A potential data breach detected in early January by Okta has had "no impact" on customers who use its FedRAMP-approved services, according to the identity authentication technology company. In a post. Fair value provided by IndexArb.com. Screenshot published by Lapsus$ showing Okta customers allegedly affected by its breach (Source: Bill Demirkapi) Identity management company Okta and Microsoft have confirmed breaches by the Lapsus$ group, which has been on a high-profile hacking spree. Why is Okta. Okta released an updated statement on Tuesday night, announcing that 2.5% of the identity and access management firm's customers were impacted by a recent breach caused by extortion group Lapsus$. Cloudflare, one of Oktas clients, stated in a blog post that it did not believe it had been hacked. The contractor employing the engineer, Sykes, part of the Sitel Group, said it was "confident there is no longer a security risk". Sophie Webster, Tech Times 23 March 2022, 10:03 pm. We need to stay alert, especially given that the world will only advance further in the years to come. Information about your device and internet connection, like your IP address, Browsing and search activity while using Yahoo websites and apps. Thanet, which uses Okta to make it easier for employees to manage and sign in to different apps, told BBC News that the attack has not affected the councils datas security, but that it will continue to monitor the issue., The National Cyber Security Centre in the United Kingdom claimed it has not observed any indication of effect in the United Kingdom.. Okta says the LAPSUS$ hacking group that's released data stolen from Microsoft, Samsung, and other companies only had access to its network for 25 minutes during a January data breach. Interesting read! I honestly did expect a little more from Okta, especially when they work in cybersecurity. Should we feel sorry for them? "There are no corrective actions that need to be taken by our customers," Mr Bradbury added. Additionally, aside from a massive breach, it also had consequences for individuals who are innocent. There is no evidence that our system has been hacked or compromised, FedEx told Reuters. Great post! Digital Privacy Statement | This post highlights that cyber criminals are not constrained by limitations pertaining to the size and power of their targets. Hundreds of organisations that rely on Okta to provide access to their networks may have been affected by a cyber-attack on the company. He admitted that Okta should have moved faster in understanding the report's implications. Bridge that became a death trap for Indian children, Why Ethiopia peace deal is triumph for prime minister. Very informative post. Although the breadth of the breach is unknown, it might have significant ramifications because Okta, located in San Francisco, manages access to hundreds of firms networks and apps. Thanet, which uses Okta to simplify the way staff manage and sign on to multiple applications, told BBC News the hack "has not compromised the security of the council's data" but it "will continue to monitor the situation". In order to prevent large companies from being irresponsible with their customers privacy, I think the government should fine these companies and require them to form partnerships with reliable Internet security companies in the industry. The breach was initially blamed on an unnamed subprocessor that provides customer support services to Okta. The breach created alarm among cybersecurity experts because of how popular the service is with big organizations and the potential access that a hacker could acquire by targeting Okta. Investigation Finds Only Two Clients Affected in Okta Security Breach. Last night, Steam - Valve's online gaming service - announced that its database had been breached. 2022 BBC. But, Bradbury said Tuesday that the Okta service itself hadnt been breached, and the hackers had instead accessed an engineers laptop who was providing technical support to Okta. In my opinion companies should be responsible for at least making sure their security system is able to prevent the common attack methods out there. A January cybersecurity incident at popular identity authentication provider Okta may have affected hundreds of the firm's . The group has previously claimed to have broken into some high-profile companies, including Microsoft. In 2017, Okta files a $100 million IPO with a promise of a tight security system. Will home prices drop? The identity management giant has revealed the final findings of its investigation into an. LAPSUS$ group claimed that they had access to Okta's internal tools, such as Slack, Jira, Splunk, AWS since January 2022. The clients of the security company found out about the breach on social media. From what I understand so far, Something like Firebase Auth would require more dev effort but is likely to cost less overall, whereas OTB, you have a UI-based console which makes config by non . Man it seems like