Search/ShinyHunters launches Salesforce data leak site to extort 39 victims
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ShinyHunters launches Salesforce data leak site to extort 39 victims

An extortion group has launched a new data leak site to publicly extort dozens of companies impacted by a wave of Salesforce breaches, leaking samples of data stolen in the attacks. The threat actors responsible for these attacks claim to be part of the ShinyHunters, Scattered Spider, and Lapsus$ groups, collectively referring to themselves as "Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters." Today, they launched a new data leak site containing 39 companies impacted by the attacks. Each entry includes samples of data allegedly stolen from victims' Salesforce instances, and warns the victims to reach out to "prevent public disclosure" of their data before the October 10 deadline is reached. The companies being extorted on the data leak site include well-known brands and organizations, including FedEx,…

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ShinyHunters launches Salesforce data leak site to extort 39 victims
An extortion group has launched a new data leak site to publicly extort dozens of companies impacted by a wave of Salesforce breaches, leaking samples of data stolen in the attacks. The threat actors responsible for these attacks claim to be part of the ShinyHunters, Scattered Spider, and Lapsus$ groups, collectively referring to themselves as "Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters." Today, they launched a new data leak site containing 39 companies impacted by the attacks. Each entry includes samples of data allegedly stolen from victims' Salesforce instances, and warns the victims to reach out to "prevent public disclosure" of their data before the October 10 deadline is reached. The companies being extorted on the data leak site include well-known brands and organizations, including FedEx, Disney/Hulu, Home Depot, Marriott, Google, Cisco, Toyota, Gap, McDonald's, Walgreens, Instacart, Cartier, Adidas, CarMax, Sake Fifth Avenue, Air France & KLM, Transunion, HBO MAX, UPS, Chanel, and IKEA. "All of them have been contacted long ago, they saw the email because I saw them download the samples multiple times. Most of them chose to not disclose and ignore," ShinyHunters told BleepingComputer. "We highly advise you proceed into the right decision, your organisation can prevent the release of this data, regain control over the situation and all operations remain stable as always. We highly recommend a decision-maker to get involved as we are presenting a clear and mutually beneficial opportunity to resolve this matter," they warned on the leak site. The threat actors also added a separate entry requesting that Salesforce pay a ransom to prevent all impacted customers' data (approximately 1 billion records containing personal information) from being leaked. "Should you comply, we will withdraw from any active or pending negotiation indiviually from your customers. Your customers will not be attacked again nor will they face a ransom from us again, should you pay," they added. The extortion group also threatened the company, stating that it would help law firms pursue civil and commercial lawsuits against Salesforce following the data breaches and warned that the company had also failed to protect customers' data as required by the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters have been targeting Salesforce customers with voice phishing attacks since the beginning of the year, leading to breaches that have impacted companies such as Google, Cisco, Qantas, Adidas, Allianz Life, Farmers Insurance, Workday, as well as LVMH subsidiaries, including Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany & Co. In these attacks, the threat actors tricked employees into linking a malicious OAuth app to their company's Salesforce instance. ShinyHunters told BleepingComputer that while a particular Salesforce instance may have been targeted, it also contained data for many of the subsidiaries, making the attacks more impactful. Once connected, the attackers stole company databases and used the data to extort victims via email. These extortion emails were signed by ShinyHunters, a notorious extortion group linked to a long string of high-profile breaches in recent years, including the Snowflake attacks and those against AT&T and PowerSchool. ShinyHuntersalso claimed to have used stolen OAuth tokens for Salesloft's Drift AI chat integration with Salesforce to steal sensitive information, including passwords, AWS access keys, and Snowflake tokens, from customers' Salesforce instances. These attacks were tracked by Mandiant under a separate threat cluster named "UNC6395" as they have been unable to formally link the breaches to this group. On a Telegram channel associated with the extortion group, the threat actors claim that they will begin extorting companies affected by the Salesloft Drift attacks on a separate data leak site launching on October 10th. The Salesloft attacks are known to have impacted Google, Palo Alto Networks, CyberArk, Cloudflare, Rubrik, Elastic, BeyondTrust, Proofpoint, JFrog, Zscaler, Tenable, Nutanix, Qualys, and Cato Networks, among many others. ShinyHunters claim that companies will not be re-extorted under the Salesloft campaign if a ransom is paid in this initial extortion phase. "We are aware of recent extortion attempts by threat actors, which we have investigated in partnership with external experts and authorities. Our findings indicate these attempts relate to past or unsubstantiated incidents, and we remain engaged with affected customers to provide support," Salesforce said in a statement published after ShinyHunters launched their data leak site. "At this time, there is no indication that the Salesforce platform has been compromised, nor is this activity related to any known vulnerability in our technology." Update October 03, 11:02 EDT: Added Salesforce statement. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report
bleepingcomputer.comOct 3, 2025extracted
Your Service Desk is the New Attack Vector—Here's How to Defend It.
