CYBERSECURITY
Companies Beware of Proprietary Data Uploaded to Virus Total
Phillip Kittelson | 23 Mar 23 |
1 min read
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Virus Total is an amazing tool, used by cybersecurity professionals across the world, and across the many industries in the government and private sectors. But beware, just like the saying anything posted on the Internet will be there forever. Analyst might routinely upload documents to Virus Total to detect known malicious code.
The average user who browses and searches Virus Total may only see indicators such as IP addresses, hashes, and file names, however, anyone with an enterprise account can download the uploaded content. That includes users outside of your organization.
Virus Total supports search modifiers which allow tailoring search results to including file type and file name or labels, and more here on VT’s support poral.
A savvy searcher with an enterprise account for Virust Total could locate PDF, Office documents, other file types with the words restricted, proprietary, confidential, Confidential PII, Attorney-Client Privileged, Restricted in the file name. Further narrowing searches could target result specific organizations or industries.
Companies may use alternate labels, however, simple Google searches can reveal how those companies label their internal confidential data via published guides. Here is an example.
Security analyst should be cautious when uploading files to any third party, regardless of the intent or purpose.
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