Best Open Source Threat Intelligence Feeds

What are Threat Intelligence Feeds?

Threat intelligence feeds provide a continuous stream of data that offers real-time details about cyber threats globally. These feeds collect information from various sources, including security experts, government agencies, and open-source intelligence. The gathered data is processed and analyzed, converting raw information into actionable threat intelligence. This includes indicators of compromise (IOCs), tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by threat actors. Such intelligence is invaluable to security teams, enabling them to quickly identify, understand, and mitigate threats.

Moreover, threat intelligence feeds offer automated streams of crucial threat information, including IOCs, details on threat actors, suspicious domains and IP addresses, and malware hashes. These are essential for maintaining an organization's security posture. The effectiveness of these feeds relies on the context they provide. Without context, the data might seem overwhelming and difficult to interpret. However, with proper context, security teams can focus on the most pressing threats, enhancing their response time and efficiency.

Types of Threat Intelligence Feeds

Threat intelligence feeds are primarily categorized into four types:

Commercial Feeds

These feeds gather anonymized metadata from customers and analyze it to provide threat intelligence. Often provided by reputable cybersecurity firms, they offer comprehensive coverage of the threat landscape.

Open-source Feeds

Publicly available sources of threat intelligence, such as public forums, blogs, newsletters, social media, and even threat intelligence browser extensions, fall into this category. They provide valuable information but often require more manual analysis.

Community-based Feeds

These are collaborative efforts where individuals and organizations share threat intelligence with each other. Valuable for niche or specific threat information, examples include Google SafeBrowsing and VirusTotal.

Government and NGO Feeds

Governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provide threat intelligence feeds, sometimes for free or at a cost. These include platforms for sharing threat data among entities, like the Department of Homeland Security's Automated Indicator Sharing or the FBI's InfraGard project. While these feeds are valuable for staying informed about cyber threats, relying solely on them can provide a limited perspective of the threat landscape.

Threat Feeds vs. Threat Intel Feeds

Threat feeds and threat intelligence feeds are both real-time data streams that gather cyber risk or cyber threat information. However, the key difference between the two is context.

Whereas threat feeds simply collect vast quantities of data and make it available to security teams via a report or live view of the dataset, a threat intelligence feed provides indicators of compromise — a piece of digital forensics that suggests that a file, system, or network may have been breached — with relevant context. This helps teams focus on the most urgent issues and alerts.

Context is incredibly important to modern IT teams, many of which are overworked and understaffed and do not have sufficient time to manage and review multiple data feeds. Using technology, including data aggregation and analytics (AI ML), to analyze raw feed data, deduplicate, and provide context around the findings helps make the data more actionable, and thus more useful.

Benefits of Threat Intelligence Feeds

Threat intelligence feeds offer security practitioners critical external visibility on known malicious sources. This data can significantly enhance event detection, prevention efforts, and event response and remediation.

Effective use of threat intelligence feeds provides several key benefits to organizations, including:

Increased Efficiency and Improved Resource Allocation

By automating data collection, formatting, analysis, and dissemination, IT staff can be redeployed to focus on higher-value activities. The contextual information provided by threat intelligence feeds allows IT teams to prioritize tasks, concentrating limited resources on the most urgent needs.

Enhanced Proactive Security Measures

While threat data alone does not automatically improve security posture, combining intelligence with detection and control mapping enables organizations to better prepare for and prevent security events. Targeted security measures can address specific threats, and insights from threat intelligence feeds can strengthen overall defenses.

Improved Speed

Threat intelligence feeds offer real-time access to the latest data and insights, which is crucial in the rapidly changing security landscape. Access to timely threat intelligence, combined with a robust security infrastructure and toolset, helps organizations stay ahead of adversaries, ensuring quicker and more effective responses to emerging threats.

How Threat Intelligence Feeds Gather Data

Threat intelligence feeds function similarly to other data feeds, automatically receiving, storing, de-duplicating, and preparing data that meets specific criteria from predefined sources. Security teams often use a Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) to coordinate this activity.

The process generally follows these steps:

Define Data Requirements

This planning step involves outlining the organization’s goals and objectives concerning threat intelligence data. Requirements vary based on data usage, specific threats faced, and common attack techniques by known adversaries.

