Travel and Lifestyle Sites

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Written By Threat NG Staff

Travel and Lifestyle sites are digital platforms focused on real-world activities, including navigation, travel planning, restaurant reviews, health tracking, and fitness routines. In a cybersecurity context, these sites are high-risk targets because they collect highly sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (PII), real-time location data, and detailed health information. The primary risks include location tracking abuse, targeted social engineering based on PII, and massive data breaches that expose health and travel history.

Maps & Travel Sites

These platforms are used for navigation, route planning, reviewing businesses, and recording travel experiences, often relying on GPS data.

  • Cybersecurity Context:

    • Location Tracking Abuse (Doxing): Services like Flightradar24, Foursquare, and Google Maps track precise or near-real-time user locations and check-ins. Malicious actors can exploit vulnerabilities or use compromised credentials to track high-value targets (executives, journalists) or identify patterns of movement, posing a physical security risk.

    • Phishing and Fraud: Review platforms like TripAdvisor and Zomato are vulnerable to fake accounts posting malicious links that appear to be hotel bookings or restaurant specials, leading to payment fraud or credential theft.

    • Data Brokerage: The vast amounts of location data and travel history collected by these sites are highly valuable and are often sold or brokered, increasing the risk of exposure if data handling is not secure.

    • Examples: A threat actor gains access to a person's Foursquare or Google Maps history, learning their daily commute and where they dine (Zomato), which is then used to craft a highly believable spear-phishing email regarding a supposed flight delay (Flightradar24).

Health & Fitness Sites

These platforms focus on tracking personal health data, logging exercise, sharing recipes, and discussing physical well-being.

  • Cybersecurity Context:

    • Exposure of Sensitive Health Data: Sites like MyFitnessPal and doctissimo collect detailed Health Information (diet, weight, medical conditions), which, if breached, can be used for blackmail (sextortion) or identity fraud. This data is often protected by strict regulations such as HIPAA in the US.

    • Malware Distribution (Lifestyle Content): Forums and download sections on specialized sites like BodyBuilding or BikeRadar can be used to distribute malicious files disguised as workout plans, diet logs, or software utilities.

    • Social Engineering: Detailed PII and health goals gleaned from profiles on AllTrails or Pinkbike can be used to construct compelling social engineering attacks against the user or their colleagues.

    • Examples: A large-scale breach of a platform like MyFitnessPal exposes millions of users' email addresses, passwords, and health data. An attacker then uses this exposed information to launch a targeted phishing campaign against employees, offering a "free trial" of a fitness product linked to a malware download.

ThreatNG is an excellent solution for mitigating the risks associated with Travel and Lifestyle sites by providing continuous, external monitoring to detect the exposure of highly sensitive PII, location data, and compromised credentials that can lead to targeted attacks on employees and executives.

External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring

ThreatNG’s External Discovery process automatically maps an organization's exposure across the public web, paying close attention to platforms that handle PII and health data. Continuous Monitoring ensures threats are identified the moment they are exposed.

  • Dark Web Presence: Vital for PII-rich sites. ThreatNG constantly monitors the Dark Web and high-risk forums for mentions of organizations and associated Compromised Credentials. Breaches of large health/fitness platforms like MyFitnessPal or travel sites like TripAdvisor often lead to credential dumps. ThreatNG detects whether any employee's corporate email address appears in these dumps, flagging it as an immediate threat vector.

  • Archived Web Pages: ThreatNG searches archived content across the web for exposed documents and PII. Suppose an employee posted a photo to an outdoor profile on AllTrails or Pinkbike that accidentally revealed the text of a sensitive document in the background. In that case, ThreatNG’s index can still detect and flag the leaked Image File or Text File, turning it into a critical data-leak alert.

  • Technology Stack: ThreatNG identifies the technologies an organization is using. This is particularly relevant if the organization has an internal wellness program that uses third-party health apps, or if it uses booking software connected to services like Google Maps.

External Assessment for Travel and Lifestyle Risks

ThreatNG's External Assessment scores quantify the risk of PII leakage—the primary threat in this category—and its potential to facilitate social engineering.

  • BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This score is significantly impacted by the specific nature of data exposed on these sites.

