Bugcrowd Enters the IT Asset Discovery Business

New service searches for errant or vulnerable devices on the Internet.

Bug bounty program provider Bugcrowd today added a new service in which selected white-hat hackers help root out an organizations exposed and vulnerable network devices on the Internet.
The new Attack Surface Management (ASM) service also analyzes the risks these devices pose and provides remediation recommendations for the findings.
Mapping and amassing a full inventory of devices on a network sounds like an obvious practice, but most organizations struggle to get a handle on whats living on their network — a problem exacerbated by the explosion of mobile and Internet of Things devices in the typical enterprise — and how attackers could abuse them if theyre vulnerable or misconfigured.
Casey Ellis, founder, chairman, and CTO of Bugcrowd, says ASM differs from traditional asset discovery tools in that it focuses on the Internet view of the devices rather than on an internal network view. Were at a point right now where pretty much everyone is part of the way in migration to the cloud, which means you cant really find everything, he notes. Were doing it for them.
Bugcrowd, which launched in 2012 as a crowdsourcing model for finding vulnerabilities in software, offers bug bounty, vulnerability disclosure programs, and penetration testing. The company relies on vetted independent security researchers to discover security weaknesses.
This [new ASM offering] doubles down that were not just focused on bug bounties and vulnerability disclosure. ... There are more things we can do with the crowd. This cements us bringing this crowdsourced security approach more widely, he notes.
ASMs rollout comes on the heels of Metasploit creator and renowned security expert HD Moores recent rollout of his new IT asset discovery tool,
Rumble Network Discovery
, which detects an organizations devices and their status on a network without requiring administrative access to reach them.
While Discovery maps out devices from the inside of an organizations network, Bugcrowds ASM detects asset exposure on the public Internet. The thing HD is solving first is the idea of an internal view of a corporate network, something [hes] beginning to address from the inside-out. Were taking it from the outside-in, Ellis says.
ASM will essentially provide a benchmark of network assets and can be set to detect devices on a continuous basis, he says. New devices are often placed on the Internet outside the purview of the security team, he notes, and that makes it difficult to keep tabs on them.
Moore, founder and CEO of Critical Research Corp., says Bugcrowds new service should augment the bug bounty program as well. Many bounty programs are limited by unrealistically small scopes because the folks running the program arent aware of how much stuff they have exposed to the Internet, he says. This should be a good thing for Bugcrowd, as it gives the crowd more things to look at, and great for their customers, as they get visibility into their overall exposure, and not just what they happen to know about.
Moore, who serves on Bugcrowds advisory board, notes that there are several other vendors currently monitoring the external attack surface, including Censys.io, Asset Note, Expanse.co, RiskRecon, and BitDiscovery. In the case of Asset Note, the team started the company as the result of doing bug bounty work and realizing how big the gap was between perceived and actual exposure for most organizations, he says. Visibility is a big deal for security and its great to see another company making Internet-wide asset discovery part of their platform.
Profiles and Context
Ellis notes that many organizations today merely consult DNS records for tracking any external weaknesses of their devices. But those lists only contain the systems they know about, he says.
Bugcrowds new asset discovery service stops short of exploiting any vulnerable devices it discovers, he says. Its more about profiling the assets and providing context on how risky it is and what would happen if it were attacked.
ASMs findings can be used in Bugcrowds bug bounty and penetration testing programs for more targeted testing, the company says.
Related Content:
Crowdsourced vs. Traditional Pen Testing
Higher Education: 15 Books to Help Cybersecurity Pros Be Better

Metasploit Creator HD Moores Latest Hack: IT Assets
10 Ways to Keep a Rogue RasPi From Wrecking Your Network
This free, all-day online conference offers a look at the latest tools, strategies, and best practices for protecting your organization’s most sensitive data. Click for
more information
and, to register,
here
.

Last News
▸ New threat discovered: Mobile phone ownership compromised. ◂ Discovered: 23/12/2024 Category: security	▸ Some DLP Products Vulnerable to Security Holes ◂ Discovered: 23/12/2024 Category: security	▸ Scan suggests Heartbleed patches may not have been successful. ◂ Discovered: 23/12/2024 Category: security

**Cyber Security Categories**
Google Dorks Database	Exploits Vulnerability	Exploit Shellcodes

CVE List

Tools/Apps

News/Aarticles

Phishing Database

Deepfake Detection

Trends/Statistics & Live Infos

Tags:
Bugcrowd Enters the IT Asset Discovery Business