What are primary and secondary assets?

1 min

Question

Hexiosec ASM has a concept of assets either being classed as primary or secondary. What does this mean and how is it determined?

Answer

Hexiosec ASM uses 'primary' and 'secondary' to describe the relationships back to seed domains and IP addresses. Since everything on the internet is connected, we need to ensure the results of a Hexiosec ASM scan are appropriately focussed.

Screenshot showing an example domain on the left, with the graph image showing connections on the right.

Domains Graph

A domain (or IP) will be a 'primary' asset if it is connected back to one of the seed nodes via a valid path. A subdomain (or child) of a seed domain will be a 'primary' asset. However, the domain of a 3rd-party service aliased (DNS CNAME'd) from a primary domain, or a subdomain for a different website found in a certificate would both be 'secondary' assets.

For example, if an organisation uses Microsoft for emails it would have an 'autodiscover' subdomain such as 'autodiscover.example.com', which has an alias to 'autodiscover.outlook.com'. Hexiosec ASM would mark these domains as:

'autodiscover.example.com' - Primary
'autodiscover.outlook.com' - Secondary

For more information please read Managing Domains and IPs.