The service desk is the new perimeter Attackers aren’t picking locks—they’re picking people. The fastest way inside many enterprises is still the service desk. Threat actors like Scattered Spider have turned social engineering into a science, and your help desk agents are their primary target. One convincing phone call can turn a routine password reset into full domain access. The MGM Resorts and Clorox incidents showed how devastating one successful social-engineering call can be, with a nine-figure business impact and weeks of disruption. That’s not a fluke; it’s the playbook. Training Helps, Controls Decide Yes, agent training matters. No, it won’t save you on its own. Social engineers are specialists at exploiting helpful humans under time pressure. Scripts, “common sense,” and ad-hoc challenge questions break down when an attacker is calm, prepared, and persuasive. If your last line of defense is an overworked agent making a judgment call, you’ve already lost. Bottom line: user verification must be a security-owned workflow, not an agent-owned conversation. See how to design role-based, points-based verification that fits your ServiceNow flow and stops social engineering without slowing support. Download our comprehensive guide and start building a more resilient help desk today See the Guide A workflow approach to help desk user verification Shift verification out of the agent’s head and into a formal IT-security workflow that’s consistent, logged, and enforced: Mandatory controls: Agents never handle or view credentials. The workflow does. Role-based verification: Align the depth of checks to the risk of the persona (execs, admins, finance, contractors, etc.). High-risk roles demand stronger proofs. Points-based flexibility: Real life happens—phones die, travel breaks MFA. Use multiple proof types with scores that add up to a pass/fail threshold. ITSM integration: Keep the agent in their normal tool (e.g., ServiceNow). Tickets launch the verification flow automatically and return the result + telemetry back to the ticket. Reduce Agent Stress and Error: A formal workflow removes the burden of being a security expert from your agents. They no longer have to make high-stakes judgment calls, leading to faster, more consistent, and less stressful ticket handling. This isn't just better security; it's better service. What “good” looks like (NIST-aligned profiles) Most of our customers start with three verification profiles mapped to user risk and available factors. It could be like this: Profile 1 (Standard User - Low Assurance): For routine requests like a password reset for a standard employee. - Method: A push notification to their registered corporate authenticator app (Okta Verify, MS Authenticator). This is fast, familiar, and leverages existing infrastructure. Profile 2 (Privileged User / Sensitive Action - High Assurance): For domain admins, finance controllers, or anyone requesting a sensitive change. - Method: Requires two distinct factors. For example: Successful authenticator push notification AND a one-time code sent to the corporate email address on file. OR answering a question based on a non-public attribute from the HRIS system (e.g., "What is your employee ID number?"). Method: Requires two distinct factors. For example: Successful authenticator push notification Profile 3 (Contingency / MFA Failure - Flexible Assurance): For when the user has lost their primary MFA device. - Method: The user must achieve 100 points from a menu of options, preventing them from being fully locked out. - One-time code to personal email on file: (50 points) - One-time code to personal phone number on file: (50 points) - Verification of device serial number from MDM: (60 points) - answering a question based on a non-public attribute from the HRIS system (e.g., "What is your employee ID number?"). (50 points) Method: The user must achieve 100 points from a menu of options, preventing them from being fully locked out. Tip: If MFA isn’t universally available, prefer enterprise-verified data (HRIS/IDP attributes, device posture, geo/behavior signals) over guessable personal trivia. Keep a short, vetted list and retire any question that leaks or shows up in breaches. Detect attacks early, document everything When verification lives inside the workflow, you get security outcomes “for free”. These are some of the extra benefits realized by our customers: Early warning: Spikes in failed verifications against the same user or role are smoke before fire—auto-alert SecOps. Automatic warning against suspicious accounts, same user calling in short time. Audit trail: Every attempt, factor, score, and outcome is stamped back onto the ticket. Compliance: Automated reporting demonstrates consistent controls across the desk. Rollout plan that won’t break the desk All organizations have their own project principles but these are common traits: Inventory factors + gaps: Which users have MFA? Which don’t? What secure data is suitable for knowledge checks? Define 3 profiles: Map to low/medium/high-risk roles; set pass threshold to 100. Integrate with ITSM: Trigger the flow from your ticket (e.g., ServiceNow) with user ID + category; write back results and telemetry. Train for process, not persuasion: Agents learn one thing—follow the workflow. Measure and tune: Track failure rates, time-to-resolution, escalations, and false rejects. Adjust scoring and questions quarterly. A note on our tools FastPass Identity Verification Manager (IVM) implements this model: mandatory, role-based, and points-based verification, tightly integrated with ITSM. It centralizes checks, enforces policy, and returns results + context to the ticket for alerting, audit, and compliance. If you’re facing Scattered Spider-style tactics, this is the kind of guardrail that blocks them at the first hop. FastPassCorp has assisted several large organizations with implementation of secure user workflow, and has gained a superior experience in the field documented in the available guides and videos. The takeaway You don’t beat social engineering with nicer posters and longer scripts. You beat it by removing discretion, raising proof, and instrumenting the workflow the attacker is trying to exploit. Do that, and the service desk stops being a soft target and starts acting like a proper control. Concerned about Scattered Spider? If you’d like to know how you can protect your service desk and agents against a Scattered Spider or other social engineering attack? Have a look at our videos and guides for implementing a secure user verification workflow or contact us for a meeting on your situation. Sponsored and written by FastPassCorp.
