Malicious Websites
Malicious websites are intentionally designed to harm users, devices, or networks. They actively engage in or facilitate harmful activities, posing a significant threat to online safety.
Here's a breakdown of their key characteristics:
Harmful Functionality: Malicious websites are not just deceptive; they actively carry out destructive actions. This can include:
Malware Distribution: Spreading viruses, worms, ransomware, and other malicious software.
Data Theft: Stealing sensitive information like login credentials, financial data, and personal details.
Exploitation of Vulnerabilities: Using security weaknesses in browsers or systems to gain unauthorized access.
Fraudulent Activities: Online scams, phishing, and other deceptive practices to defraud users.
Intentional Harm: The key differentiator is the intent to cause harm. These websites are deliberately created or compromised to engage in malicious activities.
Diverse Forms: Malicious websites can take many forms. They might appear as legitimate sites to trick users or operate covertly to infect devices.
Here’s how ThreatNG can assist in tackling malicious websites:
ThreatNG's external discovery is the starting point. It enables the platform to map an organization's online presence without requiring internal connections. This is the first step in identifying web assets that could be compromised or used to host or distribute malicious content.
ThreatNG's external assessment features are valuable in evaluating the risks associated with malicious 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 malicious site or inject malicious code.
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 malicious websites or phishing pages, 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), Sentiment and Financials Findings, and Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials). This assessment is highly relevant because malicious websites often involve phishing and other deceptive activities.
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). Malicious websites that impersonate a brand or distribute harmful content can severely damage an organization's 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 compromise websites and turn them into malicious platforms.
3. Reporting
ThreatNG provides various reports, including security ratings reports. These reports can highlight the risks associated with malicious websites and provide valuable insights for remediation.
ThreatNG provides continuous monitoring of the external attack surface and digital risk. This is vital for the timely detection of malicious websites or related malicious activity.
ThreatNG's Investigation Modules provide detailed analysis capabilities:
Domain Intelligence:
DNS Intelligence:
Domain Record Analysis: ThreatNG analyzes domain records, including IP and vendor/technology identification. This can help in tracing the origin and infrastructure of a malicious website.
Domain Name Permutations: ThreatNG identifies taken and available domain name permutations. This is valuable for detecting typosquatting domains often used to host malicious sites. For example, if a company's domain is "example.com," ThreatNG can find out if "examp1e.com" or "example.net" are registered and potentially malicious.
Web3 Domains: ThreatNG identifies taken and available Web3 domains. As Web3 use grows, this capability becomes essential to address malicious 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, which is often used to direct users to malicious websites.
WHOIS Intelligence: ThreatNG provides WHOIS analysis and identifies other domains owned. This can uncover connections between malicious websites and other potentially malicious domains or actors.
Subdomain Intelligence: ThreatNG analyzes subdomains, HTTP responses, headers, server headers, cloud hosting, content identification (including admin pages, APIs, and potentially sensitive information), ports (including those used for IoT/OT and databases), known vulnerabilities, and web application firewall discovery. This detailed analysis can reveal vulnerabilities attackers might exploit to compromise subdomains and host malicious content.
IP Intelligence: ThreatNG provides information on IPs, shared IPs, ASNs, country locations, and private IPs. This is useful for tracking down the servers hosting malicious websites.
Certificate Intelligence: ThreatNG analyzes TLS certificates, including their status and issuers. This can help identify suspicious certificates used by malicious sites.
Social Media: ThreatNG analyzes social media posts. This can help detect social media campaigns that promote or link to malicious websites.
Sensitive Code Exposure: ThreatNG discovers public code repositories and uncovers exposed credentials, secrets, and configuration files. Attackers might use this information to compromise websites or infrastructure.
Mobile Application Discovery: ThreatNG discovers mobile apps in marketplaces and analyzes their contents. Malicious websites might be promoted through malicious mobile apps, or apps might redirect to such sites.
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 malicious 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 malicious activities.
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 malicious website attacks, as attackers might exploit negative news or events.
Archived Web Pages: ThreatNG analyzes archived web pages. This can help understand website changes and identify potential malicious modifications.
Dark Web Presence: ThreatNG monitors the dark web for organizational mentions, ransomware events, and compromised credentials. Compromised credentials can facilitate various malicious activities.
Technology Stack: ThreatNG identifies the technologies used by the organization. Attackers might use this information to find vulnerabilities to exploit.
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 malicious 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 malicious websites, block malicious IPs, or trigger incident response workflows.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): ThreatNG's intelligence on domain permutations, Web3 domains, dark web activity, and other threat indicators can enrich TIPs, improving threat detection and prevention.
Web Filtering and Email Security Solutions: Integrating ThreatNG's data on malicious domains and URLs can enhance the detection and blocking of malicious websites in web traffic and email communications.
Examples of ThreatNG Helping:
ThreatNG's Domain Name Permutations capability detects a newly registered domain resembling a company's customer portal. An alert is triggered, and the security team discovers a malicious site to steal customer credentials and payment information.
ThreatNG's Subdomain Intelligence identifies a subdomain on an unusual server that serves exploit code to target a vulnerability in a popular browser. This indicates a malicious site used for drive-by download attacks.
ThreatNG's Search Engine Exploitation feature finds that the company's software downloads are offered on unofficial websites, some of which distribute malware-infected versions of the software.
Examples of ThreatNG Working with Complementary Solutions:
ThreatNG detects a malicious website and sends an alert to a SIEM. The SIEM correlates this with network intrusion detection system (IDS) logs to identify users who have visited the malicious site and whose machines might be infected.
ThreatNG's threat intelligence on malicious domains and IPs is shared with a web application firewall (WAF) and intrusion prevention system (IPS). These security tools have been updated to block traffic to and from malicious sites.
A SOAR platform uses ThreatNG's API to automate reporting the malicious website to relevant authorities, such as search engine providers and hosting companies, and initiate internal system vulnerability scans.
ThreatNG offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities to help organizations identify, assess, monitor, and investigate malicious website threats. Its intelligence repositories and investigation modules, particularly Domain Intelligence, provide valuable insights and can enhance the effectiveness of other security tools.
