Adversary Centric Intelligence
Adversary Centric intelligence (ACI) in cybersecurity refers to a proactive and targeted approach to threat intelligence that focuses on understanding the motivations, capabilities, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of specific threat actors or groups.
Critical characteristics of ACI:
Focus on the Adversary: ACI shifts the focus from general threat trends to specific adversaries, allowing organizations to tailor their defenses and responses to their unique threats.
Proactive: ACI is not just about reacting to attacks but actively seeking information about threat actors to anticipate their future moves and preemptively disrupt their operations.
Contextualized: ACI provides in-depth context about threat actors, including their motivations, capabilities, infrastructure, and historical activities, which helps security teams make informed decisions.
Actionable: ACI generates actionable intelligence that can be used to prioritize vulnerabilities, harden defenses, and improve detection and response capabilities.
Key benefits of ACI:
Targeted defense: By understanding an organization's specific threats, security teams can prioritize their resources and efforts to defend against the most likely attacks.
Proactive threat hunting: ACI enables security teams to proactively search for signs of compromise based on known threat actor TTPs.
Improved incident response: ACI provides valuable context during incident response, allowing security teams to understand the attacker's motivations and capabilities and make informed decisions about containment and recovery.
Enhanced situational awareness: ACI helps organizations better understand the threat landscape and the specific risks they face, enabling them to make more informed security decisions.
ACI typically involves the following activities:
Threat actor profiling: Gathering and analyzing information about specific threat actors or groups, including their motivations, targets, capabilities, infrastructure, and TTPs.
Monitoring and tracking: Continuously monitoring threat actor activities and TTPs to identify new threats and emerging attack patterns.
Attribution: Linking specific attacks to known threat actors or groups based on their unique TTPs and infrastructure.
Information sharing: Sharing ACI insights with other organizations and security communities to improve collective defense and awareness.
ACI is a critical component of a mature cybersecurity strategy. It allows organizations to move beyond reactive security and adopt a proactive, intelligence-led approach to defending against sophisticated cyber threats.
How ThreatNG Helps with ACI
Identifies Potential Attack Vectors: ThreatNG's discovery and assessment capabilities, combined with its domain intelligence module, meticulously map your external attack surface. This reveals vulnerabilities and weaknesses that adversaries might exploit, like exposed sensitive ports, outdated software, or misconfigured services.
Uncovers Adversary Infrastructure: By scanning the dark web and analyzing domain intelligence, ThreatNG can identify potential adversary infrastructure, such as malicious domains, phishing websites, or command-and-control servers. This helps you proactively block or mitigate threats.
Detects Compromised Credentials: ThreatNG's dark web monitoring alerts you to any compromised credentials associated with your organization. This allows you to take immediate action to reset passwords and prevent account takeovers.
Analyzes Code Repositories: ThreatNG scans public code repositories for sensitive information like API keys, security certificates, and database credentials. This helps you prevent data breaches and protect your intellectual property.
Assesses Cloud and SaaS Security: ThreatNG evaluates your implementations for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, reducing your risk of cloud-based attacks.
Provides Contextualized Threat Intelligence: ThreatNG's intelligence repositories provide valuable context about known vulnerabilities, ransomware events and groups, and ESG violations, helping you understand the threat landscape and prioritize your security efforts.
Examples of ThreatNG in Action for ACI
Scenario: You suspect a specific APT group is targeting your industry.
ThreatNG Action: Use the Domain Intelligence module to analyze domain name permutations and identify any domains registered by the APT group that mimic your organization's domain. This helps you proactively detect and block potential phishing or malware attacks.
Scenario: You want to understand how an adversary might exploit your web application.
ThreatNG Action: Leverage the Web Application Hijack Susceptibility score and the Search Engine Exploitation module to identify exposed sensitive information, vulnerable files, or publicly accessible login pages that an attacker could leverage.
Scenario: You want to protect your organization from ransomware attacks.
ThreatNG Action: Use the Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility score, Dark Web Presence monitoring, and Sentiment and Financials analysis to identify potential ransomware threats. Monitor SEC Form 8-Ks for any mentions of security incidents or data breaches that could indicate increased ransomware risk.
Scenario: You want to assess your organization's exposure to social engineering attacks.
ThreatNG Action: Utilize the BEC & Phishing Susceptibility assessment to gauge your organization's vulnerability to phishing emails, spear-phishing attempts, and BEC scams. This assessment considers domain infrastructure, dark web presence, and sentiment analysis to identify potential weaknesses attackers might exploit.
Scenario: You want to prevent data leaks from your code repositories.
ThreatNG Action: Employ the Sensitive Code Exposure module to scan your public code repositories for exposed API keys, database credentials, and other sensitive information.
By combining continuous monitoring, comprehensive reporting, and collaborative tools, ThreatNG empowers your security team to proactively identify, assess, and mitigate threats, adopting a genuinely adversary-centric approach to security.
