What is an Attack Surface? How to Discover Your Public Digital Assets
In cybersecurity, your attack surface refers to the sum total of all points where an unauthorized user (an attacker) can attempt to enter or extract data from your systems. Minimizing your attack surface is one of the most fundamental tenets of proactive security.
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Types of Attack Surfaces
Your attack surface is generally divided into three categories:
1. Digital / External Attack Surface: Anything accessible via the internet. This includes public websites, DNS servers, domain names, subdomains, IP addresses, APIs, and cloud services. 2. Physical Attack Surface: The physical assets containing your data, such as employee laptops, mobile devices, servers, and office premises. 3. Social Engineering / Human Attack Surface: The employees who can be targeted with phishing, vishing, or baiting attacks.
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Steps to Discover Your Public Digital Assets
To secure your external digital footprint, you must think like an attacker and map out your assets:
1. Perform Subdomain Reconnaissance
Attackers look for forgotten subdomain names (e.g., test.yourcompany.com or old-api.yourcompany.com). Discovering these is the first step of digital asset mapping.
2. Identify Exposed Ports & Services Ensure only necessary ports (typically Port 80 and 443 for web traffic) are open. Having database ports like Port 5432 (PostgreSQL) or Port 6379 (Redis) exposed to the public is a major risk.
3. Check for Certificate Expirations Expired or misconfigured SSL/TLS certificates not only display browser warnings but also present security gaps.
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