bleepingcomputer.comOct 2, 2025extracted
1.5 Million Impacted by Allianz Life Data Breach
Insurance giant Allianz subsidiary Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America is notifying roughly 1.5 million people that their personal information was stolen in a July data breach. The incident occurred on July 16 and involved a third-party cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) system used by Allianz Life, the company told SecurityWeek in July. Only Allianz Life in the US was impacted, the company said, adding that most of its roughly 1.4 million customers were likely affected, without sharing an exact number. This week, however, the company notified the Maine Attorney General’s Office that the breach affects the data of 1,497,036 “Allianz Life customers, financial professionals, and select Allianz Life employees”. The stolen personal information includes names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers, the insurer notes in the notification letter sent to the affected people. Allianz Life is providing the affected individuals with two years of free identity theft restoration and credit monitoring services. The company also said it has contained and mitigated the issue, and that the incident was limited to the third-party CRM, as none of its systems were accessed. While Allianz Life did not share details on the compromised CRM, the attack was attributed to the infamous Scattered Spider cybercrime group, which conducted a large-scale campaign targeting the Salesforce instances of major companies. Adidas, Cisco, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Google, Air France/KLM, and Workday are also believed to have been targeted in the campaign. Scattered Spider and its recent partner-in-crime ShinyHunters, a hacking group specializing in extortion, announced in mid-September their retirement, but cybersecurity specialists remain skeptical of their disappearance from the threat landscape. Related: Canadian Airline WestJet Says Hackers Stole Customer Data Related: Automotive Titan Stellantis Discloses Data Breach Related: Salesforce AI Hack Enabled CRM Data Theft Related: 33 Attorneys General Send Letter to FTC on Commercial Surveillance Rules
securityweek.comOct 2, 2025extracted
New Guidance Calls on OT Operators to Create Continually Updated System Inventory
Cybersecurity agencies in several countries have teamed up to create new guidance for operational technology (OT) organizations, specifically for building and maintaining a definitive view of their architecture. In mid-August, agencies from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Germany released asset inventory guidance for OT owners and operators. Joined by the United Kingdom, these countries have now published a follow-up document that explains how organizations can leverage asset inventories, SBOMs and other data sources to create and maintain definitive records, a collection of continually updated documents that represent an accurate and up-to-date view of their OT systems. “Establishing a definitive record of your organisation’s OT will allow you to effectively assess risks and implement the proportionate security controls. Rather than focusing solely on individual assets, a holistic approach enables you to consider the broader context which leads to a better assessment of the criticality and potential impacts of compromises,” the guidance explains. The authoring agencies admit that creating a definitive record of all OT systems can be complex and time consuming, and recommend prioritizing systems based on their impact to business functions and potential national impact, based on third-party connections that can change configurations or directly control processes, and based on the overall exposure of the system. The guidance focuses on five principles. The first is related to defining processes for establishing and maintaining a definitive record. This includes establishing data sources, setting up a process for validating the collected information, and determining how the definitive record will be maintained. The second principle is related to establishing an OT information security management program. Keeping in mind that the definitive record will contain information that can be highly valuable for threat actors, organizations need to establish the scope of the program, determine the value of the OT information to an attacker, and ensure that the information is secure. The third principle focuses on identifying and categorizing assets to support informed risk-based decisions. This includes defining the criticality, exposure, and availability of each asset, enabling the organisation to take effective decisions when considering new or updated security controls. Identifying and documenting connectivity within the OT network is covered by the fourth principle. Organizations need to determine asset communication requirements, determine which communication protocols are required and how to secure them, learn what architectural security controls are currently implemented, document network constraints, and determine whether existing security controls could be bypassed by an attacker in case of compromise. The fifth and final principle focuses on documenting third-party risks to OT systems. This involves determining the level of trust for each entity associated with an external connection, contractual requirements imposed by the third party, and whether the third party is installing equipment for out-of-band access. “Maintaining updated OT systems is vital for effective cybersecurity protection since security teams cannot detect vulnerabilities, apply controls, or respond effectively to incidents without a clear understanding of which assets exist, how they’re connected, or what roles they play,” Joshua Roback, principal security solution architect at Swimlane, told SecurityWeek. “One key takeaway from the guidance includes fostering coordination between OT and IT teams. This is especially important now, as the two traditionally separate domains now face multiple shared threats, including the rise of insider threats and the growing popularity of ransomware groups like ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider,” Roback added. “Combined efforts between the two teams can bridge IT teams’ knowledge of cybersecurity practice and OT teams’ knowledge of industrial processes and operational constraints to create a vastly improved OT architecture that benefits organizations as a whole.” Related: CISA Requests Public Feedback on Updated SBOM Guidance Related: US, Allies Release Guidance on Securing OT Environments Related: Western Security Agencies Share Advice on Selecting OT Products
securityweek.comSep 30, 2025extracted
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ShinyHunters Wage Broad Corporate Extortion Spree
