Cloud information evaluation firm Snowflake is on the middle of a current spate of alleged information thefts, as its company clients scramble to grasp if their shops of cloud information have been compromised.
Snowflake helps a few of the largest international companies — together with banks, healthcare suppliers and tech corporations — retailer and analyze their huge quantities of knowledge, reminiscent of buyer information, within the cloud.
Final week, Australian authorities sounded the alarm saying they had turn into 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 lots of of thousands and thousands of buyer data 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, Dwell Nation confirmed that its Ticketmaster subsidiary was hacked and that the stolen database was hosted on Snowflake.
Snowflake acknowledged in a quick assertion that it was conscious of “doubtlessly 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 techniques. Somewhat, 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 way of infostealing malware,” which is designed to scrape a person’s saved passwords from their laptop.
Regardless of the delicate information that Snowflake holds for its clients, Snowflake lets every buyer handle the safety of their environments, and doesn’t robotically enroll or require its clients to make use of multi-factor authentication, or MFA, in keeping with Snowflake’s buyer documentation. Not implementing using MFA seems to be how cybercriminals allegedly obtained enormous quantities of knowledge from a few of Snowflake’s clients, a few of which arrange their environments with out the extra safety 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 include delicate information.” It’s unclear if this stolen demo account has any position within the current breaches.
TechCrunch has this week seen lots of of alleged Snowflake buyer credentials which might be obtainable 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 surroundings.
A number of the credentials seen by TechCrunch 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 instructed clients to right away swap on MFA for his or her accounts. Till then, Snowflake accounts that aren’t implementing using MFA to log in are placing their saved information susceptible to compromise from easy assaults like password theft and reuse.
How we checked the info
A supply with data of cybercriminal operations pointed TechCrunch to an internet site the place would-be attackers can search by way of lists of credentials which have been stolen from varied sources, reminiscent of infostealing malware on somebody’s laptop or collated from earlier information breaches. (TechCrunch is just not linking to the positioning the place stolen credentials can be found in order to not support dangerous actors.)
In all, TechCrunch 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 very least two pharmaceutical giants, a meals supply service, a public-run freshwater provider, and others. We now have additionally seen uncovered usernames and passwords allegedly belonging to a former Snowflake worker.
TechCrunch is just not naming the previous worker as a result of there’s no proof they did something flawed. (It’s in the end each the accountability of Snowflake and its clients to implement and implement safety insurance policies that stop intrusions that consequence from the theft of worker credentials.)
We didn’t take a look at 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 lively use or in the event that they instantly led to account compromises or information thefts. As a substitute, we labored to confirm the authenticity of the uncovered credentials in different methods. This consists of checking the person login pages of the Snowflake environments that have been uncovered by the infostealing malware, which have been nonetheless lively and on-line on the time of writing.
The credentials we’ve seen embrace the worker’s e mail handle (or username), their password, and the distinctive net handle for logging in to their firm’s Snowflake surroundings. After we checked the online addresses of the Snowflake environments — typically made up of random letters and numbers — we discovered the listed Snowflake buyer login pages are publicly accessible, even when not searchable on-line.
TechCrunch 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 check in.
One option to login depends on Okta, a single sign-on supplier that enables Snowflake customers to check in with their very own firm’s company credentials utilizing MFA. In our checks, we discovered that these Snowflake login pages redirected to Dwell 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 inside Snowflake login web page that now not exists.
Snowflake’s different login choice permits the person 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 help 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’s some proof to counsel that a number of workers with entry to their firm’s Snowflake environments had their computer systems beforehand compromised by infostealing malware. In keeping with a examine on breach notification service Have I Been Pwned, a number of of the company e mail addresses used as usernames for accessing Snowflake environments have been present in a current 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 TechCrunch, together with whether or not any of its clients’ information was discovered within the Snowflake worker’s demo account. In a press release, Snowflake mentioned it’s “suspending sure person accounts the place there are robust indicators of malicious exercise.”
Snowflake added: “Underneath Snowflake’s shared accountability mannequin, clients are liable for implementing MFA with their customers.” The spokesperson mentioned Snowflake was “contemplating all choices for MFA enablement, however we now have not finalized any plans right now.”
When reached by e mail, Dwell Nation spokesperson Kaitlyn Henrich didn’t remark by press time.
Santander didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Lacking MFA resulted in enormous breaches
Snowflake’s response thus far leaves a variety of questions unanswered, and lays naked a raft of corporations that aren’t reaping the advantages that MFA safety gives.
What is evident is that Snowflake bears at the very least some accountability for not requiring its customers to modify on the safety function, and is now bearing the brunt of that — together with its clients.
The information breach at Ticketmaster allegedly entails upwards of 560 million buyer data, in keeping with the cybercriminals promoting the info on-line. (Dwell Nation wouldn’t touch upon what number of clients are affected by the breach.) If confirmed, Ticketmaster could be the most important U.S. information breach of the 12 months thus far, and one of many largest in current historical past.
Snowflake is the most recent firm in a string of high-profile safety incidents and sizable information breaches attributable to the dearth of MFA.
Final 12 months, cybercriminals scraped round 6.9 million buyer data 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 12 months, the UnitedHealth-owned well being tech big Change Healthcare admitted hackers broke into its techniques and stole enormous quantities of delicate well being information from a system not protected with MFA. The healthcare big hasn’t but mentioned what number of people had their data compromised however mentioned 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 e mail. You too can ship information and paperwork by way of SecureDrop.
