Vulnerability Threat Intelligence
In cybersecurity, Vulnerability Threat Intelligence (VTI) is a specialized and critical subset of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) that focuses specifically on the collection, analysis, and contextualization of information related to software and hardware vulnerabilities. Its primary goal is to help organizations understand which vulnerabilities pose the most significant and immediate risks, allowing them to prioritize remediation efforts effectively.
Here's a detailed breakdown:
What is a Vulnerability?
Before diving into VTI, it's essential to understand what a "vulnerability" is. In cybersecurity, a vulnerability is a weakness, flaw, or misconfiguration in a system, application, or network that can be exploited by a threat actor to gain unauthorized access, steal data, disrupt services, or otherwise compromise the system. Examples include:
Software bugs: Errors in coding that create security holes.
Misconfigurations: Improperly set up systems or applications.
Outdated software: Software that hasn't been updated with the latest security patches.
Human error: Mistakes by users or administrators (e.g., weak passwords, falling for phishing).
Zero-day vulnerabilities: Flaws that are unknown to the vendor and therefore have no publicly available patch.
The Core of Vulnerability Threat Intelligence
VTI goes beyond simply identifying vulnerabilities (which is the domain of vulnerability management). It enriches this information with real-world threat context to determine the likelihood and potential impact of a vulnerability being exploited. Key aspects include:
Collection of Vulnerability Data:
Public Databases: Sources like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) which assigns Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifiers to publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Vendor Advisories: Direct notifications from software and hardware vendors about flaws in their products.
Security Research: Information from security researchers, penetration testers, and bug bounty programs.
Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT): Monitoring security blogs, forums, social media, and academic papers for discussions on new vulnerabilities and exploit techniques.
Underground Forums and Dark Web: Information from cybercriminal marketplaces and discussions where exploits are traded or discussed, providing insights into what adversaries are actively targeting.
Contextualization and Analysis: This is where VTI differentiates itself. Raw vulnerability data is not enough. VTI adds layers of context by answering questions like:
Is an exploit available? Is there proof-of-concept (PoC) code or active malware that can weaponize the vulnerability? This significantly increases the urgency.
Who is exploiting it? Are specific threat actors (e.g., state-sponsored groups, organized crime, hacktivists) known to use this vulnerability? Understanding the adversary's Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) helps predict future attacks.
What are their motivations? Are they looking for financial gain, intellectual property, or disruption?
Which assets are affected? How does the vulnerability relate to the organization's critical systems, data, and business functions? A high-severity vulnerability on a non-critical internal system might be less urgent than a moderate one on an internet-facing production server.
What is the potential impact? What are the business consequences if this vulnerability is exploited (e.g., data breach, system downtime, reputational damage, regulatory fines)?
Prioritization: Based on the analysis, VTI helps security teams prioritize remediation efforts. Not all vulnerabilities are created equal. Factors considered for prioritization include:
Severity Score (e.g., CVSS): While a starting point, severity scores are often insufficient on their own.
Exploitability: Is the vulnerability easy to exploit? Is an exploit publicly available?
Active Exploitation: Is the vulnerability currently being exploited in the wild? This is a major red flag.
Asset Criticality: How important is the affected system or data to the organization's operations and mission?
Threat Actor Intent and Capability: Are the threat actors likely to target your organization and do they have the capabilities to exploit the vulnerability?
Dissemination and Actionable Insights: The final stage involves delivering this intelligence to the relevant security teams (e.g., SecOps, incident response, patch management, risk management) in an understandable and actionable format. This could include:
Alerts about critical new vulnerabilities.
Reports on emerging threat trends linked to specific vulnerabilities.
Recommendations for patching, mitigation strategies, or compensating controls.
Integration with security tools like SIEMs (Security Information and Event Management) and vulnerability management platforms to automate detection and response.
Why is Vulnerability Threat Intelligence Important?