An extortion group has launched a new data leak site to publicly extort dozens of companies impacted by a wave of Salesforce breaches, leaking samples of data stolen in the attacks. The threat actors responsible for these attacks claim to be part of the ShinyHunters, Scattered Spider, and Lapsus$ groups, collectively referring to themselves as "Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters." Today, they launched a new data leak site containing 39 companies impacted by the attacks. Each entry includes samples of data allegedly stolen from victims' Salesforce instances, and warns the victims to reach out to "prevent public disclosure" of their data before the October 10 deadline is reached. The companies being extorted on the data leak site include well-known brands and organizations, including FedEx, Disney/Hulu, Home Depot, Marriott, Google, Cisco, Toyota, Gap, McDonald's, Walgreens, Instacart, Cartier, Adidas, CarMax, Sake Fifth Avenue, Air France & KLM, Transunion, HBO MAX, UPS, Chanel, and IKEA. "All of them have been contacted long ago, they saw the email because I saw them download the samples multiple times. Most of them chose to not disclose and ignore," ShinyHunters told BleepingComputer. "We highly advise you proceed into the right decision, your organisation can prevent the release of this data, regain control over the situation and all operations remain stable as always. We highly recommend a decision-maker to get involved as we are presenting a clear and mutually beneficial opportunity to resolve this matter," they warned on the leak site. The threat actors also added a separate entry requesting that Salesforce pay a ransom to prevent all impacted customers' data (approximately 1 billion records containing personal information) from being leaked. "Should you comply, we will withdraw from any active or pending negotiation indiviually from your customers. Your customers will not be attacked again nor will they face a ransom from us again, should you pay," they added. The extortion group also threatened the company, stating that it would help law firms pursue civil and commercial lawsuits against Salesforce following the data breaches and warned that the company had also failed to protect customers' data as required by the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters have been targeting Salesforce customers with voice phishing attacks since the beginning of the year, leading to breaches that have impacted companies such as Google, Cisco, Qantas, Adidas, Allianz Life, Farmers Insurance, Workday, as well as LVMH subsidiaries, including Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany & Co. In these attacks, the threat actors tricked employees into linking a malicious OAuth app to their company's Salesforce instance. ShinyHunters told BleepingComputer that while a particular Salesforce instance may have been targeted, it also contained data for many of the subsidiaries, making the attacks more impactful. Once connected, the attackers stole company databases and used the data to extort victims via email. These extortion emails were signed by ShinyHunters, a notorious extortion group linked to a long string of high-profile breaches in recent years, including the Snowflake attacks and those against AT&T and PowerSchool. ShinyHuntersalso claimed to have used stolen OAuth tokens for Salesloft's Drift AI chat integration with Salesforce to steal sensitive information, including passwords, AWS access keys, and Snowflake tokens, from customers' Salesforce instances. These attacks were tracked by Mandiant under a separate threat cluster named "UNC6395" as they have been unable to formally link the breaches to this group. On a Telegram channel associated with the extortion group, the threat actors claim that they will begin extorting companies affected by the Salesloft Drift attacks on a separate data leak site launching on October 10th. The Salesloft attacks are known to have impacted Google, Palo Alto Networks, CyberArk, Cloudflare, Rubrik, Elastic, BeyondTrust, Proofpoint, JFrog, Zscaler, Tenable, Nutanix, Qualys, and Cato Networks, among many others. ShinyHunters claim that companies will not be re-extorted under the Salesloft campaign if a ransom is paid in this initial extortion phase. "We are aware of recent extortion attempts by threat actors, which we have investigated in partnership with external experts and authorities. Our findings indicate these attempts relate to past or unsubstantiated incidents, and we remain engaged with affected customers to provide support," Salesforce said in a statement published after ShinyHunters launched their data leak site. "At this time, there is no indication that the Salesforce platform has been compromised, nor is this activity related to any known vulnerability in our technology." Update October 03, 11:02 EDT: Added Salesforce statement. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report
25 shared
Oct 8, 2025
Scattered Spider gang feigns retirement, breaks into bank instead
FBI warns of Scattered Spider and ShinyHunters attacks on Salesforce platforms Hackers connected to the Scattered Spider and ShinyHunters cybercriminal operations are extorting organizations for exorbitant ransoms after stealing data from Salesforce, the FBI warned. The agency released a flash notice on Friday with information about an ongoing data theft campaign that has impacted hundreds of businesses this year. The FBI refers to the hackers as both UNC6040 and UNC6395 and by their colloquial names of ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider, respectively. After months spent breaching some of the largest companies in the world, the hackers are now attempting to extort victim organizations — threatening to leak troves of customer data, business documents and more. The FBI did not say how many victims have received extortion emails demanding payment in cryptocurrency but they noted that the monetary demands have varied widely and are made at seemingly random times. Some extortion incidents were initiated days after data exfiltration while others took place months later. The FBI said the campaign began in October 2024 when members of the group gained access to organizations through social engineering attacks that involved contacting call centers and posing as IT employees. That scheme typically gave the cybercriminals access to employee credentials that were then leveraged to access Salesforce instances holding customer data. In other cases, the hackers used phishing emails or texts to take over employees’ phones or computers. The hackers evolved their tactics throughout the summer, switching to exploiting third-party applications that organizations linked to their Salesforce instances. “UNC6040 threat actors have deceived victims into authorizing malicious connected apps to their organization's Salesforce portal,” the FBI said. “This grants UNC6040 threat actors significant capabilities to access, query, and exfiltrate sensitive information directly from the compromised Salesforce customer environments.” By August, the hackers began targeting the Salesloft Drift application, an AI chatbot that can be integrated with Salesforce. The tactic allowed them to bypass traditional defenses like multifactor authentication, login monitoring and password resets, the FBI explained. In some cases, the FBI has found that the hackers created malicious applications within Salesforce trial accounts that allowed them to register connected apps without using a legitimate corporate account. On Monday, Reuters and the BBC confirmed that Kering — the French conglomerate that owns Gucci, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen — was attacked by the same ShinyHunters cybercriminals. ShinyHunters told the BBC that it stole information connected to 7.4 million unique email addresses. The hackers told another news outlet that they stole the information in late 2024 but only began negotiating a ransom