Cloud information evaluation firm Snowflake is on the middle of a latest spate of alleged information thefts, as its company clients scramble to grasp if their shops of cloud information have been compromised.
The Boston-based information large helps among the largest world firms — together with banks, healthcare suppliers and tech corporations — retailer and analyze their huge quantities of information, comparable to buyer information, within the cloud.
Final week, Australian authorities sounded the alarm saying they had grow to be conscious of “profitable compromises of a number of corporations utilising Snowflake environments,” with out naming the businesses. Hackers had claimed on a recognized cybercrime discussion board that they’d stolen a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of buyer information from Santander Financial institution and Ticketmaster, two of Snowflake’s largest clients. Santander confirmed a breach of a database “hosted by a third-party supplier,” however wouldn’t identify the supplier in query. On Friday, Reside Nation confirmed that its Ticketmaster subsidiary was hacked and that the stolen database was hosted on Snowflake.
Snowflake acknowledged in a short assertion that it was conscious of “probably unauthorized entry” to a “restricted quantity” of buyer accounts, with out specifying which of them, however that it has discovered no proof there was a direct breach of its methods. Relatively, Snowflake known as it a “focused marketing campaign directed at customers with single-factor authentication” and that the hackers used “beforehand bought or obtained by means of infostealing malware,” which is designed to scrape a consumer’s saved passwords from their laptop.
Regardless of the delicate information that Snowflake holds for its clients, Snowflake lets every buyer handle the security of their environments, and doesn’t mechanically enroll or require its clients to make use of multi-factor authentication, or MFA, in line with Snowflake’s buyer documentation. Not imposing the usage of MFA seems to be how cybercriminals allegedly obtained large quantities of information from a few of Snowflake’s clients, a few of which arrange their environments with out the extra security measure.
Snowflake conceded that one among its personal “demo” accounts was compromised as a result of it wasn’t protected past a username and password, however claimed the account “didn’t comprise delicate information.” It’s unclear if this stolen demo account has any position within the latest breaches.
information.killnetswitch has this week seen a whole bunch of alleged Snowflake buyer credentials which are accessible on-line for cybercriminals to make use of as a part of hacking campaigns, suggesting that the chance of Snowflake buyer account compromises could also be far wider than first recognized.
The credentials have been stolen by infostealing malware that contaminated the computer systems of workers who’ve entry to their employer’s Snowflake setting.
A number of the credentials seen by information.killnetswitch seem to belong to workers at corporations recognized to be Snowflake clients, together with Ticketmaster and Santander, amongst others. The workers with Snowflake entry embrace database engineers and information analysts, a few of whom reference their expertise utilizing Snowflake on their LinkedIn pages.
For its half, Snowflake has informed clients to right away swap on MFA for his or her accounts. Till then, Snowflake accounts that aren’t imposing the usage of MFA to log in are placing their saved information liable to compromise from easy assaults like password theft and reuse.
How we checked the information
A supply with data of cybercriminal operations pointed information.killnetswitch to an internet site the place would-be attackers can search by means of lists of credentials which were stolen from varied sources, comparable to infostealing malware on somebody’s laptop or collated from earlier data breaches. (information.killnetswitch is just not linking to the location the place stolen credentials can be found in order to not help unhealthy actors.)
In all, information.killnetswitch has seen greater than 500 credentials containing worker usernames and passwords, together with the online addresses of the login pages for the corresponding Snowflake environments.
The uncovered credentials seem to pertain to Snowflake environments belonging to Santander, Ticketmaster, at the least two pharmaceutical giants, a meals supply service, a public-run freshwater provider, and others. Now we have additionally seen uncovered usernames and passwords allegedly belonging to a former Snowflake worker.
information.killnetswitch is just not naming the previous worker as a result of there’s no proof they did something unsuitable. (It’s finally each the duty of Snowflake and its clients to implement and implement security insurance policies that forestall intrusions that end result from the theft of worker credentials.)