Proactive Defense: Shifts security from a reactive "patch-as-issues-arise" model to a proactive, intelligence-driven approach, allowing organizations to address weaknesses before they are exploited.
Risk Reduction: Helps organizations reduce their attack surface by focusing on vulnerabilities that present the most credible and immediate threats.
Informed Decision-Making: Enables security leaders to make data-driven decisions about resource allocation, security investments, and risk management strategies.
Enhanced Incident Response: By understanding the TTPs associated with specific vulnerabilities, security teams can improve their detection capabilities and shorten response times during an attack.
Compliance and Governance: Demonstrates a mature and threat-informed approach to cybersecurity, which is increasingly essential for regulatory compliance and board-level reporting.
Operational Efficiency: Reduces the "noise" of countless vulnerability alerts by highlighting those that truly matter, making security teams more efficient.
Vulnerability Threat Intelligence transforms raw vulnerability data into dynamic, actionable intelligence, empowering organizations to stay ahead of adversaries and effectively protect their critical assets against active exploitation.
ThreatNG is a comprehensive solution designed to help organizations understand, manage, and reduce their external cyber risks by providing an all-in-one external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings platform. It provides a proactive and intelligence-driven approach to cybersecurity, addressing vulnerabilities and potential attack vectors from an external perspective.
Here's how ThreatNG helps with vulnerability threat intelligence:
External Discovery
ThreatNG excels at external discovery, performing purely external unauthenticated discovery with no connectors. This means it can map an organization's digital footprint as an attacker sees it, identifying assets and potential entry points without internal access. For example, it can discover forgotten subdomains, misconfigured cloud assets, or exposed code repositories that an organization might not even be aware of, which could harbor exploitable vulnerabilities.
External Assessment
ThreatNG provides a wide range of external assessment ratings that directly contribute to vulnerability threat intelligence by highlighting specific areas of susceptibility:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This score is substantiated by analyzing external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, including Domain Intelligence. It examines parts of a web application accessible from the outside world to identify potential entry points for attackers.
Example: ThreatNG might identify an outdated web server version with a known cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on a publicly accessible web application, indicating a high susceptibility to hijacking.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates this by using external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, incorporating Domain Intelligence. This includes comprehensively analyzing the website's subdomains, DNS records, SSL certificate statuses, and other relevant factors.
Example: If ThreatNG discovers a CNAME record pointing to an expired service on a cloud provider, it flags the subdomain as susceptible to takeover, a common vulnerability used for phishing or malicious content hosting.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This is derived from Sentiment and Financials Findings, Domain Intelligence (including DNS Intelligence capabilities like Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains, and Email Intelligence providing email security presence and format prediction), and Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials).
Example: ThreatNG might find that an organization's compromised credentials are circulating on the dark web or identify look-alike domain permutations that could be used for phishing attacks, indicating a vulnerability to social engineering.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: This score is derived from attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG Violations, Sentiment and Financials (Lawsuits, SEC filings, SEC Form 8-Ks, and Negative News), and Domain Intelligence (Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains that are available and taken).
Example: If ThreatNG identifies numerous negative news articles or SEC filings related to security incidents, it indicates a vulnerability to brand damage due to past breaches or ongoing security weaknesses.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This is derived from external attack surface and digital risk intelligence based on Cloud and SaaS Exposure, Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials), Domain Intelligence (DNS Intelligence capabilities including Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains, and Email Intelligence), and Sentiment and Financials (Lawsuits and SEC Form 8-Ks).
Example: ThreatNG could detect an open cloud storage bucket with sensitive data or an organization's email addresses appearing in data dumps on the dark web, signifying a high susceptibility to data leaks.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This considers parameters covered by the Domain Intelligence module, including certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports. Code Secret Exposure is also factored in, as it discovers code repositories and their exposure level and investigates their contents for sensitive data. Cloud and SaaS Exposure evaluates cloud services and SaaS solutions; additionally, compromised credentials on the dark web increase this risk.
