With companies coming forward every day announcing impacts from their third-party cloud data storage vendor, the Snowflake data breach seems to be snowballing into one of the biggest data breaches of the digital age. Here's everything to know about the Snowflake breach; we'll update this page as new information becomes available.

Why the Snowflake Breach Matters

Snowflake is a prominent U.S.-based cloud data storage and analytics company, with over 9,800 global customers. Its customer base includes major corporations like Adobe, AT&T, Capital One, DoorDash, HP, JetBlue, Mastercard, Micron, NBC Universal, Nielsen, Novartis, Okta, PepsiCo, Siemens, US Foods, Western Union, and Yamaha, among others. Snowflake holds approximately a 20% share of the data warehouse market and was recently ranked #1 on the Fortune Future 50 List, it an attractive target for cybercriminals. However, it is crucial to note that the breaches are not necessarily due to failures by Snowflake. The correlation does not imply causation, as emphasized by Snowflake’s Chief Information Security Officer Brad Jones. The company, along with its forensic partners, found no evidence of vulnerabilities or breaches within Snowflake’s platform.

Ongoing Investigation and Preliminary Results in Snowflake Breach

On May 31, Snowflake revealed that attackers accessed customer accounts using single-factor authentication. According to preliminary results, these attackers leveraged credentials obtained through infostealing malware.

Compromised Employee Account

Snowflake confirmed that a threat actor obtained credentials from a single former employee, accessing demo accounts that were isolated from production and corporate systems. Snowflake’s core systems are protected by Okta and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) but the demo accounts lacked such safeguards.

Test Environments Targeted

Demo accounts are often overlooked as security risks. Despite assurances that these accounts do not contain sensitive data, they remain attractive targets due to their perceived value. Cybercriminals exploit the perception gap, knowing that a claimed breach of a high-profile company like Snowflake can generate significant media attention.

Attack Path

The initial access point for the attackers was almost certainly compromised credentials obtained through infostealing malware. Mandiant, who helped Snowflake in its investigation, confirmed that the compromised credentials were from customer instances and were traced back to infostealer malware logs. Several variants of infostealer malware were used, including VIDAR, RISEPRO, REDLINE, RACOON STEALER, LUMMA, and METASTEALER.

Possible Reasons for the Breach

Mandiant confirmed that there was no breach of Snowflake’s enterprise environment. They identified that most credentials used by the attackers originated from historical infostealer infections. The lack of MFA and failure to rotate credentials for up to four years were significant factors. Network allow lists were also not used to restrict access to trusted locations.

Unconfirmed Threat Actor Claims

The threat actor also claimed to have logged into Snowflake’s ServiceNow using the same credentials. This claim has neither been confirmed nor explicitly refuted by Snowflake. Other unknowns include whether similar methods compromised other Snowflake employees, and the definition of "sensitive" data used for determining the impact on demo accounts. The investigation is ongoing, but Snowflake stands by its initial findings.

Affected Customers from Snowflake Breach

The data breaches began in April 2024, and the company claimed it had impacted a “limited” number of Snowflake customers. Snowflake initially did not disclose the exact number or the names of all affected customers. However, a comprehensive report from Mandiant two weeks after the initial disclosure revealed that 165 customers were impacted in the Snowflake data breach. While some victims have been identified through attackers’ offers to sell stolen data, others were revealed via mandatory public disclosures. Most companies have yet to confirm the impact. Following is a list of all companies know to have been impacted in the Snowflake data breach:

• Santander Group: The company confirmed a compromise without mentioning Snowflake.
• Impact: Santander Bank staff and 30 million customers’ data has allegedly been breached.

• TicketMaster (Live Nation Entertainment subsidiary): Confirmed via an SEC 8-K report, with Snowflake identified as the third party involved.
• Impact: 560 Million TicketMaster user details and card info potentially at risk.

