OSINT Top Ten: Number 6 - Online Text Sharing Repositories

At Number Six of the Open Source Intelligence Top Ten (aka OSINT Top Ten) is Online Text Sharing Repositories.

More commonly known as "paste sites," these online sharing repositories make it easy to share text from anywhere to anyone. They are most frequently used by employees (mostly sysadmins and support staff) to easily and quickly share information. The popularity of these sites has taken off over the years. It is a frequent spot to find credential dumps, pirated software links, and other company information that may have inadvertently been shared by one of these sites.

Awareness of what is pasted and available (especially to the public) is good security practice. All organizations should monitor for discussions about their domain, organization name(s), products, and services, especially for data leaks. An organization should be on the lookout for is email addresses, cracked license keys, key generators, hacked software, mobile applications, subdomains, compressed files, and system log files. All these exposures can lead to technical, strategic, operational, and financial risks.

To mitigate and manage risks, an organization needs to know its exposure level, lockdown where they can, develop the appropriate policies, provide best practices/technical implementations, and vigilantly monitor for exposures on these paste sites. Upon discovering vulnerabilities and leaks, send takedown notices where possible and warranted.

Next we cover Number 5 - Cloud Exposure.