Cloud information evaluation firm Snowflake is on the heart of a current 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 a few of the largest world companies — together with banks, healthcare suppliers and tech corporations — retailer and analyze their huge quantities of knowledge, similar to buyer information, within the cloud.
Final week, Australian authorities sounded the alarm saying they had develop 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 a whole lot 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. 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 pc.
Regardless of the delicate information that Snowflake holds for its clients, Snowflake lets every buyer handle the safety of their environments, and doesn’t mechanically enroll or require its clients to make use of multi-factor authentication, or MFA, in keeping with Snowflake’s buyer documentation. Not imposing 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 in all 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 a whole lot of alleged Snowflake buyer credentials which can be accessible on-line for cybercriminals to make use of as a part of hacking campaigns, suggesting that the danger of Snowflake buyer account compromises could also be far wider than first recognized.
The credentials had been stolen by infostealing malware that contaminated the computer systems of workers who’ve entry to their employer’s Snowflake atmosphere.
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 informed clients to instantly swap on MFA for his or her accounts. Till then, Snowflake accounts that aren’t imposing using MFA to log in are placing their saved information prone to compromise from easy assaults like password theft and reuse.
How we checked the information
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 numerous sources, similar to infostealing malware on somebody’s pc or collated from earlier information breaches. (TechCrunch shouldn’t be linking to the positioning the place stolen credentials can be found in order to not support unhealthy 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, no less than 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.
TechCrunch shouldn’t be naming the previous worker as a result of there’s no proof they did something flawed. (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 presently in lively use or in the event that they straight led to account compromises or information thefts. As an alternative, 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 had been uncovered by the infostealing malware, which had been nonetheless lively and on-line on the time of writing.
The credentials we’ve seen embrace the worker’s e mail deal with (or username), their password, and the distinctive net deal with for logging in to their firm’s Snowflake atmosphere. 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.
TechCrunch confirmed that the Snowflake environments correspond to the businesses whose workers’ logins had been compromised. We had been ready to do that as a result of every login web page we checked had two separate choices to register.
One strategy to login depends on Okta, a single sign-on supplier that permits Snowflake customers to register 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 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 had 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 keeping with a test on breach notification service Have I Been Pwned, a number of of the company e mail addresses used as usernames for accessing Snowflake environments had been present in a current information 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’ information was discovered within the Snowflake worker’s demo account. In an announcement, Snowflake mentioned 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 accountable for imposing 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, Reside 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 to this point leaves quite a lot of questions unanswered, and lays naked a raft of corporations that aren’t reaping the advantages that MFA safety supplies.
What is evident is that Snowflake bears no less than some accountability for not requiring its customers to change 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 information, in keeping 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. information breach of the yr to this point, 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 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 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 enormous quantities of delicate well being information from a system not protected with MFA. The healthcare large 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.”
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 e mail. It’s also possible to ship information and paperwork through SecureDrop.