in June 2025. Last week, a critical government agency in Vietnam confirmed that millions of financial records were stolen in an attack claimed by ShinyHunters. The cybercriminals previously took credit for devastating campaigns targeting giants in the insurance, retail and aviation industries. The FBI provided indicators of compromise that potential victims can use to see whether they have been affected by the hacking campaigns and urged companies to train call center employees on the tactics used. The agency also said companies should limit the privileges of almost every employee account, enforce IP-based access restrictions, monitor API usage and more. Experts said the information provided by the FBI showed how sophisticated the actors are at abusing legitimate tools for nefarious purposes, like Azure cloud infrastructure, virtual servers, Tor exit nodes and proxy services to obfuscate their origin. Scattered retirement? The FBI notice came shortly after the group made several posts on Telegram claiming to be retiring. The group blamed a recent string of arrests, law enforcement activity and criminal convictions against members as their reason for ceasing the current operation. Cybersecurity experts were dubious about the disbanding claims, noting that cybercriminal operations often make similar claims before reconstituting under different names. Some theorized the hackers are likely going to enjoy the spoils of their recent extortion campaigns before returning to cybercriminal activity. Sam Rubin, a senior official with Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42, said recent arrests may have prompted the group to lay low, but history says such activity is often temporary. “Groups like this splinter, rebrand, and resurface — much like ShinyHunters. Even if public operations pause, the risks remain: stolen data can resurface, undetected backdoors may persist, and actors may re-emerge under new names,” he said. “Silence from a threat group does not equal safety.” Jonathan Greig is a Breaking News Reporter at Recorded Future News. Jonathan has worked across the globe as a journalist since 2014. Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.
17 shared
Sep 17, 2025
Two Scattered Spider Suspects Arrested in UK; One Charged in US
FBI warns of Scattered Spider and ShinyHunters attacks on Salesforce platforms Hackers connected to the Scattered Spider and ShinyHunters cybercriminal operations are extorting organizations for exorbitant ransoms after stealing data from Salesforce, the FBI warned. The agency released a flash notice on Friday with information about an ongoing data theft campaign that has impacted hundreds of businesses this year. The FBI refers to the hackers as both UNC6040 and UNC6395 and by their colloquial names of ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider, respectively. After months spent breaching some of the largest companies in the world, the hackers are now attempting to extort victim organizations — threatening to leak troves of customer data, business documents and more. The FBI did not say how many victims have received extortion emails demanding payment in cryptocurrency but they noted that the monetary demands have varied widely and are made at seemingly random times. Some extortion incidents were initiated days after data exfiltration while others took place months later. The FBI said the campaign began in October 2024 when members of the group gained access to organizations through social engineering attacks that involved contacting call centers and posing as IT employees. That scheme typically gave the cybercriminals access to employee credentials that were then leveraged to access Salesforce instances holding customer data. In other cases, the hackers used phishing emails or texts to take over employees’ phones or computers. The hackers evolved their tactics throughout the summer, switching to exploiting third-party applications that organizations linked to their Salesforce instances. “UNC6040 threat actors have deceived victims into authorizing malicious connected apps to their organization's Salesforce portal,” the FBI said. “This grants UNC6040 threat actors significant capabilities to access, query, and exfiltrate sensitive information directly from the compromised Salesforce customer environments.” By August, the hackers began targeting the Salesloft Drift application, an AI chatbot that can be integrated with Salesforce. The tactic allowed them to bypass traditional defenses like multifactor authentication, login monitoring and password resets, the FBI explained. In some cases, the FBI has found that the hackers created malicious applications within Salesforce trial accounts that allowed them to register connected apps without using a legitimate corporate account. On Monday, Reuters and the BBC confirmed that Kering — the French conglomerate that owns Gucci, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen — was attacked by the same ShinyHunters cybercriminals. ShinyHunters told the BBC that it stole information connected to 7.4 million unique email addresses. The hackers told another news outlet that they stole the information in late 2024 but only began negotiating a ransom in June 2025. Last week, a critical government agency in Vietnam confirmed that millions of financial records were stolen in an attack claimed by ShinyHunters. The cybercriminals previously took credit for devastating campaigns targeting giants in the insurance, retail and aviation industries. The FBI provided indicators of compromise that potential victims can use to see whether they have been affected by the hacking campaigns and urged companies to train call center employees on the tactics used. The agency also said companies should limit the privileges of almost every employee account, enforce IP-based access restrictions, monitor API usage and more. Experts said the information provided by the FBI showed how sophisticated the actors are at abusing legitimate tools for nefarious purposes, like Azure cloud infrastructure, virtual servers, Tor exit nodes and proxy services to obfuscate their origin. Scattered retirement? The FBI notice came shortly after the group made several posts on Telegram claiming to be retiring. The group blamed a recent string of arrests, law enforcement activity and criminal convictions against members as their reason for ceasing the current operation. Cybersecurity experts were dubious about the disbanding claims, noting that cybercriminal operations often make similar claims before reconstituting under different names. Some theorized the hackers are likely going to enjoy the spoils of their recent extortion campaigns before returning to cybercriminal activity. Sam Rubin, a senior official with Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42, said recent arrests may have prompted the group to lay low, but history says such activity is often temporary. “Groups like this splinter, rebrand, and resurface — much like ShinyHunters. Even if public operations pause, the risks remain: stolen data can resurface, undetected backdoors may persist, and actors may re-emerge under new names,” he said. “Silence from a threat group does not equal safety.” Jonathan Greig is a Breaking News Reporter at Recorded Future News. Jonathan has worked across the globe as a journalist since 2014. Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.
