Deceptive Websites
Deceptive websites are online pages designed to mislead or trick users for malicious purposes. These websites employ various tactics to manipulate users into taking actions they wouldn't usually take, often resulting in harm.
Here's a breakdown of their characteristics:
Misleading Content or Design: Deceptive websites often present false or misleading information or mimic the design of trusted websites to create a false sense of security.
Manipulative Tactics: These sites use manipulative techniques to pressure, persuade, or deceive users. This can include creating a sense of urgency, offering unrealistic deals, or impersonating legitimate organizations.
Harmful Outcomes: The goals of deceptive websites vary, but they often involve:
Stealing sensitive information (login credentials, financial details, personal data).
Spreading malware.
Conducting fraud.
Broad Category: "Deceptive websites" is a broad category that encompasses various types of malicious sites, including phishing sites, scam sites, and sites that spread misinformation.
Here’s how ThreatNG can help in addressing deceptive websites:
ThreatNG's external discovery is the starting point. It enables the platform to map an organization's entire online presence without needing any internal connections. This is essential for identifying all web assets that could be exploited by deceptive websites or used in deceptive campaigns.
ThreatNG's external assessment features are valuable in evaluating the risks associated with deceptive websites:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: ThreatNG analyzes the externally accessible parts of web applications to identify potential entry points for attackers. This is important because attackers might hijack parts of a legitimate web application to redirect users to a deceptive site or inject deceptive elements.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG assesses a website's susceptibility to subdomain takeovers by analyzing subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. Attackers sometimes use compromised subdomains to host deceptive websites, making this assessment essential.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: ThreatNG derives this from a combination of factors, including Domain Intelligence (with DNS Intelligence, Domain Name Permutations, and Web3 Domains capabilities) and Sentiment and Financials Findings. This assessment is highly relevant because deceptive websites are often employed in phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks. For example, ThreatNG's Domain Name Permutations capability can reveal if attackers have registered slightly altered domain names to deceive users.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: ThreatNG uses attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG Violations, Sentiment and Financials, and Domain Intelligence (including Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains). Deceptive websites can severely damage an organization's brand reputation, and ThreatNG's assessment helps understand and mitigate this risk.
Cyber Risk Exposure: ThreatNG considers parameters from its Domain Intelligence module, such as certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports, to determine cyber risk exposure. This helps identify potential weaknesses attackers could exploit to create convincing deceptive websites.
3. Reporting
ThreatNG provides various reports, including security ratings reports. These reports can highlight the risks associated with deceptive websites.
ThreatNG provides continuous monitoring of the external attack surface and digital risk. This is vital for the timely detection of deceptive websites or related malicious activity.
ThreatNG's Investigation Modules provide detailed analysis capabilities:
Domain Record Analysis: ThreatNG analyzes domain records, including IP and vendor/technology identification. This can help in tracing the origin and infrastructure of a deceptive website.
Domain Name Permutations: ThreatNG identifies taken and available domain name permutations. This is valuable for detecting typosquatting domains often used in deceptive website attacks. For example, if a company's domain is "example.com," ThreatNG can find out if "examp1e.com" or "example.net" are registered.
Web3 Domains: ThreatNG identifies taken and available Web3 domains. As Web3 use grows, this capability becomes essential to address deceptive websites in decentralized environments.
Email Intelligence: ThreatNG analyzes email security presence (DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records), predicts email formats, and harvests emails. This helps understand email spoofing, a common tactic to direct users to deceptive websites.
WHOIS Intelligence: ThreatNG provides WHOIS analysis and identifies other domains owned. This can uncover connections between deceptive websites and other potentially malicious domains.
Subdomain Intelligence: ThreatNG analyzes subdomains, HTTP responses, headers, server headers, cloud hosting, content identification (including admin pages and APIs), ports, known vulnerabilities, and web application firewall discovery. This detailed analysis can reveal vulnerabilities that attackers might exploit to host deceptive pages.
IP Intelligence: ThreatNG provides information on IPs, shared IPs, ASNs, country locations, and private IPs. This is useful for tracking down the servers hosting deceptive websites.
