential stuffing attacks against other services or social engineering creates a toxic combination.
Dark Web Presence: Identifies organizational mentions of related people, places, or things, associated ransomware events, and compromised credentials.
Example: ThreatNG discovers a forum discussion on the dark web where a ransomware group mentions targeting organizations in your specific industry (Associated Ransomware Events), and simultaneously finds a large dump of compromised credentials for your domain. This is a critical toxic combination, indicating a high likelihood of an imminent and targeted ransomware attack.
Technology Stack: Identifies all technologies used by the organization.
Example: ThreatNG determines that an organization uses an outdated version of a specific web server (Web Servers) that has a known critical vulnerability. If this server is also configured with overly permissive access controls, it creates a toxic combination, making it highly susceptible to exploitation.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
ThreatNG's continuously updated intelligence repositories, branded as DarCache, provide critical context for identifying and prioritizing toxic combinations.
Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web): Provides insights into discussions and activities on the dark web.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): Contains constantly updated information on compromised credentials. This is a prime source for identifying one component of many toxic combinations (e.g., exposed data + compromised credentials).
Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware): Tracks over 70 ransomware gangs. This allows organizations to understand if they are being targeted or are at high risk, especially when combined with other vulnerabilities.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): Provides a holistic view of external risks, including real-world exploitability, likelihood of exploitation, and potential impact.
NVD (DarCache NVD): Provides technical characteristics and impact of vulnerabilities.
EPSS (DarCache EPSS): Offers a probabilistic estimate of exploitation likelihood. This is vital for prioritizing, as a severe vulnerability with a high EPSS score, when combined with an exposed asset, forms a more potent toxic combination.
KEV (DarCache KEV): Lists vulnerabilities actively exploited in the wild. If a KEV is present on an exposed asset, it immediately signals a toxic combination that requires urgent remediation.
Verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits (DarCache eXploit): Provides direct links to PoC exploits, enabling security teams to assess real-world impact.
Example: ThreatNG identifies an exposed web server running an old, unpatched version of software. DarCache Vulnerability reveals a high CVSS score (NVD) for a known vulnerability, a high EPSS score indicating likely exploitation, and a KEV entry confirming active exploitation. Furthermore, DarCache eXploit provides a direct link to a verified PoC for this vulnerability. This combination of an exposed asset, a known exploitable vulnerability, and readily available PoC code represents a highly dangerous toxic combination, making the asset extremely vulnerable to immediate compromise.
ESG Violations (DarCache ESG): Provides information on various ESG-related offenses.
Bug Bounty Programs (DarCache Bug Bounty): Lists in-scope and out-of-scope assets for bug bounty programs.
SEC Form 8-Ks (DarCache 8-K): Provides relevant SEC filings for publicly traded companies.
Mobile Apps (DarCache Mobile): Indicates the presence of access and security credentials within discovered mobile apps.
Working with Complementary Solutions
While ThreatNG is a comprehensive solution, it can synergize with other cybersecurity tools to create an even stronger defense against toxic combinations.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) / Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Solutions:
Synergy: ThreatNG identifies the external attack surface and potential toxic combinations (e.g., an exposed sensitive port combined with a known vulnerability and compromised credentials). This external intelligence can be fed into a SIEM. The SIEM can then correlate ThreatNG's findings with internal log data from firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions. If ThreatNG flags a potentially toxic combination, the SIEM can look for internal activity patterns that might indicate an attacker trying to exploit it. A SOAR platform could then automate the response, for example, by blocking the IP address attempting to manipulate the combination or initiating a vulnerability scan on the affected asset.
Example: ThreatNG identifies an externally facing SSH port that is open and a related compromised credential on the dark web. It also notes a high EPSS score for an SSH vulnerability. This alert is sent to the SIEM. The SIEM, correlating with internal logs, detects multiple failed login attempts on that SSH port using the compromised credentials and a sudden spike in network traffic originating from that port. The SOAR platform, triggered by the SIEM alert and ThreatNG's external context, automatically blocks the attacker's IP at the firewall and creates a high-priority ticket for the security team to patch the SSH vulnerability and reset the compromised credentials.
Vulnerability Management Platforms:
Synergy: ThreatNG excels at external discovery and assessment, identifying externally exploitable vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. This information complements internal vulnerability scanners that focus on internal network assets. By combining ThreatNG's external view with internal scan data, an organization gains a holistic understanding of vulnerabilities, especially those that could form toxic combinations when an external vulnerability is chained with an internal one.
Example: ThreatNG identifies a web application firewall (WAF) bypass vulnerability on an externally facing web application. The internal vulnerability management platform also reports that the underlying web server has an unpatched operating system vulnerability that allows local privilege escalation. Individually, these might be medium-severity. However, together, ThreatNG highlights the external access point, and the internal scanner confirms the path to higher privileges. The combined intelligence allows the organization to prioritize patching the OS vulnerability with extreme urgency because it's now part of a critical, toxic combination.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Solutions:
Synergy: ThreatNG identifies compromised credentials on the dark web and can highlight toxic combinations of excessive privileges that are externally visible. IAM solutions manage user identities and access rights internally. By integrating ThreatNG's insights, IAM solutions can be more proactive in revoking compromised credentials, enforcing stronger MFA policies on accounts identified in toxic combinations, or adjusting overly permissive roles.
Example: ThreatNG identifies an employee's email address and password on the dark web that is also tied to an administrative account. The IAM solution confirms that this account has broad access across multiple critical systems, creating a toxic combination of compromised credentials and excessive privileges. The IAM system can then automatically trigger a forced password reset and MFA enrollment for that user, and also flag the account for a privilege review.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Solutions:
Synergy: ThreatNG detects data leak susceptibility through cloud/SaaS exposure, dark web presence, and code secret exposure. This external visibility can inform and enhance a DLP solution's rules and monitoring capabilities. DLP solutions, which monitor data in transit and at rest, can then focus on preventing the exfiltration of data identified as being at risk by ThreatNG's external assessment.
Example: ThreatNG identifies an open, publicly exposed cloud storage bucket containing sensitive customer data. This information is fed to the DLP solution. While the bucket itself is external, the DLP solution can be configured to detect attempts to upload similar types of sensitive data to other unsanctioned cloud services or to prevent the movement of such data from internal systems, thus closing off another potential path for data leakage if the current exposed bucket is not immediately secured.
By providing a holistic, outside-in view of an organization's security posture and actively identifying the synergistic effects of multiple weaknesses, ThreatNG helps organizations move beyond isolated vulnerability patching to proactively address and mitigate the most impactful "toxic combinations" that attackers are most likely to exploit.