17 shared
Sep 23, 2025
Scattered Spider Related Domain Names, (Thu, Jul 31st)
A wave of data breaches impacting companies like Qantas, Allianz Life, LVMH, and Adidas has been linked to the ShinyHunters extortion group, which has been using voice phishing attacks to steal data from Salesforce CRM instances. In June, Google's Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) warned that threat actors tracked as UNC6040 were targeting Salesforce customers in social engineering attacks. In these attacks, the threat actors impersonated IT support staff in phone calls to targeted employees, attempting to persuade them into visiting Salesforce's connected app setup page. On this page, they were told to enter a "connection code", which linked a malicious version of Salesforce's Data Loader OAuth app to the target's Salesforce environment. In some cases, the Data Loader component was renamed to "My Ticket Portal," to make it more convincing in the attacks. GTIG says that these attacks were usually conducted through vishing (voice phishing), but credentials and MFA tokens were also stolen through phishing pages that impersonated Okta login pages. Around the time of this report, multiple companies reported data breaches involving third-party customer service or cloud-based CRM systems. LVMH subsidiaries Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Tiffany & Co. each disclosed unauthorized access to a customer information database, with Tiffany Korea notifying customers the attackers breached a "vendor platform used for managing customer data." Adidas, Qantas, and Allianz Life also reported breaches involving third-party systems, with Allianz confirming it was a third-party customer relationship management platform. "On July 16, 2025, a malicious threat actor gained access to a third-party, cloud-based CRM system used by Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz Life)," an Allianz Life spokesperson told BleepingComputer. While BleepingComputer has learned that the Qantas data breach also involved a third-party customer relationship management platform, the company will not confirm it is Salesforce. However, previous reporting from local media claims the data was stolen from Qantas' Salesforce instance. Furthermore, court documents state that the threat actors targeted "Accounts" and "Contacts" database tables, both of which are Salesforce objects. While none of these companies have publicly named Salesforce, BleepingComputer has since confirmed that all were targeted in the same campaign detailed by Google. The attacks have not led to public extortion or data leaks yet, with BleepingComputer learning that the threat actors are attempting to privately extort companies over email, where they name themselves as ShinyHunters. It is believed that when these extortion attempts fail, the threat actors will release stolen information in a long wave of leaks, similar to ShinyHunter's previous Snowflake attacks. "We have not identified any data leak sites associated with this activity," Genevieve Stark, Head of Cybercrime, and Information Operations Intelligence Analysis at GTIG, told BleepingComputer. "It is plausible that the threat actor intends to sell the data instead of sharing it publicly. This approach would align with prior ShinyHunters Group activity." Google say they are now tracking Salesforce data-theft attacks under multiple threat group designations. "GTIG attributes multiple incidents impacting Salesforce instances to UNC6040. In at least some cases, the follow-on extortion activity, which we attribute to the distinct threat cluster UNC6240, has used the ShinyHunters brand," Stark told BleepingComputer. "The extortion activity is attributed to UNC6240 instead of UNC6040 due to a significant time gap between the initial data theft activity and the subsequent extortion activity. We have not confirmed the nature of the relationship between these intrusions and the prior use of this handle on underground forums." Who is ShinyHunters The breaches have caused confusion among the cybersecurity community and the media, including BleepingComputer, with the attacks attributed to Scattered Spider (tracked by Mandiant as UNC3944), as those threat actors were also targeting the aviation, retail, and insurance sectors around the same time and demonstrated similar tactics. However, threat actors associated with Scattered Spider tend to perform full-blown network breaches, culminating with data theft and, sometimes, ransomware. ShinyHunters, tracked as UNC6040, on the other hand, tends to focus more on data-theft extortion attacks targeting a particular cloud platform or web application. It is BleepingComputer's and some security researchers' belief that both UNC6040/UNC6240 and UNC3944 consist of overlapping members that communicate within the same online communities. The threat group is also believed to overlap with "The Com," a network of experienced English-speaking cybercriminals. "According to Recorded Future intelligence, the overlapping TTPs between known Scattered Spider and ShinyHunters attacks indicate likely some crossover between the two groups," Allan Liska, an Intelligence Analyst for Recorded Future, told BleepingComputer. Other researchers have told BleepingComputer that ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider appear to be operating in lockstep, targeting the same industries at the same time, making it harder to attribute attacks. Some also believe that both groups have ties to threat actors from the now-defunct Lapsus$ hacking group, with reports indicating that one of the recently arrested Scattered Spider hackers was also in Lapsus$. Another theory is that ShinyHunters is acting as an extortion-as-a-service, where they extort companies on behalf of other threat actors in exchange for a revenue share, similar to how ransomware-as-a-service gangs operate. This theory is supported by previous conversations BleepingComputer has had with ShinyHunters, where they claimed not to be behind a breach, but just acting as the seller of the stolen data. These breaches include PowerSchool, Oracle Cloud, the Snowflake data-theft attacks, AT&T, NitroPDF, Wattpad, MathWay, and many more. To muddy the waters further, there have been numerous arrests of people linked to the name "ShinyHunters," including those who