Example: ThreatNG might discover a publicly accessible server with an unpatched vulnerability on a sensitive port, alongside exposed API keys in a public code repository, significantly increasing the cyber risk exposure score.
ESG Exposure: This rates an organization based on discovered environmental, social, and governance (ESG) violations through its external attack surface and digital risk intelligence findings. It analyzes Competition, Consumer, Employment, Environment, Financial, Government Contracting, Healthcare, and Safety-related offenses.
Example: While not a direct "vulnerability" in the traditional sense, if ThreatNG uncovers multiple ESG violations, it indicates a broader organizational risk posture that could attract negative attention and potentially lead to targeted attacks or reputational damage.
Supply Chain and Third-Party Exposure: This is derived from Domain Intelligence (Enumeration of Vendor Technologies from DNS and Subdomains), Technology Stack, and Cloud and SaaS Exposure.
Example: ThreatNG might identify a third-party vendor used by the organization with a known software vulnerability or an exposed cloud service, indicating a supply chain risk.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This is calculated based on external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, including domain intelligence (exposed sensitive ports, exposed private IPs, and known vulnerabilities), dark web presence (compromised credentials and ransomware events and gang activity), and sentiment and financials (SEC Form 8-Ks).
Example: If ThreatNG detects an organization's credentials on a ransomware gang's target list or identifies exposed sensitive ports with known vulnerabilities, it indicates a high susceptibility to ransomware attacks.
Mobile App Exposure: This evaluates an organization’s mobile apps by discovering them in marketplaces and analyzing their contents for access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers.
Example: ThreatNG could find an organization's mobile app in an unofficial marketplace containing hardcoded AWS access keys or API tokens, exposing backend infrastructure to potential attacks.
Positive Security Indicators: Beyond just vulnerabilities, ThreatNG also identifies and highlights an organization's security strengths, such as Web Application Firewalls or multi-factor authentication. It validates these positive measures from an external attacker's perspective, providing objective evidence of their effectiveness.
Example: ThreatNG might detect a robust Web Application Firewall (WAF) protecting an organization's web applications, indicating a strong security control that mitigates particular vulnerabilities.
Reporting
ThreatNG offers diverse reporting capabilities crucial for vulnerability management. These include Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, and Informational), Security Ratings, Inventory, Ransomware Susceptibility, and U.S. SEC Filings reports. The prioritized reports are particularly valuable, as they help organizations focus on the most critical risks, aiding in effective resource allocation.
Example: A prioritized report from ThreatNG might highlight 5 critical vulnerabilities with active exploits and associated with ransomware gang activity, allowing the security team to address these immediately, rather than sifting through hundreds of lower-priority findings.
Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG continuously monitors all organizations' external attack surfaces, digital risks, and security ratings. This constant surveillance ensures that as new vulnerabilities emerge or an organization's digital footprint changes, the intelligence is updated in real time, enabling rapid response to evolving threats.
Example: If a new zero-day vulnerability is discovered in widely used software that an organization has exposed externally, ThreatNG's continuous monitoring would quickly identify the presence of this vulnerable software, trigger an alert, and update the organization's risk score, even before the organization's internal vulnerability scans catch up.
Investigation Modules
ThreatNG's investigation modules provide deep insights that are critical for understanding and addressing vulnerabilities:
Domain Intelligence:
Domain Overview: Provides a digital presence in Word Cloud, Microsoft Entra Identification and Domain Enumeration, Bug Bounty Programs, and related SwaggerHub instances, including API documentation.
Example: Discovering an organization's SwaggerHub instance with exposed API documentation could reveal potential API vulnerabilities or sensitive endpoints that an attacker could target.
DNS Intelligence: Includes Domain Record Analysis (IP Identification, Vendors and Technology Identification), Domain Name Permutations (Taken and Available), and Web3 Domains (Taken and Available).
