Cloud information evaluation firm Snowflake is on the heart of a current spate of alleged information thefts, as its company clients scramble to know if their shops of cloud information have been compromised.
The Boston-based information large helps a number of the largest international companies — together with banks, healthcare suppliers and tech firms — retailer and analyze their huge quantities of information, equivalent 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 firms utilising Snowflake environments,” with out naming the businesses. Hackers had claimed on a recognized cybercrime discussion board that that they had stolen tons of of tens of millions of buyer data from Santander Financial institution and Ticketmaster, two of Snowflake’s greatest clients. Santander confirmed a breach of a database “hosted by a third-party supplier,” however wouldn’t title 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 short 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 methods. Reasonably, Snowflake known as it a “focused marketing campaign directed at customers with single-factor authentication” and that the hackers used “beforehand bought or obtained via 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 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 imposing the usage of MFA seems to be how cybercriminals allegedly obtained enormous quantities of information 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 function within the current breaches.
TechCrunch has this week seen tons of of alleged Snowflake buyer credentials which are out there 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.
Among the credentials seen by TechCrunch seem to belong to workers at firms recognized to be Snowflake clients, together with Ticketmaster and Santander, amongst others. The staff 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 advised clients to right away change 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 prone 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 via lists of credentials which were stolen from varied sources, equivalent to infostealing malware on somebody’s laptop or collated from earlier information breaches. (TechCrunch shouldn’t be linking to the location the place stolen credentials can be found in order to not help unhealthy actors.)
In all, TechCrunch has seen greater than 500 credentials containing worker usernames and passwords, together with the net addresses of the login pages for the corresponding Snowflake environments.
The uncovered credentials seem to pertain to Snowflake environments belonging to Santander, Ticketmaster, a minimum of 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 shouldn’t be naming the previous worker as a result of there’s no proof they did something mistaken. (It’s finally each the accountability of Snowflake and its clients to implement and implement safety insurance policies that forestall intrusions that outcome 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 present 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 tackle (or username), their password, and the distinctive net tackle for logging in to their firm’s Snowflake setting. After we checked the net 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 ready to do that as a result of every login web page we checked had two separate choices to sign up.
One strategy to login depends on Okta, a single sign-on supplier that permits 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 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 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 help documentation. It’s these credentials that seem to have been stolen by the infostealing malware from the workers’ computer systems.
It’s not clear precisely when the workers’ credentials have been stolen or for the way lengthy they’ve been on-line.
There may be 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 response to 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 current information dump containing tens of millions 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 stated it’s “suspending sure consumer accounts the place there are robust indicators of malicious exercise.”
Snowflake added: “Beneath Snowflake’s shared accountability mannequin, clients are chargeable for imposing MFA with their customers.” The spokesperson stated Snowflake was “contemplating all choices for MFA enablement, however now we have not finalized any plans right now.”
When reached by electronic 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 loads of questions unanswered, and lays naked a raft of firms that aren’t reaping the advantages that MFA safety offers.
What is obvious is that Snowflake bears a minimum of some accountability for not requiring its customers to modify on the safety characteristic, and is now bearing the brunt of that — together with its clients.
The information breach at Ticketmaster allegedly includes 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 can be the biggest U.S. information breach of the yr thus far, and one of many greatest in current historical past.
Snowflake is the newest firm in a string of high-profile safety incidents and sizable information breaches brought on by the dearth of MFA.
Final yr, 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 opponents — 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 enormous 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 more likely to have an effect on a “substantial proportion of individuals in America.”
Are you aware 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 too can ship information and paperwork by way of SecureDrop.
