Phishing Websites
Phishing websites are fraudulent web pages designed to mimic legitimate websites and deceive users into divulging sensitive information. They are a key component of phishing attacks, a type of social engineering in which attackers impersonate trustworthy entities to trick individuals.
Here's a breakdown of their characteristics:
Impersonation: Phishing websites closely resemble the appearance of well-known websites, such as those of banks, social media platforms, or e-commerce stores.
Deceptive Purpose: Their primary goal is to steal users' credentials (usernames and passwords), financial details (credit card numbers and bank account information), or other personal data.
Delivery Mechanism: Users are typically lured to phishing websites through deceptive emails, messages, or advertisements that contain malicious links.
Short Lifespan: Phishing websites are often short-lived to avoid detection and being taken down by security measures.
Varied Complexity: While some phishing websites are simple copies, others can be sophisticated and interactive, enhancing their deceptive nature.
Here’s how ThreatNG addresses the challenges of phishing websites:
1. External Discovery
ThreatNG's external discovery capability allows it to map an organization's digital footprint without needing any internal connections. This is crucial for identifying all web assets that could be spoofed in a phishing attack.
2. External Assessment
ThreatNG's external assessment features help evaluate various risks related to phishing websites:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: ThreatNG analyzes externally accessible parts of web applications to find potential entry points for attackers. This is important because attackers might hijack parts of a legitimate web application to redirect users to a phishing site.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG assesses the risk of subdomain takeover by analyzing subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificates. Attackers often host phishing sites on compromised subdomains, so this assessment is critical.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: ThreatNG specifically derives this from Domain Intelligence (including DNS Intelligence with Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains, and Email Intelligence), Sentiment and Financials Findings, and Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials). This is a core function, as it directly addresses the risk of phishing attacks.
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). Phishing websites can severely damage a brand's reputation, and ThreatNG helps assess this risk.
Cyber Risk Exposure: ThreatNG uses its Domain Intelligence module to analyze parameters like certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports. This helps identify potential weaknesses that attackers could exploit in phishing campaigns.
3. Reporting
ThreatNG provides reports that can highlight phishing-related risks and offer insights for mitigation.
4. Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG's continuous monitoring of the external attack surface and digital risk is essential for the timely detection of phishing websites or related activities..
ThreatNG's Investigation Modules provide in-depth analysis capabilities:
Domain Record Analysis: ThreatNG analyzes domain records, including IP and vendor/technology identification. This can help trace the origin and infrastructure of a phishing website.
Domain Name Permutations: ThreatNG identifies taken and available domain name permutations. This is highly valuable for detecting typosquatting domains used in phishing attacks. For instance, it can reveal if attackers have registered "bank0famerica.com" instead of "bankofamerica.com."
Web3 Domains: ThreatNG identifies taken and available Web3 domains. As Web3 evolves, it becomes essential to address phishing 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 phishing websites.
WHOIS Intelligence: ThreatNG provides WHOIS analysis and identifies other domains owned. This can uncover connections between phishing websites and other 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 attackers might exploit to host phishing 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 phishing websites.
Certificate Intelligence: ThreatNG analyzes TLS certificates, including their status and issuers. This can help identify suspicious certificates used by phishing sites.
Social Media: ThreatNG analyzes social media posts. This can help detect social media campaigns that promote phishing 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 phishing websites or target their attacks.
Mobile Application Discovery: ThreatNG discovers mobile apps and analyzes their contents. This is relevant because phishing attacks can also involve fake mobile apps that direct users to phishing websites or steal credentials directly.
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 phishing 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 phishing attacks.
Online Sharing Exposure: ThreatNG identifies organizational 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 phishing 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 spoofing tactics used in phishing.
Dark Web Presence: ThreatNG monitors the dark web for organizational mentions, ransomware events, and compromised credentials. Compromised credentials are often used to facilitate phishing attacks.
Technology Stack: ThreatNG identifies the technologies used by the organization. Attackers might use this information to craft more convincing phishing 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 phishing 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 phishing 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 phishing websites.
Examples of ThreatNG Helping:
ThreatNG's Domain Name Permutations capability detects a newly registered domain that is a close variation of a company's domain. An alert is triggered, and the security team discovers a phishing site to steal customer login credentials.
ThreatNG's Search Engine Exploitation feature finds sensitive information exposed through search engines that could be used to make phishing websites more convincing.
Examples of ThreatNG Working with Complementary Solutions:
ThreatNG detects a phishing website and sends an alert to a SIEM. The SIEM correlates this with employee web browsing activity to identify potentially compromised accounts.
ThreatNG's threat intelligence on phishing domains is shared with an email security solution. The email security solution blocks emails containing links to these malicious domains.
A SOAR platform uses ThreatNG's API to automate taking down detected phishing websites and notifying affected users.
ThreatNG provides comprehensive capabilities to help organizations identify, assess, monitor, and investigate phishing website threats. Its intelligence repositories and investigation modules, particularly Domain Intelligence, offer valuable insights and can enhance the effectiveness of other security tools.