Example: Identifying DNS records pointing to deprecated services or old IP addresses could indicate unmonitored infrastructure susceptible to hijacking or shadow IT, a form of vulnerability.
Email Intelligence: Provides Security Presence (DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records), Format Predictions, and Harvested Emails.
Example: If ThreatNG finds that an organization lacks proper DMARC, SPF, or DKIM records, it indicates a vulnerability to email spoofing and phishing attacks.
WHOIS Intelligence: Offers WHOIS Analysis and Other Domains Owned.
Example: Revealing obscure domains owned by the organization through WHOIS analysis could uncover forgotten systems with unpatched vulnerabilities.
Subdomain Intelligence: This is extensive, including HTTP Responses, Header Analysis (Security and Deprecated Headers), Server Headers (Technologies), Cloud Hosting, Website Builders, E-commerce Platforms, Content Management Systems, Portfolio Website Builders, CRM, Email Marketing, Communication and Marketing, Landing Page Builders, Sales Enablement, Online Course Platforms, Help Desk Software, Knowledge Base Software, Customer Feedback Platforms, Code Repositories, Cloud Hosting, API Management, Developer Tools, Documentation Platforms, Product Management, Video Hosting, Blogging Platforms, Podcast Hosting, Digital Publishing, Photo Sharing, Content Experience, Translation Management, Brand Management, Website Monitoring, Status Communication, Survey Platforms, Project Management, Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility, Content Identification (Admin Pages, APIs, Development Environments, VPNs, Empty HTTP/HTTPS Responses, HTTP/HTTPS Errors, Applications, Google Tag Managers, Javascript, Emails, Phone Numbers), Ports (IoT / OT, Industrial Control Systems, Databases, Remote Access Services), Known Vulnerabilities, Web Application Firewall Discovery and Vendor Types.
Example: ThreatNG could identify an exposed administrative panel on a subdomain with a weak password policy and an outdated content management system (CMS) version containing known vulnerabilities, allowing an attacker easy access to the system. It could also detect sensitive ports open to the internet, such as exposed databases (SQL Server, MySQL) or remote access services (SSH, RDP), creating direct attack vectors.
IP Intelligence: Identifies IPs, Shared IPs, ASNs, Country Locations, and Private IPs.
Example: Detecting private IPs exposed publicly could indicate misconfigured network settings, making internal systems vulnerable.
Certificate Intelligence: Provides TLS Certificates (Status, Issuers, Active, Certs without Subdomains, Subdomains without Certificates), and Associated Organizations (Domains, Certificates, and Emails).
Example: Discovering expired or misconfigured SSL/TLS certificates can indicate a vulnerability to man-in-the-middle attacks and impact trust.
Sensitive Code Exposure:
Code Repository Exposure: Discovers public code repositories, uncovering digital risks like exposed access credentials (API Keys, Access Tokens, Generic Credentials, Cloud Credentials), security credentials (Cryptographic Keys), other secrets, configuration files (Application, System, Network), database exposures (Database Files, Database Credentials), application data exposures (Remote Access, Encryption Keys, Encrypted Data, Java Keystores, Code Repository Data), activity records (Command History, Logs, Network Traffic), communication platform configurations (Chat Clients, Email Clients), development environment configurations, security testing tools, cloud service configurations, remote access credentials, system utilities, personal data, and user activity.
Example: ThreatNG might find a public GitHub repository belonging to the organization that contains hardcoded API keys or cloud access credentials, providing a direct path for attackers to compromise connected services.
Mobile Application Discovery: Discovers mobile apps in marketplaces and identifies the presence of access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers within them.
Example: ThreatNG could identify an organization's mobile app in an unauthorized marketplace that has been tampered with, containing vulnerabilities or malicious code injected by an attacker.