• LendingTree: Notified by Snowflake about a potential data impact involving QuoteWizard.
• Impact: On June 1, a hacker going by the name “Sp1d3r” posted on the cybercriminal platform BreachForums that they had stolen the sensitive information of over 190 million people from QuoteWizard. The alleged database included customer details, partial credit card numbers, insurance quotes and other information.

• Advance Auto Parts: Unconfirmed by the company, but a dark web listing claimed significant data theft.
• Impact: Same actor as LendingTree claimed leak of 380 million customers and 358,000 former and current employees.

• Pure Storage: The Pure Storage data breach involved a third party temporarily gaining access to the workspace, which housed data such as company names, LDAP usernames, email addresses, and the Purity software release version number.
• Impact: The same threat actor known as “Sp1d3r” claimed responsibility, alleging the theft of 3 terabytes of data from the company’s Snowflake cloud storage that was reportedly being sold for $1.5 million.

Tech Crunch discovered over 500 login credentials and web addresses for Snowflake environments on a website used by attackers to search for stolen credentials. These included corporate email addresses found in a recent data dump from various Telegram channels.

Security Measures and Customer Support

Snowflake Chief Information Security Officer Brad Jones reiterated the company's findings, asserting that the breaches were not due to any vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or breaches of Snowflake’s platform or personnel credentials. Snowflake is collaborating with customers to enhance security measures and plans to mandate advanced security controls such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) and network policies, especially for privileged accounts. The company acknowledges the friction in their MFA enrollment process and is working to streamline it. The shared responsibility model places MFA enforcement on customers, but Snowflake aims to make it a standard prerequisite due to the high sensitivity of the data stored in their cloud environments.

Key Recommendations for Snowflake Customers:

1. Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication: Make MFA mandatory for all accounts, particularly those with privileged access.
2. Regularly Rotate Credentials: Ensure that all credentials are regularly updated to prevent long-term exposure from previous leaks.
3. Implement Network Allow Lists: Restrict access to trusted IP addresses to minimize unauthorized access.
4. Enhance Logging and Monitoring: Improve logging and monitoring capabilities to detect and respond to suspicious activities promptly.

Snowflake has also published indicators of compromise and steps for detecting and preventing unauthorized user access here. Cloud security firm Permiso has developed an open-source tool dubbed "YetiHunter" to detect and hunt for suspicious activity in Snowflake environments based on the IoCs shared by Snowflake, Mandiant, DataDog, and its own intelligence. Editor's Note: This blog will be updated as additional breach information from Snowflake and its customers becomes available or is claimed by threat actors on underground forums for sale. Links and data to any additional IoCs related to the Snowflake breach will be published here too.

A threat actor on a dark web forum has listed data from Truist Bank for sale following a cyberattack on the banking institution. Meanwhile, Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc. (K&S) is also dealing with a data breach. Reports indicate that Truist Bank client data, including sensitive information such as employee details and bank transactions, has been put up for sale on the dark web. The alleged Truist Bank data leak is attributed to a threat actor known as Sp1d3r. The data, reportedly obtained via the Snowflake breach, raises questions about the security measures in place at Truist Bank.

Truist Bank Data Breach Allegedly Goes on Sale on Dark Web

According to the threat actor’s post, the Truist Bank data breach is now selling for $1 million. The compromised data includes details of 65,000 employees, bank transactions containing names, account numbers, balances, and the source code for IVR funds transfers. [caption id="attachment_77051" align="alignnone" width="595"] Source: Dark Web[/caption] The post by the threat actor provides specific information about the data for sale and contact details for purchase. Additionally, the post includes various usernames, threads, reputation points, and contact information such as XMPP handles and email addresses associated with the threat actor. Meanwhile, Kulicke and Soffa Industries, a renowned semiconductor and electronics manufacturing company, disclosed a breach compromising millions of files. Initially detected on May 12, 2024, the breach exposed critical data, including source codes, engineering information, and personally identifiable information.

