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- “Shadow Infrastructure: Forgotten Assets, Ghost Devices & Expired DNS”
“Shadow Infrastructure: Forgotten Assets, Ghost Devices & Expired DNS”
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Legacy Servers and Domains Still Accept External Traffic
Old web apps, demo environments, or staging servers remain live by accident. They aren’t patched, monitored, or documented. Attackers use these ghost assets as stealth entry points.
DNS Records Outlive Their Underlying Services
Subdomains often point to decommissioned services that now host malicious content. Companies rarely review old CNAMEs or A records. Forgotten links lead users to attacker-controlled infrastructure.
Expired Domains Are Being Reclaimed by Threat Actors
Abandoned domains are re-registered to spoof brands or catch stray traffic. Internal tools may still ping or trust these domains. They become powerful phishing and data capture channels.
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IoT Devices Operate Outside Standard Inventories
Smart sensors, IP cameras, and vending machines connect directly to corporate networks. They’re unmanaged, unpatched, and invisible to IT teams. These weak points allow lateral movement and spying.
Forgotten Cloud Instances Drain Budget and Create Risk
Old EC2, GCP, or Azure VMs continue running with default credentials. Billing teams ignore them due to low cost, but attackers don’t. These machines are goldmines for silent persistence.
Reverse proxies or load balancers route traffic to legacy apps that weren’t in scope. These shadow services bypass firewalls and EDR entirely. Only asset-level discovery can uncover them.
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