We didn’t check the stolen usernames and passwords as doing so would break the legislation. As such, it’s unknown if the credentials are at the moment in energetic use or in the event that they instantly led to account compromises or information thefts. As an alternative, we labored to confirm the authenticity of the uncovered credentials in different methods. This contains checking the person login pages of the Snowflake environments that have been uncovered by the infostealing malware, which have been nonetheless energetic and on-line on the time of writing.
The credentials we’ve seen embrace the worker’s electronic mail deal with (or username), their password, and the distinctive internet deal with for logging in to their firm’s Snowflake setting. Once we checked the online addresses of the Snowflake environments — usually made up of random letters and numbers — we discovered the listed Snowflake buyer login pages are publicly accessible, even when not searchable on-line.
information.killnetswitch confirmed that the Snowflake environments correspond to the businesses whose workers’ logins have been compromised. We have been in a position to do that as a result of every login web page we checked had two separate choices to sign up.
One method to login depends on Okta, a single sign-on supplier that enables Snowflake customers to sign up with their very own firm’s company credentials utilizing MFA. In our checks, we discovered that these Snowflake login pages redirected to Reside Nation (for Ticketmaster) and Santander sign-in pages. We additionally discovered a set of credentials belonging to a Snowflake worker, whose Okta login web page nonetheless redirects to an inner Snowflake login web page that now not exists.
Snowflake’s different login possibility permits the consumer to make use of solely their Snowflake username and password, relying on whether or not the company buyer enforces MFA on the account, as detailed by Snowflake’s personal assist documentation. It’s these credentials that seem to have been stolen by the infostealing malware from the staff’ computer systems.
It’s not clear precisely when the staff’ credentials have been stolen or for a way lengthy they’ve been on-line.
There may be some proof to recommend that a number of workers with entry to their firm’s Snowflake environments had their computer systems beforehand compromised by infostealing malware. In line with a test on breach notification service Have I Been Pwned, a number of of the company electronic mail addresses used as usernames for accessing Snowflake environments have been present in a latest information dump containing thousands and thousands of stolen passwords scraped from varied Telegram channels used for sharing stolen passwords.
Snowflake spokesperson Danica Stanczak declined to reply particular questions from information.killnetswitch, together with whether or not any of its clients’ information was discovered within the Snowflake worker’s demo account. In an announcement, Snowflake stated it’s “suspending sure consumer accounts the place there are sturdy indicators of malicious exercise.”
Snowflake added: “Underneath Snowflake’s shared duty mannequin, clients are accountable for imposing MFA with their customers.” The spokesperson stated Snowflake was “contemplating all choices for MFA enablement, however we’ve got not finalized any plans presently.”
When reached by electronic mail, Reside Nation spokesperson Kaitlyn Henrich didn’t remark by press time.
Santander didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Lacking MFA resulted in large breaches
Snowflake’s response up to now leaves loads of questions unanswered, and lays naked a raft of corporations that aren’t reaping the advantages that MFA security gives.
What is obvious is that Snowflake bears at the least some duty for not requiring its customers to modify on the security characteristic, and is now bearing the brunt of that — together with its clients.
The data breach at Ticketmaster allegedly entails upwards of 560 million buyer information, in line with the cybercriminals promoting the information on-line. (Reside Nation wouldn’t touch upon what number of clients are affected by the breach.) If confirmed, Ticketmaster could be the biggest U.S. data breach of the yr up to now, and one of many largest in latest historical past.
Snowflake is the most recent firm in a string of high-profile security incidents and sizable data breaches attributable to the shortage of MFA.
Final yr, cybercriminals scraped round 6.9 million buyer information from 23andMe accounts that weren’t protected with out MFA, prompting the genetic testing firm — and its rivals — to require customers allow MFA by default to stop a repeat assault.
And earlier this yr, the UnitedHealth-owned well being tech large Change Healthcare admitted hackers broke into its methods and stole large quantities of delicate well being information from a system not protected with MFA. The healthcare large hasn’t but stated what number of people had their data compromised however stated it’s prone to have an effect on a “substantial proportion of individuals in America.”
Have you learnt extra in regards to the Snowflake account intrusions? Get in contact. To contact this reporter, get in contact on Sign and WhatsApp at +1 646-755-8849, or by electronic mail. You can too ship recordsdata and paperwork through SecureDrop.