Two Cybersecurity Incidents at Once

In response to the Kulicke and Soffa data breach, K&S swiftly initiated containment measures in collaboration with cybersecurity experts and law enforcement agencies. The company's cybersecurity team worked diligently to isolate affected servers and prevent further intrusion. Despite the breach, K&S remains committed to safeguarding its systems and data integrity. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), K&S detailed its efforts to mitigate the impact of the breach. The company assured stakeholders that, as of the filing date, the incident had not materially disrupted its operations. However, investigations are ongoing to ascertain the full extent of the breach and increase the cybersecurity measures in place. The Truist Bank data breach and the Kulicke and Soffa cyber incident highlight the persistent threat of cyberattacks faced by organizations worldwide. While both entities are actively addressing the breaches, the incidents highlight a broader case of cybersecurity measures and their impact in safeguarding sensitive information and maintaining trust in the digital age. Media Disclaimer: This report is based on internal and external research obtained through various means. The information provided is for reference purposes only, and users bear full responsibility for their reliance on it. The Cyber Express assumes no liability for the accuracy or consequences of using this information.

Data breaches affecting customers of the cloud storage provider Snowflake have hit about 165 organizations so far, according to a Google Mandiant report published today. While initial claims linked the Snowflake breach to the cloud provider’s own environment, Mandiant said its investigation backs up Snowflake’s assertion that the breaches came from compromised customer credentials, many of which did not have multi-factor authentication enabled. Some of the high-profile organizations hit in the attack have included Ticketmaster, Advance Auto Parts, Santander, and more.

Snowflake Breach Discovered in April

Mandiant is attributing the breach to UNC5537, “a financially motivated threat actor suspected to have stolen a significant volume of records from Snowflake customer environments. UNC5537 is systematically compromising Snowflake customer instances using stolen customer credentials, advertising victim data for sale on cybercrime forums, and attempting to extort many of the victims.” The threat group is based in North America, with an additional member in Turkey, Mandiant said. “Mandiant's investigation has not found any evidence to suggest that unauthorized access to Snowflake customer accounts stemmed from a breach of Snowflake's enterprise environment,” Mandiant researchers wrote. “Instead, every incident Mandiant responded to associated with this campaign was traced back to compromised customer credentials.” Mandiant first saw evidence of the Snowflake data breach campaign in April, when the company “received threat intelligence on database records that were subsequently determined to have originated from a victim’s Snowflake instance.” In the subsequent investigation, Mandiant found that the organization’s Snowflake instance had been compromised by a threat actor using credentials previously stolen with infostealer malware. “The threat actor used these stolen credentials to access the customer’s Snowflake instance and ultimately exfiltrate valuable data,” Mandiant said. At the time of the compromise, the account did not have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled.

Hackers Used Credentials from Infostealer Campaigns

Mandiant said its investigations so far into hacked Snowflake customers found that UNC5537 was able to obtain access via stolen customer credentials that were “primarily obtained from multiple infostealer malware campaigns that infected non-Snowflake owned systems.” Some of those infostealer infections date back as far as 2020, using infostealer malware variants such as VIDAR, RISEPRO, REDLINE, RACOON STEALER, LUMMA and METASTEALER. Initial access to Snowflake customer instances often occurred via the native web-based UI (SnowFlake UI AKA SnowSight) or command-line interface (CLI) tool (SnowSQL) running on Windows Server 2022. Mandiant identified additional access leveraging an attacker-named utility, “rapeflake,” which Mandiant is tracking as FROSTBITE. [caption id="attachment_76343" align="alignnone" width="750"] Snowflake breach attack path (source: Mandiant)[/caption] In addition to a lack of MFA, Mandiant said some affected accounts had not updated credentials since they had been stolen, even after significant time had elapsed. The affected Snowflake instances also did not use network allow lists to only allow access from trusted locations. A list of suspect IP addresses can be found on VirusTotal, and Snowflake has also published detailed security information, including indicators of compromise (IoCs).