CrowdStrike Falcon Intelligence

What is Falcon Intelligence?

Intelligence is the part of cybersecurity that is easiest to buy and hardest to use: a feed nobody acts on is a subscription, not a control. The question to settle before purchase is which decision the data is supposed to change — what gets patched first, what gets blocked, or what the board is told.

Falcon Intelligence is a threat intelligence platform from CrowdStrike - the company that first introduced the concept of adversary tracking. Instead of focusing only on malware and IOC, CrowdStrike tracks people behind attacks.

Why adversary-focused:

• Malware changes, but TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, Procedures) are stable
• Knowing the adversary, you can predict their next move
• Attribution allows better threat prioritization

Adversary Tracking

Naming Convention

CrowdStrike uses animal names for actor categories:

Suffix	Category	Examples
BEAR	Russia	COZY BEAR, FANCY BEAR
PANDA	China	WICKED PANDA, MUSTANG PANDA
KITTEN	Iran	CHARMING KITTEN
CHOLLIMA	North Korea	LABYRINTH CHOLLIMA
SPIDER	eCrime	WIZARD SPIDER, CARBON SPIDER
JACKAL	Hacktivism	FRONTLINE JACKAL

Adversary Profiles

For each actor, CrowdStrike provides:

• Motivation - financial, espionage, sabotage
• Targets - industries, regions, organization types
• TTPs - techniques used in attacks
• Malware - tools and infrastructure
• Recent activity - latest campaigns

Example: WIZARD SPIDER

Type: eCrime
Origin: Eastern Europe
Motivation: Financial (Ransomware)
Active since: 2016
Notable malware: TrickBot, Ryuk, Conti
Targets: Healthcare, Manufacturing, Government
Recent: Linked to Conti ransomware operations

Falcon Intelligence Levels

Falcon Intelligence (Standard)

• Adversary profiles (public info)
• IOC feeds
• Malware search
• Basic reports

Falcon Intelligence Premium

• Deep adversary intelligence - detailed profiles
• Strategic reports - for CISO and executives
• Custom intelligence - dedicated reports for your industry
• Analyst access - ability to ask questions

Falcon Intelligence Recon

• Digital risk monitoring - dark web monitoring
• Threat actor targeting - are you in their sights
• Credential monitoring - leaked employee passwords
• Brand monitoring - phishing sites, fake domains

IOC Feeds

Falcon Intelligence provides IOC (Indicators of Compromise):

IOC Types

• File hashes - MD5, SHA1, SHA256
• Domains - malicious domains
• IPs - C2 infrastructure
• URLs - phishing, malware delivery
• Email addresses - phishing actors

Integrations

IOC can be automatically sent to:

• SIEM (Splunk, QRadar, Sentinel)
• Firewall (Fortinet)
• SOAR (Phantom, Demisto)
• EDR (via Falcon Agent)

Confidence Scoring

Each IOC has confidence score:

• High - confirmed malicious
• Medium - probably malicious
• Low - suspicious, requires verification

Malware Analysis

Automated Analysis

Upload file to Falcon Sandbox:

• Static analysis - strings, imports, metadata
• Dynamic analysis - behavioral execution
• Network analysis - C2 communication
• Attribution - mapping to threat actors

Manual Analysis

For Premium: access to CrowdStrike analysts:

• Reverse engineering
• Custom malware analysis
• Attribution research

Strategic Intelligence

Reports for CISO and executives:

Threat Landscape Reports

• Quarterly threat assessments
• Industry-specific threats
• Regional threat analysis
• Emerging threats

Executive Briefings

• Non-technical summaries
• Risk prioritization
• Board-ready materials

Targeted Intelligence

• “Who is targeting our industry?”
• “What groups are active in our region?”
• “Are we being targeted by specific actors?”

Intelligence APIs

Integration with your security stack:

# Example: Query for IOCs
response = falcon_intel.get_indicators(
    types=['domain', 'ip'],
    malicious_confidence='high',
    last_updated_gte='2024-01-01'
)

for ioc in response:
    firewall.block(ioc.value)

Available APIs

• Indicator API - IOC feeds
• Actor API - adversary profiles
• Report API - intelligence reports
• Sandbox API - malware submission

Workflow with Falcon Intelligence

Proactive Intelligence

[New Campaign Detected] --> [CrowdStrike Alert]
                                   |
                           "WIZARD SPIDER targeting healthcare"
                                   |
                            [Your SOC]
                                   |
                    [Proactive hunting for TTPs]

Reactive Investigation

[Alert in Falcon Insight] --> [Investigation]
                                   |
                    [Query Intelligence for context]
                                   |
                    "This malware is FANCY BEAR tool"
                    "Used in campaign against NATO governments"

Why CrowdStrike Intelligence?

Track Record

• First to identify FANCY BEAR (Russian GRU)
• Key in DNC hack 2016 investigation
• Tracking SolarWinds/SUNBURST

Scale

• 200+ tracked adversaries
• 20+ years historical data
• Global analyst team

Integration

• Native with Falcon platform
• APIs for custom integrations
• Feeds for third-party tools