company after company gets caught up in these security breaches. Okta has built a secure, reliable infrastructure in the cloud founded on Zero Trust principles that significantly reduces the risk to the Okta service caused by events like this. One of Okta's clients, Cloudflare, said, in a blog post, it did not believe it had been compromised. We have identified those customers and are contacting them directly. All rights reserved. I was surprised to learn that the group is based in South America. Okta said that it just received a short report regarding the issue from Sitel on March 17 after sharing symptoms of the breach with them on January 21. A January cybersecurity incident at popular identity authentication provider Okta may have affected hundreds of the firm's clients, Okta acknowledged late Tuesday amid an . They have been doing a lot of damage to companies all over. 12:14 AM EDT, Wed March 23, 2022. Nonetheless, I was surprised that Okta would not admit to the fault in their online infrastructure. But the service itself . Now let us get to the topic, they were hacked and this breach was carried out by the cyber-gang Lapsus$. Fury As OktaThe Company That Manages 100 Million LoginsFails To Tell Customers About Breach For Months (Forbes) With $25 billion market cap and over 100 million customers, Okta is one of the biggest cybersecurity companies around. This post, like many others, highlights the widespread nature of cybersecurity threats and cyberattacks. . It always seems like the bad guys are a step or two ahead. In light of the evidence that we have gathered in the last week, it is clear that we would have made a different decision if we had been in possession of all of the facts that we have today, Oktasaid, adding it should have more actively and forcefully compelled information from Sitel.. The cyber-gang is infamous for extortion, threatening the publication of sensitive information if its victims do not comply with their demands. At the moment, Okta's CSO, David Bradbury, claims that only 366 clients, or 2.5% of their customer base, have potentially been impacted. In 2017, Okta said that the U.S. Department of Justice was a customer. The potential impact to Okta customers is limited to the access that support engineers have, Bradbury said. The gang has claimed to have broken into several high-profile firms, including Microsoft, in the past. However, failing to adequately protect their customers may ultimately lead to lawsuits and a decline in reputation. Notably, Okta's customers include high-profile enterprises like FedEx Corporation and Moody's Corporation. CNN Business . Market holidays and trading hours provided by Copp Clark Limited. Okta reported that in the worst-case 366 of its clients were affected and that their data may have been viewed or acted upon the companys stock dropped 9% as a result of the announcement. "We are sharing this interim update, consistent with our values of customer success, integrity, and transparency. The scope of the breach is still unclear, but it could have major consequences because thousands of companies rely on San Francisco-based Okta to manage access to their networks and applications. Its interesting to me how consistently vulnerable major companies are to these kinds of attacks, and how poorly they always seem to respond. The malicious activities, which granted the threat actor access to nearly 366 Okta customers, took place over a five-day period between January 16 and 21, during which the hackers carried out various phases of the attack, including privilege escalation after gaining an initial foothold, persistence, lateral movement, and internal network reconnaissance. The security firm confirmed the hack after the suspected group behind it, Lapsus$, posted screenshots of Okta's apps and systems on Mar. About Okta, Inc. Data Breach Good Post! Ive lost count of how many blog posts and articles Ive read about big companies getting breached. Lapsus . Okta breach: Hundreds of clients could be affected, company concedes. Okta, an identity authentication service with more than 15,000 customers, said Tuesday that an attacker had access to a support engineer's laptop for five days in January. 2022 Cable News Network. The data breach. My takeaway overall is that while computers are obviously amazing, the frequency of breaches makes it almost seem inadvisable to keep much important on them. Cybersecurity researchers investigated a string of hacks against technology companies and have traced an attack on the teen. Its frustrating to see Okta try to sweep this incident underneath the rug, especially when they deserve every bit of criticism for it. The Okta Inc. website on a smartphone arranged in Dobbs Ferry, New York, U.S., on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021. In an updated statement on Wednesday, Okta's chief security officer David Bradbury. The criminal gang then received a copy of the full investigative report on March 22, the same day it