Certificate Intelligence: ThreatNG analyzes TLS certificates, including their status and issuers. This can help identify suspicious certificates used by deceptive sites.
Social Media: ThreatNG analyzes social media posts. This can help in detecting social media campaigns that promote deceptive websites.
Sensitive Code Exposure: ThreatNG discovers public code repositories and uncovers exposed credentials, secrets, and configuration files. Attackers might use this information to create more convincing deceptive websites or target their attacks.
Mobile Application Discovery: ThreatNG discovers mobile apps in marketplaces and analyzes their contents. Deceptive activities can also occur within mobile applications, or deceptive websites might be promoted.
Search Engine Exploitation: ThreatNG helps investigate an organization’s susceptibility to exposing information via search engines. Attackers might use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to make their deceptive sites appear higher in search results.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: ThreatNG identifies sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services and SaaS implementations, which helps identify potential cloud-based deceptive website attacks.
Online Sharing Exposure: ThreatNG identifies an organization's presence within online code-sharing platforms. Attackers might find and leverage information on these platforms.
Sentiment and Financials: ThreatNG analyzes lawsuits, layoff chatter, SEC filings, and ESG violations. This can provide context for potential deceptive website attacks, as attackers might exploit negative news or events.
Archived Web Pages: ThreatNG analyzes archived web pages. This can help understand changes to a website and identify potential spoofing tactics used to create deceptive sites.
Dark Web Presence: ThreatNG monitors the dark web for organizational mentions, ransomware events, and compromised credentials. Compromised credentials can facilitate deceptive website attacks.
Technology Stack: ThreatNG identifies the technologies used by the organization. Attackers might use this information to craft more convincing deceptive sites.
ThreatNG maintains intelligence repositories for various data, including dark web information, compromised credentials, ransomware events, and domain-related data. These repositories provide context for investigating and understanding deceptive website threats.
7. Working with Complementary Solutions
While the document doesn't detail specific integrations, ThreatNG's data and analysis capabilities can enhance other security tools:
SIEM (Security Information and Event Management): ThreatNG's findings can be integrated into a SIEM to correlate external attack surface data with internal security events, providing a more complete security picture.
SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation and Response): ThreatNG can trigger automated responses in SOAR platforms to take down deceptive websites or block malicious IPs.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): ThreatNG's intelligence on domain permutations, Web3 domains, and dark web activity can enrich TIPs, improving threat detection.
Email Security Solutions: Integrating ThreatNG's Email Intelligence can enhance the detection of phishing emails that direct users to deceptive websites.
Examples of ThreatNG Helping:
ThreatNG's Domain Name Permutations capability detects a newly registered domain that closely resembles a company's human resources portal. An alert is triggered, and the security team discovers a deceptive site designed to collect employee personal information under the guise of an updated benefits enrollment.
ThreatNG's Subdomain Intelligence identifies a subdomain on an unusual server serving a page mimicking the company's customer feedback survey. This indicates a potentially deceptive site for collecting sensitive customer data or spreading misinformation.
ThreatNG's Search Engine Exploitation feature finds that the company's marketing materials contain outdated product specifications. Attackers could use this to create deceptive websites that advertise older products as the latest version to mislead customers.
Examples of ThreatNG Working with Complementary Solutions:
ThreatNG detects a deceptive website and sends an alert to a SIEM. The SIEM correlates this with web traffic logs and user behavior analytics to identify potentially affected users and the extent of the deception.
ThreatNG's threat intelligence on malicious domains is shared with a web application firewall (WAF) and intrusion prevention system (IPS). These security tools are updated to block access to the deceptive domains and prevent exploitation attempts.
A SOAR platform uses ThreatNG's API to automate reporting the deceptive website to search engines, social media platforms, and relevant authorities to minimize its impact and prevent further harm.
ThreatNG offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities to help organizations identify, assess, monitor, and investigate deceptive website threats. Its intelligence repositories and investigation modules, particularly Domain Intelligence, provide valuable insights and can enhance the effectiveness of other security tools.
