Adversarial Emulation

Adversarial emulation is a cybersecurity assessment method that aims to test an organization's security controls against real-world threat actors' tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This proactive approach helps organizations identify weaknesses in their defenses and improve their overall security posture.

Key characteristics of adversarial emulation:

• Realistic attack scenarios: Adversary emulation simulates the entire attack lifecycle, from initial access to data exfiltration, using TTPs observed in real-world attacks.

• Threat intelligence-driven: Emulation plans are based on threat intelligence reports and frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, ensuring the simulated attacks are relevant and up-to-date.

• Focus on adversary behavior: Unlike traditional penetration testing, which focuses on finding vulnerabilities, adversarial emulation emphasizes replicating the behavior of specific threat actors or groups.

• Continuous improvement: Adversary emulation is an iterative process that helps organizations to improve their security controls by identifying and addressing weaknesses continuously.

Benefits of adversarial emulation:

• Enhanced security posture: By identifying and addressing weaknesses in defenses, organizations can reduce their risk of successful cyberattacks.

• Improved incident response: Adversary emulation helps organizations better understand how to respond to a real-world attack.

• Reduced attack surface: By identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities, organizations can reduce their attack surface, making it more difficult for attackers to succeed.

• Increased confidence: Adversary emulation gives organizations greater confidence in their ability to defend against cyberattacks.

Examples of adversarial emulation tools and platforms:

• MITRE Caldera: An open-source framework for building automated adversary emulation systems.

• SCYTHE: A commercial platform that provides a wide range of adversary emulation capabilities.

• AttackIQ: A cloud-based platform that offers automated adversary emulation and breach and attack simulation (BAS) capabilities.

Adversarial emulation is an essential tool for organizations that want to proactively improve their cybersecurity posture and reduce their risk of cyberattacks. By simulating real-world attack scenarios, organizations can identify and address weaknesses in their defenses before attackers exploit them.

ThreatNG's comprehensive suite of features can significantly aid in adversarial emulation and enhance its effectiveness. Let's break down how ThreatNG's capabilities align with the key aspects of adversarial emulation:

1. Threat Intelligence-Driven Emulation:

• Domain Intelligence: ThreatNG's extensive domain intelligence provides crucial information about potential targets, including DNS records, subdomain vulnerabilities, exposed APIs, and known vulnerabilities. This data allows for creating realistic attack scenarios based on real-world TTPs.

• Dark Web Presence: By monitoring the dark web for compromised credentials, ransomware events, and organization-specific mentions, ThreatNG helps identify potential attack vectors and adversary tactics.

• Sentiment and Financials: Information on lawsuits, SEC filings, and negative news helps understand an organization's vulnerabilities and potential motivations for attackers, enabling more targeted emulation scenarios.

• Intelligence Repositories: Access to comprehensive data on vulnerabilities, ransomware groups, and ESG violations ensures that emulated attacks are relevant and up-to-date with the latest threat landscape.

2. Realistic Attack Scenarios:

• Web Application Hijack Susceptibility & Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: These assessments pinpoint weaknesses in external web applications and subdomains, emulating attacks exploiting these vulnerabilities.

• BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: By analyzing sentiment, financials, domain intelligence, and dark web presence, ThreatNG helps emulate social engineering attacks tailored to the target organization.

• Data Leak Susceptibility: This assessment guides the emulation of data exfiltration scenarios by identifying potential leakage points through cloud exposures, dark web activity, and financial disclosures.

• Cyber Risk Exposure: ThreatNG's comprehensive analysis of code repositories, cloud services, and compromised credentials enables the emulation of attacks exploiting these vulnerabilities.

• Supply Chain & Third-Party Exposure: By mapping the organization's supply chain and third-party relationships, ThreatNG facilitates the emulation of attacks targeting these connections.

3. Continuous Monitoring and Improvement:

• Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG's constant monitoring capabilities ensure that the attack surface is constantly assessed for new vulnerabilities and emerging threats, allowing for ongoing adaptation of emulation scenarios.

• Reporting: Detailed reports, including technical, prioritized, and ransomware susceptibility reports, provide valuable insights into the organization's security posture and areas for improvement.

4. Collaboration and Management:

• Collaboration and Management Facilities: Role-based access controls, correlation evidence questionnaires, and policy management features streamline collaboration and ensure that emulation exercises are aligned with the organization's risk tolerance and security objectives.

Examples of Adversarial Emulation with ThreatNG:

• Emulating a ransomware attack: ThreatNG identifies exposed sensitive ports, known vulnerabilities, and dark web mentions related to ransomware. This information is used to craft an attack scenario that simulates a ransomware group's TTPs, including phishing, lateral movement, and data encryption.

• Emulating a supply chain attack: ThreatNG maps the organization's third-party relationships and identifies vulnerabilities in its systems. This allows for the emulation of an attack targeting a weak link in the supply chain to gain access to the organization's network.

• Emulating a data breach: ThreatNG identifies potential data leakage points through cloud exposures, code repositories, and dark web activity. This information is used to design an attack scenario that simulates data exfiltration through various channels.

Complementary Solutions:

While ThreatNG provides extensive capabilities for adversarial emulation, it can be further enhanced by integrating with:

• Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) platforms: Tools like AttackIQ or SCYTHE can automate the execution of attack scenarios and provide detailed reports on the effectiveness of security controls.

• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems: SIEMs can collect and analyze security logs generated during emulation exercises, providing valuable insights into the organization's detection and response capabilities.

• Threat intelligence platforms (TIPs): TIPs can provide additional context on adversary TTPs and emerging threats, further enriching emulation scenarios.

By leveraging ThreatNG's comprehensive intelligence, continuous monitoring, and collaboration features, organizations can conduct practical adversarial emulation exercises that accurately reflect real-world threats and strengthen their overall security posture.