Search Engine Exploitation:
Website Control Files: Discovers files like
robots.txtandsecurity.txtwhich can expose sensitive directories, emails, or security policies.Example: Identifying a
robots.txtfile inadvertently exposing administrative directories could guide an attacker to sensitive areas of a website.
Search Engine Attack Surface: Helps investigate an organization’s susceptibility to exposing errors, general advisories, IoT entities, persistent exploitation, potential sensitive information, privileged folders, public passwords, susceptible files, susceptible servers, user data, and web servers via search engines.
Example: ThreatNG could detect error messages or directory listings indexed by search engines that expose sensitive system information, making it easier for an attacker to identify vulnerabilities.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: Identifies Sanctioned and Unsanctioned Cloud Services, Cloud Service Impersonations, and Open Exposed Cloud Buckets (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform). It also covers SaaS implementations like Business Intelligence and Data Analytics, Collaboration and Productivity, Content Management and Collaboration, CRM, Customer Service and Support, Communication and Collaboration, Data Analytics and Observability, Endpoint Management, ERP, Human Resources, Identity and Access Management, Incident Management, IT Service Management, Project Management, Video Conferencing, and Work Operating Systems.
Example: ThreatNG might discover an unsanctioned cloud storage instance with an open bucket policy, leaving sensitive company data publicly accessible.
Online Sharing Exposure: Detects organizational entity presence within online code-sharing platforms like Pastebin, GitHub Gist, Scribd, Slideshare, Prezi, and GitHub Code.
Example: Finding confidential internal documentation or source code snippets on Pastebin indicates a data leak vulnerability.
Dark Web Presence: Monitors organizational mentions of related or defined people, places, or things, associated ransomware events, and compromised credentials.
Example: The presence of an organization's compromised credentials on dark web forums or mentions of past ransomware incidents linked to the organization serve as strong indicators of existing vulnerabilities or a heightened risk profile.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
ThreatNG maintains continuously updated intelligence repositories, branded as DarCache, which are central to its vulnerability threat intelligence capabilities:
Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web): Provides insights into illicit activities and discussions that could impact an organization's security posture.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): Tracks compromised credentials, directly contributing to understanding exposure related to phishing and credential stuffing attacks.
Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware): Tracks over 70 ransomware gangs, providing critical context on active threats.
Example: If DarCache Ransomware indicates that a particular gang is targeting organizations with exposed RDP ports, and ThreatNG's assessment finds such a port open, the urgency for remediation dramatically increases.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): This repository provides a holistic and proactive approach to managing external risks and vulnerabilities by understanding their real-world exploitability, the likelihood of exploitation, and the potential impact. It helps organizations make smarter security decisions and allocate resources effectively.
NVD (DarCache NVD): Includes information on Attack Complexity, Attack Interaction, Attack Vector, Impact scores (Availability, Confidentiality, Integrity), CVSS Score, and Severity, offering a deep understanding of a vulnerability's technical characteristics.
EPSS (DarCache EPSS): Offers a probabilistic estimate of the likelihood of a vulnerability being exploited shortly. Combining the EPSS score and percentile with other vulnerability data allows for a more forward-looking prioritization approach.
Example: While a vulnerability might have a high CVSS score (from DarCache NVD), if its EPSS score is low, it might not be actively exploited. This allows an organization to prioritize other vulnerabilities with higher EPSS scores that are more likely to be weaponized.
KEV (DarCache KEV): Lists vulnerabilities actively exploited in the wild, providing critical context for prioritizing immediate and proven threats.
Example: ThreatNG integrates KEV data, so if an organization identifies a vulnerability in the KEV catalog, it immediately flags it as a critical and immediate threat, demanding urgent attention.
Verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits (DarCache eXploit): Provides direct links to PoC exploits on platforms like GitHub, referenced by CVE. This significantly accelerates understanding how a vulnerability can be exploited and helps security teams reproduce it, assess its real-world impact, and develop effective mitigation strategies.