Automate Data Collection

Most threat intelligence systems begin by collecting raw data from external sources such as security vendors, communities, national vulnerability databases, or open-source feeds. Vendors may aggregate data from their user base, incorporating the resulting intelligence feed into their solutions or offering it as a separate product. Other sources include industry-specific feeds, cybersecurity "trust circles," and dark web forums. Web crawlers may also search the internet for exploits and attacks.

Convert Data and Prepare for Analysis

Raw data is converted into analyzable formats, involving decrypting files, translating foreign content, organizing data points into spreadsheets, and evaluating data for reliability and relevance.

Analyze Data

Raw data is transformed into actionable intelligence to develop action plans based on decisions made in the requirements phase. Final insights are packaged into different reports and assessments specific to each audience:

· Strategic Intelligence: For senior security planners, focusing on broad trends to plan security investments and policies.

· Tactical Intelligence: Concentrates on indicators of compromise (IOCs) to speed up the identification and elimination of potential threats. This is typically automated and the easiest to generate.

· Operational Intelligence: Examines the details of a cyberattack to understand the tactics, motives, and skill levels of malicious actors, helping to establish the appropriate defensive posture for future attacks.

Disseminate Data

Analysis results are translated into recommendations tailored for specific audiences and presented to stakeholders. It’s important to avoid technical jargon and remain concise, using formats like single-page reports or short slide decks for presentation.

Establish a Feedback Loop

Due to the evolving threat landscape, a continuous feedback loop must be established. This involves seeking stakeholder feedback on the relevance of reports, measuring the effectiveness of existing technical controls, and adjusting external threat intelligence sources and the prioritization of new insights based on context.

What are the Best Open Source Threat Intelligence Feeds?

Open source threat intelligence feeds are invaluable resources for cybersecurity professionals, enabling them to stay informed about emerging threats and risks. Here is a detailed list of some of the top open source threat intelligence feeds:

AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX)

AlienVault OTX is a global, community-driven platform where security researchers and professionals can share real-time threat intelligence. It offers information on Indicators of Compromise (IOCs), malware samples, and other threat data.

SANS Internet Storm Center (ISC)

SANS ISC offers various feeds, including daily diaries on cybersecurity events, malicious IPs, and domain names associated with malicious activities, helping organizations stay informed about the latest threats and vulnerabilities.

Cyber Threat Intelligence Network (CTIN)

CTIN provides a curated collection of cyber threat intelligence feeds, including data on vulnerabilities, malware, and phishing campaigns, helping organizations stay updated on the latest cyber threats.

Abuse.ch

Abuse.ch offers various feeds focused on different aspects of cyber threats, such as botnets, malware, and ransomware. These feeds are essential for organizations aiming to identify and mitigate emerging threats.

CIRCL (Computer Incident Response Center Luxembourg) Passive DNS and Passive SSL

CIRCL provides several feeds, including Passive DNS and Passive SSL, which offer valuable information on domain names and SSL certificates associated with malicious activities.

Spamhaus

Spamhaus is a well-known organization that offers a variety of feeds related to spam, malware, and botnet command and control servers. Their data helps organizations block known malicious IPs and domains.

PhishTank

PhishTank is a collaborative platform that allows users to submit, verify, and share phishing data. It provides an extensive feed of verified phishing URLs, aiding organizations in protecting against phishing attacks.

Dnstwist

Dnstwist is a Domain name permutation engine designed to identify homograph phishing, typosquatting, and brand imitation.

DNS fuzzing is an automated process that identifies potentially malicious domains that target your organization. This application generates a wide number of domain name permutations based on the domain name you enter and then checks to see whether any of them are in use. In addition, it can build fuzzy hashes of web pages to determine whether they are part of an ongoing phishing assault or brand impersonation, among many other capabilities.

Tens of SOC and incident response teams throughout the world, as well as independent information security experts and researchers, employ the scanner. In addition, it is incorporated with the products and services of other security companies, including but not limited to:

Splunk ESCU, Rapid7 InsightConnect SOAR, Mimecast, PaloAlto Cortex XSOAR, VDA Labs, Watcher, Intel Owl, PatrOwl, RecordedFuture, SpiderFoot, DigitalShadows, SecurityRisk, SmartFence, ThreatPipes, and Appsecco are all included.

Conclusion

Threat intelligence feeds provide real-time insight into potential threats, enabling organizations to move from reactive to proactive. Implementing the right threat intelligence source requires careful evaluation and selection, as well as effective integration with existing infrastructure.