posted the screenshots. Okta Inc. doesn't yet know how many of its customers were affected by a January data breach that the company waited nearly two months to make public, Chief Executive Officer Todd McKinnon said . Please check back later. Extortion group Lapsus$ claimed this weekend on its Telegram channel that it had access to Okta's systems, and the company said on Monday night . The company has more than 15,000 customers, meaning nearly 400 companies have been affected by the breach. Okta admitted that 366 companies, or 2.5% of its client base, were affected by the security breach that allowed hackers to access the company's . In early March 2022, authentication security company Okta reported that there had been an attempt to compromise the account of a third-party customer support engineer from Sitel in January. Chief security officer David Bradbury revealed the hackers had accessed the computer of a customer-support engineer working for the sub-processor, over a five-day period in mid-January. The scope of the breach is still unclear, but it could have major consequences because thousands of companies rely on San Francisco-based Okta to manage access to their networks and applications. Cybersecurity researchers used forensic evidence from the hack and publicly available information to connect the teen to the group. Interesting topic! Okta says 366 customers potentially affected in data breach. I hope the company can learn from this and perform better in the future. Okta 'identifying and contacting' customers potentially affected by Lapsus$ breach. I would assume that there is no shame in admitting that they got hacked since it is starting to become a common occurrence all around the world. All times are ET. Hacking methods are so common now, and the failure of admitting to their users that they have been attacked is very bad becuase then the users will not be able to trust the company any more because they were not able to protect their information. An interesting read! Okta Under Fire Over Handling of Security Incident The identity-protection company acknowledged the breach two months after spotting suspicious activity Okta CEO Todd McKinnon, pictured. A week later, on Mar. Its crazy to think about how frequently these large companies are being breached. Read about our approach to external linking. Big companies with many people, and thus many targets for attacking, are prime targets for attackers. Im not quite sure but I do know that breaking something is usually easier than building. Following a breach of its systems in January, Okta has released a forensic report finding that the threat group Lapsus$ accessed just two active customers via a third-party company. One thing which piqued my interest was that Okta kind of ignored when they got to know of the attack for a while until Lapsus sent it in their telegram channel. 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Very interesting how much news Lapsus$ is making as of late. Its honestly pretty surprising because you would expect these big companies such as Okta to make sure their cybersecurity is strong in order to protect the so many people that put trust in them. Okta said the "worst case" was 366 of its clients had been affected and their "data may have been viewed or acted upon" - its shares fell 9% on the news. Perhaps we need cameras and deterrence techniques for the digital world as we do for the physical. Affected customers have been notified and the investigation continues. If it suffered a breach, it could have widespread ramifications, security experts warn. They also mentioned that roughly 2.5% of Okta's customers might have been affected. Even when Okta received the Mandiant report in March explicitly detailing the attack, they continued to ignore the obvious signs that their environment was breached until LAPSUS$ shined a spotlight on their inaction, Demirkapi wrote in a tweet thread. 23, the company's chief security officer David Bradbury confirmed the subprocessor is a company named Sykes, which was acquired by a contact center giant Sitel in 2021. At last, here is a video from youtube which summarises it all: [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60849687, [2] https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/28/lapsus-passwords-okta-breach/, [3] https://thehackernews.com/2022/03/new-report-on-okta-hack-reveals-entire.html, [4] https://www.wired.com/story/lapsus-okta-hack-sitel-leak/, [5] https://www.reuters.com/technology/authentication-services-firm-okta-says-it-is-investigating-report-breach-2022-03-22/. Okta, an authentication services provider, announced that it has suffered a data breach. A Warner Bros. "There is no evidence of ongoing malicious activity beyond the activity detected in January," it said. VideoUS midterms: Will Gen Z vote? Great post! In Okta's case, the Lapsus$ hackers were lurking in Sitel's network for five days, from Jan. 16 to Jan. 21, until the group was detected and removed