have been arrested for the Snowflake data-theft attacks, breaches at PowerSchool, and the operation of the Breached v2 hacking forum. Yet even after these arrests, new attacks occur with companies receiving extortion emails stating, "We are ShinyHunters," referring to themselves as a "collective." Protecting Salesforce instances from attacks In a statement to BleepingComputer, Salesforce emphasized that the platform itself was not compromised, but rather, customers' accounts are being breached via social engineering. "Salesforce has not been compromised, and the issues described are not due to any known vulnerability in our platform. While Salesforce builds enterprise-grade security into everything we do, customers also play a critical role in keeping their data safe — especially amid a rise in sophisticated phishing and social engineering attacks," Salesforce told BleepingComputer. "We continue to encourage all customers to follow security best practices, including enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA), enforcing the principle of least privilege, and carefully managing connected applications. For more information, please visit: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/protect-against-social-engineering/." Salesforce is urging customers to strengthen their security posture by: Enforcing trusted IP ranges for logins Following the principle of least privilege for app permissions Enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) Restricting use of connected apps and managing access policies Using Salesforce Shield for advanced threat detection, event monitoring, and transaction policies Adding a designated Security Contact for incident communication Further details on these mitigations can be found in Salesforce's guidance linked above. Update 8/1/25: Added information from GTIG. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report
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Jul 31, 2025
TeamPCP Moves From OSS to AWS Environments
This is the fourth update to the TeamPCP supply chain campaign threat intelligence report, "When the Security Scanner Became the Weapon" (v3.0, March 25, 2026). Update 003 covered developments through March 28, including the first 48-hour pause in new compromises and the campaign's shift to monetization. This update consolidates intelligence from March 28-30, 2026 -- two days since our last update. HIGH: Databricks Investigating Alleged Compromise Linked to TeamPCP Credential Harvest CybersecurityNews reports that Databricks, the cloud data analytics platform, is investigating an alleged security compromise linked to the TeamPCP credential harvest. International Cyber Digest stated on X that they "notified them last week" and Databricks "scaled up to investigate." A separate analyst corroborated that screenshots showing AWS artifacts, CloudFormation dumps, and STS tokens "match TeamPCP's exact playbook." Databricks has not issued an official statement. If confirmed, this would be the first major cloud platform identified as a downstream victim of TeamPCP's credential trove -- distinct from the security tool vendors (Aqua, Checkmarx, BerriAI, Telnyx) directly compromised in the supply chain phase. The distinction matters: tool vendor compromises expanded TeamPCP's credential pool, while a Databricks compromise would represent the monetization of that pool against an enterprise target processing sensitive data across AWS, GCP, and Azure. Update (2026-03-30): Databricks' Head of Global Communications and their external PR agency FGS Global have confirmed the authenticity of the new @DatabricksSec X account. In their https://x.com/DatabricksSec/status/2038649955401794042, Databricks says they "thoroughly investigated this information in our internal systems and found nothing" and have "asked for more information beyond this screenshot." They state they will "transparently continue to share any new updates on all security matters." Recommended action: Organizations using Databricks should monitor for an official statement. If your CI/CD pipelines were exposed to any TeamPCP-compromised component AND those pipelines had access to Databricks credentials, treat those credentials as potentially compromised regardless of whether Databricks confirms the breach. HIGH: TeamPCP Operates Dual Ransomware Tracks - CipherForce Is Their Own Operation Update 002 documented TeamPCP's partnership with the Vect ransomware-as-a-service operation and BreachForums mass affiliate key distribution. New intelligence reveals that Vect is not TeamPCP's only ransomware channel. According to Flare and corroborated by Rami McCarthy's IOC tracker, TeamPCP operates under five confirmed aliases: PCPcat, ShellForce, DeadCatx3, CipherForce, and Persy_PCP. TeamPCP's own Telegram channel states: "you may already know us as TeamPCP or Shellforce... CipherForce is a newer project we are starting to find affiliates." CipherForce is TeamPCP's own ransomware operation, separate from the Vect partnership. This means TeamPCP is running two parallel ransomware tracks simultaneously: their proprietary CipherForce program for direct operations, and the mass Vect affiliate program via BreachForums for distributed operations. The SANS ISC Stormcast for March 30 also notes "more and more links between the TeamPCP crew and various ransomware actors" -- plural -- consistent with this dual-track model. Analysts assess this dual-track approach allows TeamPCP to maintain direct control over high-value targets (via CipherForce) while simultaneously flooding the ecosystem with mass affiliate operations (via Vect). The 300 GB stolen credential trove can feed both tracks simultaneously. Recommended action: Detection teams monitoring for Vect ransomware indicators should also add CipherForce to their watchlist. The strongest attribution link across all TeamPCP operations is a shared RSA-4096 public key embedded in payloads -- search for this key in forensic artifacts from any suspected TeamPCP exposure. HIGH: LAPSUS$ Releases AstraZeneca Data Free After Failed Sale Attempt The LAPSUS$/AstraZeneca breach claim documented in Updates 002-003 has escalated. Cybernews and Cybersecurity Insiders report two developments: LAPSUS$ released the claimed 3 GB archive for free after failing to find buyers via Session encrypted