Cloud knowledge evaluation firm Snowflake is on the heart of a current spate of alleged knowledge thefts, as its company clients scramble to know if their shops of cloud knowledge have been compromised.
The Boston-based knowledge large helps a few of the largest world firms — together with banks, healthcare suppliers and tech firms — retailer and analyze their huge quantities of knowledge, comparable to buyer knowledge, within the cloud.
Final week, Australian authorities sounded the alarm saying they had turn into conscious of “profitable compromises of a number of firms utilising Snowflake environments,” with out naming the businesses. Hackers had claimed on a identified cybercrime discussion board that they’d stolen lots of of thousands and thousands of buyer information 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, Reside 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 methods. Fairly, Snowflake referred to 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 knowledge 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 accordance with Snowflake’s buyer documentation. Not implementing using MFA seems to be how cybercriminals allegedly obtained large 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 comprise delicate knowledge.” 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 identified.
The credentials have been stolen by infostealing malware that contaminated the computer systems of workers who’ve entry to their employer’s Snowflake surroundings.
Among the credentials seen by TechCrunch seem to belong to workers at firms identified to be Snowflake clients, together with Ticketmaster and Santander, amongst others. The workers with Snowflake entry embrace database engineers and knowledge 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 implementing using MFA to log in are placing their saved knowledge liable to compromise from easy assaults like password theft and reuse.
How we checked the information
A supply with information of cybercriminal operations pointed TechCrunch to a web site the place would-be attackers can search by means of lists of credentials which have been stolen from numerous sources, comparable to infostealing malware on somebody’s laptop or collated from earlier knowledge breaches. (TechCrunch is just not linking to the location 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’ve 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 incorrect. (It’s finally each the accountability of Snowflake and its clients to implement and implement safety insurance policies that stop 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 regulation. As such, it’s unknown if the credentials are at the moment in energetic use or in the event that they straight led to account compromises or knowledge 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 net deal with 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 sign up.
One approach 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 inside Snowflake login web page that 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 assist 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 a 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 line with a examine 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 knowledge dump containing thousands and thousands of stolen passwords scraped from numerous 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’ knowledge 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 sturdy indicators of malicious exercise.”
Snowflake added: “Underneath Snowflake’s shared accountability mannequin, clients are liable for implementing MFA with their customers.” The spokesperson stated Snowflake was “contemplating all choices for MFA enablement, however we’ve 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 thus far leaves plenty of questions unanswered, and lays naked a raft of firms that aren’t reaping the advantages that MFA safety gives.
What is obvious is that Snowflake bears at the very least 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 entails upwards of 560 million buyer information, in accordance 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 can be the most important U.S. knowledge 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 knowledge breaches attributable to the dearth 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 opponents — to require customers allow MFA by default to forestall 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 knowledge 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.”
Have you learnt extra concerning 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 may as well ship information and paperwork through SecureDrop.