Example: ThreatNG identifies a vulnerability and links to a PoC exploit, enabling an organization's red team or penetration testers to quickly validate the exploitability in their specific environment and guide the blue team on targeted mitigations.
ESG Violations (DarCache ESG): Tracks Competition, Consumer, Employment, Environment, Financial, Government Contracting, Healthcare, and Safety-related offenses.
Bug Bounty Programs (DarCache Bug Bounty): Provides information on in-scope and out-of-scope elements of bug bounty programs.
SEC Form 8-Ks (DarCache 8-K): Monitors SEC filings for publicly traded US companies, especially risk and oversight disclosures.
Bank Identification Numbers (DarCache BIN): Provides BIN data.
Mobile Apps (DarCache Mobile): Indicates the presence of access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers within discovered mobile apps.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external focus and rich intelligence make it highly synergistic with various complementary solutions:
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Systems: ThreatNG can feed its prioritized vulnerability and threat intelligence directly into a SIEM. This allows security teams to correlate external attack surface data with internal logs and events, providing a more complete picture of an ongoing incident or a potential threat.
Example: ThreatNG identifies an organization's critical internet-facing web application as vulnerable to a specific CVE with an active KEV entry. This information is fed into the SIEM. If the SIEM detects suspicious activity or exploit attempts targeting that specific vulnerability in its internal logs, it can trigger a higher-priority alert, enabling a rapid and informed incident response.
Vulnerability Management Platforms (VMPs): While ThreatNG focuses on external vulnerabilities and threat context, VMPs often manage the internal scanning and remediation workflow. ThreatNG's intelligence, particularly its EPSS and KEV data, can enrich the vulnerability prioritization within a VMP, ensuring that internal remediation efforts are aligned with external threat landscapes.
Example: A VMP might identify hundreds of vulnerabilities. ThreatNG's DarCache Vulnerability data, specifically KEV and EPSS scores, can be integrated to highlight which of those vulnerabilities are actively exploited or highly likely to be exploited. This allows the VMP to prioritize patching schedules for the most critical internal vulnerabilities first.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) / Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Solutions: ThreatNG's insights into known exploited vulnerabilities, threat actor TTPs (gleaned from Dark Web and Ransomware intelligence ), and sensitive code exposure can inform EDR/XDR solutions. This intelligence can refine detection rules, improve threat hunting queries, and enhance the context around endpoint alerts.
Example: If ThreatNG identifies a specific ransomware group actively exploiting a particular vulnerability and gaining initial access through exposed RDP, this intelligence can be pushed to an EDR system. The EDR can then proactively enhance its monitoring for unusual RDP activity or specific file execution patterns associated with that ransomware group, improving its ability to detect and prevent a breach.
Attack Surface Management (ASM) Tools (complementary, though ThreatNG is an ASM): For organizations using multiple ASM tools or specialized ASM tools, ThreatNG’s detailed external discovery and assessment capabilities can complement broader ASM strategies by providing deep insights into specific risk areas like subdomain takeovers or mobile app exposure that might not be covered in as much depth by other tools.
Example: If an organization uses a broad ASM tool for inventory, ThreatNG can dive deeper into identified web applications, using its Web Application Hijack Susceptibility assessment to pinpoint specific vulnerabilities or misconfigurations that the broader tool might miss.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): ThreatNG's DarCache intelligence repositories can augment a central TIP by providing highly curated and relevant external vulnerability, dark web, and ransomware intelligence. This ensures the TIP has a richer, more actionable feed for contextualizing threats.
Example: A general TIP might ingest various threat feeds. ThreatNG can contribute specific, validated PoC exploit links and detailed KEV data to the TIP, allowing security analysts to understand the real-world implications of certain CVEs immediately.
ThreatNG's comprehensive external perspective, actionable intelligence, and robust reporting position it as a vital tool for any organization seeking to proactively manage its cyber risks and bolster its vulnerability threat intelligence program.