    • Example 1 (Targeted Social Engineering): ThreatNG detects a targeted spear-phishing campaign against an executive. The attacker has used location data scraped from Foursquare check-ins and travel history from TripAdvisor to craft an email about a "delayed itinerary." ThreatNG flags the associated malicious link or fraudulent domain as a high-risk phishing vector, increasing the organization's BEC susceptibility score.

    • Example 2 (Brand Impersonation): The assessment detects the creation of fake business profiles on review sites like Zomato that impersonate the organization's corporate cafeteria or office building. These counterfeit profiles post malicious links in the review section to steal credentials. ThreatNG flags this Brand Impersonation and demands rapid remediation.

  • Data Leak Susceptibility: This score is severely affected by exposure to PII and health data. The finding of Associated Compromised Credentials from breaches of platforms like MyFitnessPal or doctissimo that match employee corporate emails immediately elevates this score, due to the highly sensitive nature of the leaked health information.

Investigation Modules and Username Exposure

The Investigation Modules are key to linking personal lifestyle activities and credential reuse back to corporate security risks.

Social Media Investigation Module - Username Exposure

This module is essential for combating social engineering and identity theft targeting employees through lifestyle and health platforms.

  • Passive Reconnaissance: The module performs broad checks for usernames and handles of key personnel across thousands of sites, including Health & Fitness and Maps & Travel platforms. It identifies usernames on sites like AllRecipes, BodyBuilding, Lichess, and AllTrails.

  • Example: ThreatNG discovers that a high-value employee's username, which matches their corporate login, is active on MyFitnessPal and has been exposed in a data breach on that platform. The Username Exposure module correlates this high-risk credential reuse and PII exposure with the internal email, prompting the security team to enforce substantial password changes and MFA for the employee's internal accounts, neutralizing the risk that an attacker using the stolen password can access sensitive corporate systems.

Intelligence Repositories and Reporting

ThreatNG's Intelligence Repositories provide the decisive context needed to prioritize the PII-related threats from these sites.

  • DarCache Dark Web and DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials): This tracks breaches of health and travel sites. When credentials from a platform like TripAdvisor or doctissimo are dumped, DarCache Rupture filters the data to flag all employee corporate email addresses found, classifying them as Associated Compromised Credentials due to the imminent risk of account takeover.

  • DarCache Vulnerability (KEV, EPSS, PoC Exploit): This tracks threats embedded in these platforms. If a new exploit is actively used in malvertising on high-traffic travel or recipe sites (Yummly, Flightradar24), ThreatNG flags it as a Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV), allowing the organization to patch the vulnerable software targeted by the malvertisement.

Reporting compiles all these external findings—from an executive's compromised MyFitnessPal password on the Dark Web to a malicious link on a review site—into Prioritized reports. The MITRE ATT&CK Mapping correlates the finding (e.g., credential theft from TripAdvisor) to adversary tactics like "Initial Access" and "Data Exfiltration."

ThreatNG with Complementary Solutions

ThreatNG's external intelligence from Travel and Lifestyle sites is highly valuable when integrated with complementary solutions for real-time defense against targeted attacks.

  • Integration with a Mobile Device Management (MDM) Complementary Solution: ThreatNG's Dark Web Presence module identifies that a corporate-issued mobile device is using an organizational email address to log in to the high-risk app AllTrails, and that this credential has been compromised. ThreatNG shares this PII exposure finding with a complementary MDM solution. The MDM solution can then automatically perform a security audit on that device, check for the presence of the risky app, and enforce heightened security policies (e.g., encrypt all local data, restrict access to corporate email) until the employee changes their password, thereby mitigating mobile data risk.

  • Integration with a Security Awareness Complementary Solution: ThreatNG's BEC & Phishing Susceptibility module identifies a new, highly effective social engineering tactic that leverages PII from MyFitnessPal profiles (e.g., weight-loss goals) to craft convincing scam emails. ThreatNG shares the details of the scam and the PII being used with a Security Awareness complementary solution. This solution immediately sends a targeted alert and a training module to all affected employees, educating them about the specific new threat and helping them avoid falling victim to the emotionally manipulative phishing attempt.

Threat NG Staff
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