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 gain a better understanding of 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.

ThreatNG's Role in Adversary Centric Intelligence

ThreatNG's holistic approach to external attack surface management equips security teams with valuable data and insights crucial for building a robust ACI program:

Threat Actor Profiling

• Dark Web Presence: ThreatNG scours the dark web for mentions of the organization, key personnel, or associated assets, revealing threat actor discussions, potential attack plans, and leaked credentials.

• Social Media & Online Sharing Exposure: Monitoring these platforms helps identify reconnaissance activities, social engineering attempts, or data leaks that provide insights into threat actor TTPs and motivations.

• Compromised Credentials & Ransomware Events: ThreatNG's intelligence repositories can connect the dots between compromised credentials and ransomware events, aiding in attributing attacks to specific threat actors or groups.

Understanding TTPs

• Domain Intelligence, Sensitive Code Exposure, Search Engine Exploitation, Cloud and SaaS Exposure: Analyzing vulnerabilities and misconfigurations within an organization's external attack surface provides valuable insights into potential attack vectors that threat actors might exploit, revealing their TTPs.

• Archived Web Pages: Examining historical web content can uncover patterns of past attacks and vulnerabilities, providing clues about how threat actors might operate in the future.

Attribution & Proactive Threat Hunting

• Correlation & Analysis: ThreatNG's ability to correlate data from various sources, including dark web mentions, compromised credentials, and identified vulnerabilities, helps attribute attacks to specific threat actors and anticipate their future moves.

• Continuous Monitoring & Reporting: Real-time monitoring of the external attack surface and regular reporting enables security teams to proactively hunt for threats based on known TTPs and indicators of compromise (IOCs) associated with specific adversaries.

Working with Complementary Solutions

ThreatNG can integrate seamlessly with complementary solutions to enhance ACI:

• Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): ThreatNG's insights can enrich existing TIPs, providing additional context and external attack surface visibility to build more comprehensive threat actor profiles.

• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Systems: Integrate ThreatNG's intelligence feeds into SIEM systems to correlate external threats with internal events, improving detection and response capabilities against known threat actors.

• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Solutions: Leverage ThreatNG's insights to tune EDR tools for detecting and responding to specific TTPs employed by targeted threat actors.

Illustrative Examples

1. Scenario: ThreatNG's dark web monitoring identifies discussions about a potential ransomware attack targeting the organization.

   • Action: To thwart the attack, security teams can proactively implement mitigation measures, such as strengthening access controls and patching vulnerabilities.

2. Scenario: ThreatNG discovers an exposed API endpoint with a known vulnerability that a specific threat actor group has previously exploited.

   • Action: Security teams can prioritize patching that vulnerability, knowing it's a likely target for the identified threat actor.

3. Scenario: ThreatNG identifies a potential phishing campaign targeting the organization's employees.

   • Action: Security teams can launch targeted awareness campaigns to educate employees about the specific phishing tactics and implement additional email security controls.

ThreatNG's ability to comprehensively discover, assess, and continuously monitor the external attack surface, combined with its vast intelligence repositories and correlation capabilities, makes it an invaluable tool for building and operationalizing Adversary Centric Intelligence programs. By understanding the adversaries' TTPs, motivations, and potential targets, organizations can proactively defend against targeted attacks and enhance their overall security posture.