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Whether you’re a security operations center (SOC) analyst, part of an incident response team, or just an infosec nerd, you’ve likely felt the pain associated with threat intelligence feeds. On the surface, threat intelligence feeds are precisely what they sound like: Continuously updated feeds that provide external information or data on existing or potential risks and threats. In practice, however, there are a few differences that set different feeds apart from each other. Mainly, the type of content they provide.
Threat intelligence feeds are a bit of a misnomer. Whether they provide hashes, indicators of compromise (IOCs), or domain names, very few feeds provide actual “intelligence.” It is then up to security analysts to take this data or information, process it, and turn it into actionable intelligence (which almost always requires additional effort).
Information vs. intelligence (and to an extent, data). David Bianco’s well known (https://twitter.com/davidjbianco) “Pyramid of Pain” is an excellent way illustrating the types of indicators that are out there, but also how much pain they can cause your adversaries. The “good stuff” is at the top of the pyramid.
These terms are often used interchangeably, but when it comes to threat intelligence feeds, there are differences. Though they’re called “intelligence” feeds, many consist of information or data, rather than curated intelligence. For defenders, continuous streams of alerts without context can become exhausting, turning indicators of compromise into what Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest) CISO Rick Holland (now with ReliaQuest) calls “indicators of exhaustion.” Information overload can result in security teams drowning in alerts.
Data can be understood as being raw and unprocessed. Think of these feeds as those who provide data points like IP addresses, URLs, and IOCs. This type of data is useful, but only provides a small part of the story.
Information is data that is structured and given context. This brings data into focus and answers specific questions e.g., is this domain actively hosting malicious content?
Intelligence can be broadly defined as actionable information that is taken in context alongside specific requirements. This is the next step up from information; intelligence can help inform decisions: Being actionable is a critical differentiating factor between intelligence and data/information. Good intelligence allows an organization to prioritize its efforts and take proactive action against cyber threats.
This doesn’t necessarily make feeds that provide raw data useless: They can still play a role in producing intelligence. Often, feeds are the first place groups start on their threat intelligence journey: Less mature security teams may gravitate towards threat intelligence feeds because they seem to be the most accessible, especially when you are budget constrained. But knowing precisely what you are looking for, what problem you want to solve, and also recognizing the limitations of threat intelligence feeds is critical. One of the ways security teams can do this is by establishing intelligence requirements and aligning these to threat intelligence feeds. Practices like threat modeling (structuring thinking around what critical assets an organization has and which are the likely threats to that organization) can streamline this process and provide direction.
This not only makes the daunting task of narrowing down which feeds to use a little bit easier but also helps teams get the most value.
There are a ton of different threat intelligence feeds out there. This GitHub page is a great resource that has links to over 75 different feeds, as well as useful information on different standardized formats, frameworks, platforms, and services for sharing threat intelligence.
One thing we like about this list is that it highlights the importance of context and analysis we mentioned above:
“A certain amount of (domain- or business-specific) analysis is necessary to create true threat intelligence.”
Here are a couple of recommended feeds picked by Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest) that have been particularly useful, just be aware of the limitations of threat feeds.
And although not technically a threat intelligence feed, the Malware Information Sharing Platform (MISP) deserves a shoutout. MISP is a free and open-source threat intelligence platform co-financed by the European Union. It allows access to a variety of different feeds and also facilitates collecting, storing, distributing, and sharing IOCs and analyses of malware samples. Intelligence sharing between trusted partners is crucial for identifying threats, as MISP duly notes:
“Quite often similar organisations are targeted by the same Threat Actor, in the same or different Campaign. MISP will make it easier for you to share with, but also to receive from trusted partners and trust-groups. Sharing also enables collaborative analysis and prevents you from doing the work someone else already did before.”
While many of the feeds mentioned in this blog are about the general threat landscape, in contrast, SearchLight (now ReliaQuest’s GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) service (now ReliaQuest GreyMatter DRP) provides intelligence that is fully tailored to an organization. We work with our customers to build unique collection plans based on their most valuable assets. Alerts from DRP are built around specific requirements to ensure they are directly relevant to the threats and risks customers are most concerned with.
GreyMatter DRP intelligence can also be integrated into a range of platforms. DRP integrates with all the leading threat intelligence platforms, such as Anomali, ThreatConnect, ThreatQuotient, and TruStar – as well as with a host of SIEM, Ticketing, SOAR, and Enforcement platforms.
Increasingly, however, organizations have been using the data within DRP to enrich further their observables (access to DRP also grants access to Cylance Infinity, AlienVault, PhishTank, and Webroot – as well pastes, criminal forum posts, Twitter posts, and other data sources).
Customers can also use Shadow Search (now ReliaQuest GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) (now ReliaQuest GreyMatter DRP) to investigate information from SearchLight (now ReliaQuest’s GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) alerts or threat intelligence feeds and enrich their investigations. For example, if a customer receives an alert on exposed internal employee credentials, they can plug that information into Shadow Search (now ReliaQuest GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) to get critical contextual information on where the data leak originated/has been shared. If SearchLight (now ReliaQuest’s GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) detects a vulnerability on an organizations’ internet-facing applications, they can pivot into Shadow Search (now ReliaQuest GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) to gain additional context from NIST CVD, ExploitDB, and mentions across criminal locations. Additionally, if a customer uses a feed to gather IOCs about an active cyber campaign targeting their sector, Shadow Search (now ReliaQuest GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) can be used to help build a profile of previous activity or dark web forums and marketplaces where that threat actor is active. For example, this blog we published, Using Shadow Search (now ReliaQuest GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) to Power Investigations: Sextortion Campaigns, provides an overview of how to use Shadow Search (now ReliaQuest GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) to investigate a sextortion attack. These same methodologies can easily be applied to many other types of investigation.
If you want to have a play around with Shadow Search (now ReliaQuest GreyMatter Digital Risk Protection) (GreyMatter DRP) , you can do so by requesting a demo.