from its network, according to 9to5Mac. We are living in an opportunistic world, to say the least. Its so crazy to think about how fast the world has evolved in this sense in the past 10 years even. (Okta / Scoop News Group) Written by Suzanne Smalley Mar 24, 2022 | CYBERSCOOP Criticism of the identity authentication company Okta intensified Thursday in the wake of the company's announcement that 366 customer accounts were potentially compromised in a security breach via an attack on a third-party contractor's laptop. Okta has over 15,000 customers, according to its website. He added that, support engineers are also able to facilitate the resetting of passwords and multi-factor authentication factors for users, but are unable to obtain those passwords.. Both Sykes and Sitel have wide access to the organizations that they support for facilitating customer requests. Their initial response consisted of ignoring signs that their environment was compromised, which led to even further damage (to the companys image especially). The vulnerability was eventually discovered two months later, when LAPSUS$ uploaded images of the compromise on their Telegram channel on March 22. 21, just two months after the group first gained access to the company's network according to TechCrunch. For example the cyber gang which attacked OKTA used the same old hacking method which involves MFA. Discovery Company. Okta Inc ( OKTA.O ), whose authentication services are used to grant access to networks by firms such as FedEx Corp ( FDX.N) and Moody's Corp ( MCO.N ), and more than 15,000 clients, announced on Tuesday that it had been hacked and . We, TechCrunch, are part of the Yahoo family of brands. 4. Okta admitted that 366 companies, or 2.5% of its client base, were affected by the security breach that allowed hackers to access the company's private internal network. All Rights Reserved. 1) Limit Access on a 'Need-to-Know' Basis The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. One the other hand, however, I would think that at the very least a company would be eager to recognize these issues rather than putting them off, as if breaches are inevitable then you may as well make it known that you take them seriously. appreciated. Many of their clients rely on this trust, which was misplaced. The company initially notified individuals of the data breach, with an estimated 164 individuals affected. News Corp. News Corp., the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and a range of global media outlets, said in a securities filing that it was hit by a cyberattack in January 2022 and that some data . The scope of the breach is still unclear, but it could have major consequences because thousands of companies rely on San Francisco-based Okta to manage access to their networks and applications . Okta initially said the attack, in January, involved a third-party contractor, a "sub-processor", and "the matter was investigated and contained". All in all, I struggle to believe that companies are this consistently clueless, so there must be some greater method to their reactions. But as concern mounted, Okta published a series of updated blog posts providing more detail. Climate change: What have leaders done in 2022? Lapsus$. Like you said, its almost becoming a liability to keep information on company networks, which is what the networks were originally supposed to be built for. 2022 Tech Times LLC. After . French parliament stopped over 'racist' remark, Mining giant ordered to pay 275m over oil bribes, Dutch wolves to be paintballed to scare them away, Donald Trump sues top NY lawyer for 'intimidation', Black Panther stars arrive at European premiere, Lapid congratulates Netanyahu on Israel election win. Although the cybersecurity researchers believe that the teen is behind some of the major hacks, they have not been able to link him to every single hack that Lapsus$ has done. The attack had been "analogous to walking away from your computer at a coffee shop, whereby a stranger has - virtually, in this case - sat down at your machine and is using the mouse and keyboard", he said. Following a breach of its systems in January, Okta has released a forensic report finding that the threat group Lapsus$ accessed just two active customers via a third-party company. Britain's National Cyber Security Centre said it had "not seen any evidence of impact in the UK". The latest update is that Okta and Microsoft have confirmed data breaches. However, many have raised concerns about why the incident was not disclosed sooner. 17, the report was submitted to Okta. It seems to me that too many companies focus on short-term financial gain over long term prospects: the amount of money they lose to ransomware gangs might only constitute a small fraction of total annual revenue. Great post! The Okta security team's log analysis has provided that Lapsus$ gained access to the account of a support engineer. 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