Threat Intelligence Types and Tools

What is Threat Intelligence?

The study of data and information utilizing tools and procedures to provide relevant patterns on how to protect against possible risks connected with existing or developing threats against organizations, industries, sectors, or governments is known as threat intelligence.

Threat intelligence is designed to help you better comprehend the link between your operating environment and your enemy. Keeping this in mind, we may categorize threat intelligence as follows

Types of Cyber Threat Intelligence

Cyber Threat Intelligence is classified into four types strategic, tactical, technical, and operational.

‣ Strategic Intelligence

High-level intelligence that examines the organization's danger landscape and maps out risk areas based on trends, patterns, and new threats that may have an influence on business choices.

‣ Technical Intelligence

Investigates evidence and artifacts of an adversary's attack. This information may be used by incident response teams to build a baseline attack surface for the analysis and development of defense systems.

‣ Tactical Intelligence

Evaluates adversary tactics, techniques, and processes (TTP). Through real-time investigations, this intelligence may be used to tighten security controls and remediate vulnerabilities.

‣ Operational intelligence

Investigates an adversary's precise motivations and intent to launch an assault. This intelligence might be used by security teams to better understand the essential assets available in the organization (people, processes, and technology) that could be targeted.

Threat Intelligence Tools

1. Urlscan

This Threat Intelligence Tool tool is used to automate the process of browsing and crawling through websites to record activities and interactions.

*URL scan findings include a wealth of information, with the following important areas worth investigating.

Summary: This section contains general information about the URL, such as the IP address, domain registration data, page history, and a snapshot of the site.

HTTP: Information about the HTTP connections performed by the scanner to the site, including data fetched and file formats received.

Redirection: Displays information about any HTTP and client-side redirects found on the site.

Links: Displays all recognized links that go away from the site's homepage.

Behavior: This section contains information on the variables and cookies discovered on the site. These may be useful in identifying the frameworks used in the site's development.

Indicators: Displays a list of all IP addresses, domain names, and hashes linked with the site.

2. Abuse

This Threat Intelligence Tool is a research initiative hosted by the Bern University of Applied Sciences' Institute for Cybersecurity and Engineering. It was created to identify and track malware and botnets using numerous operational platforms created as part of the project. These platforms are as follows:

Malware Bazaar: A resource for sharing malware samples.
Feodo Tracker: A resource used to track botnet command and control (C2) infrastructure linked with Emotet, Dridex, and TrickBot.
SSL Blacklist: A resource for collecting and providing a blocklist for malicious SSL certificates and JA3/JA3s fingerprints.
URL Haus: A resource for sharing malware distribution sites.
Threat Fox: A resource for sharing indicators of compromise (IOCs).

2.1- Malware Bazaar

This Threat Intelligence Tool project is an all-in-one malware collection and analysis database. The project supports the following features:

1. Malware Samples Upload: Security analysts can upload their malware samples for analysis and build the intelligence database. This can be done through the browser or an API.

2. Malware Hunting: Hunting for malware samples is possible through setting up alerts to match various elements such as tags, signatures, YARA rules, ClamAV signatures, and vendor detection.

2.2- FeodoTracker

This Threat Intelligence Tool intends to exchange information about botnet Command and Control (C&C) servers related to Dridex, Emotes (aka Heodo), TrickBot, QakBot, and BazarLoader/BazarBackdoor. This is accomplished by providing a database of C&C servers from which security experts may search and examine any suspicious IP addresses they encounter.

2.3- SSL Blacklist

This Threat Intelligence Tool identifies and detects malicious SSL connections. From these connections, SSL certificates used by botnet C2 servers would be identified and updated on a denylist that is provided for use. The denylist is also used to identify JA3 fingerprints that would help detect and block malware botnet C2 communications on the TCP layer.

2.4- URLhaus

This Threat Intelligence Tool program is designed to share dangerous URLs used in virus propagation. As an analyst, you may search the database for suspicious domains, URLs, hashes, and filetypes and check your research.

2.5- ThreatFox

In This Threat Intelligence Tool Security experts can look for, exchange, and export malware-related signs of compromise. MISP events, Suricata IDS Ruleset, Domain Host files, DNS Response Policy Zone, JSON files, and CSV files are all options for exporting IOCs.

3. PhishTool

This Threat Intelligence Tool Aims to raise awareness of phishing as a serious sort of attack and to create a responsive method of email security. Security analysts may employ email analysis to discover email IOCs, prevent breaches, and offer forensic findings for phishing containment and training engagements.

PhishTool has two accessible versions: Community and Enterprise. The following are the key features:

Perform Email Analysis: PhishTool extracts metadata from phishing emails and offers analysts with necessary explanations and capabilities to track the email's actions, attachments, and URLs to triage the problem.

Heuristic Intelligence: OSINT is built into the product to offer analysts the information they need to keep ahead of persistent assaults and determine what TTP was utilized to circumvent security restrictions and allow the adversary to social engineer a target.

Classification and Reporting: Phishing email classifications are carried out so that analysts can respond swiftly. Reports can also be created to offer a forensic record that can be shared.

4. Cisco Talos Intelligence

Cisco, as one of these organizations, formed a big team of security practitioners known as Cisco Talos to provide actionable information, visibility on indications, and protection against emerging attacks using data acquired from their products. Talos Intelligence is the name of the solution.

Cisco Talos is Comprised of Six Core Teams:

Threat Intelligence and Interdiction: Rapid threat correlation and tracking enable the transformation of basic IOCs into context-rich intel.

Vulnerability & Malware Analysis: Vulnerability and Malware Analysis are undertaken to provide rules and content for threat detection.

Engineering & Development: Maintains the inspection engines and maintains them up to date in order to discover and triage emerging dangers.

Vulnerability Research and Discovery: Collaborating with service and software companies to build repeatable methods of finding and reporting security flaws.

Communities: Upholds the team's and open-source solutions' image.

Global Outreach: Distributes intelligence to consumers and the security community through publications.

Conclusion

In this blog, we learned about threat intelligence types and tools. and how to think like you’re a threat intelligence analyst (TIA). We also saw how threat intelligence is categorized into different intel. And I sorted the best four online tools which can be used in the threat intelligence investigation. Also if you are new in this cybersecurity field then you can use malware as your research program.

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Author

Ayush Pritam Bagde
Cybersecurity Researcher Intern