messaging. This shifts the incident from an extortion attempt to a full data exposure event. Cybernews research team has partially verified the dump's contents -- GitHub user information for internal AstraZeneca software developers, employee data spanning clinical research subsidiaries, and internal source code tree structures were assessed as consistent with legitimate AstraZeneca infrastructure. AstraZeneca has still not issued any public statement confirming or denying the breach at approximately 96 hours since the initial claim. Analysts assess that AstraZeneca's continued silence, combined with GDPR obligations if EU employee data is in the dump, creates increasing regulatory exposure with each passing day. Recommended action: Organizations should treat this as a probable confirmed breach for defensive planning purposes. If your organization shares integrations, data, or credentials with AstraZeneca, assess whether the exposed repository structures and configurations could affect your security posture. Given AstraZeneca's clinical research operations, the dump may contain protected health information (PHI) subject to HIPAA in the US and GDPR in the EU. Organizations with data-sharing agreements with AstraZeneca should evaluate whether their data may be in the exposed archive and prepare breach notification workflows accordingly. MEDIUM: ownCloud Discloses Build Infrastructure Impact From CVE-2026-33634 ownCloud published a security notice confirming their build infrastructure -- the systems producing container images and client binaries -- was affected by CVE-2026-33634 (the Trivy compromise). ownCloud confirms: no customer data compromised, no source code altered, impact limited to build systems only. This is one of the first named downstream organizations to publicly disclose that they were in the blast radius of the Trivy supply chain compromise. The disclosure is notable for its transparency -- most affected organizations have remained silent despite the CISA KEV entry and federal remediation deadline of April 8. Recommended action: Organizations using ownCloud should review the security notice and verify their deployments are using images produced after the remediation. More broadly, ownCloud's disclosure should prompt other organizations that used Trivy in their build pipelines between March 19-22 to conduct their own impact assessments and consider similar disclosure. MEDIUM: Supply Chain Pause Extends Past 96 Hours No new package compromises across any ecosystem have been publicly reported since the Telnyx PyPI disclosure on March 27, extending the supply chain pause documented in Update 003 past 96 hours. This is the longest quiet period since TeamPCP began active supply chain operations on March 19. Expanded ecosystem search results (March 30): An independent search of RubyGems, crates.io, and Maven Central -- the three ecosystems identified as plausible expansion targets in Update 003 -- found zero TeamPCP-related IOCs in any of them. The RubyGems, crates.io, and Maven Central watch items remain "Not observed." While the CanisterWorm's propagation technique is registry-agnostic (any stolen publish token would work), there is no evidence TeamPCP has moved beyond the five confirmed ecosystems (GitHub Actions, PyPI, npm, Docker Hub/GHCR, OpenVSX). Note on sourcing: CybersecurityNews listed "NPM and OpenVSX" alongside the other compromised ecosystems in their Databricks article. These are accurate in the sense that both ecosystems were hit, but they refer to the known CanisterWorm npm worm (March 20, 66+ packages) and the Checkmarx OpenVSX extensions (March 23, ast-results and cx-dev-assist) -- not new compromises. No new npm or OpenVSX activity has been documented since the original incidents. Recommended action: Use this supply chain pause as a remediation window. The CISA KEV deadline for CVE-2026-33634 is now 9 days away (April 8, 2026). Complete credential rotations and IOC sweeps before the deadline. HIGH: Campaign Transitions to Three Parallel Monetization Tracks While supply chain poisoning has paused, TeamPCP is not dormant. Analysts assess the group has completed its supply chain expansion phase and transitioned fully to credential exploitation and monetization. Three distinct operational tracks are now running simultaneously: Direct credential exploitation against high-value targets -- the Databricks investigation (see above) represents the first alleged downstream victim of the ~300 GB stolen credential trove, distinct from the tool vendors directly compromised in the supply chain phase. Proprietary ransomware via CipherForce -- TeamPCP's own ransomware operation, with recruitment via their Telegram channel. No confirmed deployments yet, but the infrastructure and affiliate recruitment are active. Mass affiliate ransomware via Vect/BreachForums -- Distributed operations leveraging the BreachForums mass affiliate key distribution documented in Update 002. The distribution window is now ~96 hours with no confirmed deployments. The distinction between these tracks matters for defenders: detection teams monitoring for Vect ransomware indicators should also add CipherForce to their watchlist. The shared RSA-4096 public key embedded in payloads is the strongest attribution link across all TeamPCP operations. INFO: Cloud Security Alliance Publishes Second Research Note on AI/ML Supply Chain Risk The Cloud Security Alliance AI Safety Initiative published a research note on March 29 framing the TeamPCP campaign as a structural shift in adversary methodology -- from opportunistic typosquatting to deliberate pipeline compromise of trusted AI/ML packages. The note assesses that "the economics of targeting high-value AI credential stores are accelerating adversary investment." This is the second CSA publication covering TeamPCP (the first was the Kubernetes wiper lab analysis documented in Update 003) and focuses specifically on the AI/ML ecosystem implications rather than technical TTPs. Watch Item Status The full campaign report is available at sans.org/white-papers/when-security-scanner-became-weapon. A SANS Emergency Webcast replay is available at sans.org/webcasts/when-security-scanner-became-weapon. Updates to the report will be in the form of these ISC diaries.
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Apr 4, 2026