Following the announcement of a major data breach the other week, the FBI has parted ways with an Accenture contractor, after a patch failure opened the door to a ShinyHunters attack.
We’ve discussed the hacking collective ad nauseum, but the story we examined last time continues with new twists and turns. As we mentioned, this third party organization was Oracle Peoplesoft, an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and human capital management (HCM) software suite, used to exploit the FBI’s online job portal. An investigation into the matter has already led to several arrests, and the Bureau has reportedly taken down much of the group’s infrastructure.
Of course, this is not the first time ShinyHunters has run afoul of law enforcement, but the work to dismantle the group and its infrastructure has never been as aggressive as it is now. One law enforcement source cites one of the recent arrests as a Canadian citizen, while another was taken into custody by the FBI and the Dutch National Police. While the group has temporarily moved to Telegram, it has no plans to remain on the platform.
While it’s still too early to tell, it looks like ShinyHunters may have overreached this time, especially boasting initially about how they had compromised the agency’s systems and sharing samples of the stolen data with news outlets. This included medical records, home addresses, and areas of work for just about every employee within the bureau. ShinyHunters originally wanted the FBI’s advisory warning against their operations rescinded, but that stage is past. Despite their claims of not wanting to escalate the situation by publicly sharing the stolen data, clearly it has been escalated beyond what the group would have preferred.
And yet, despite the current tribulations ShinyHunters is experiencing, there are countless bad actors out there who will continue successfully breaking through exterior defenses, utilizing new developments in AI and machine learning, or internal vulnerabilities like a predilection to social engineering. When that happens, organizations must ensure their valuable stored data is locked down tight.
“If we assume attackers will eventually get through, we also have to assume they [cyber criminals] may eventually reach the data,” said David Stonehill, Chief Technology Officer at NetLib Security. A blow against ShinyHunters will not dissuade other bad guys from working to steal your sensitive information To that end, our patented Encryptionizer platform provides a potent layer of transparent data encryption across all environments – physical, virtual and cloud – thereby ensuring one of the most consequential gaps in enterprise security that remains largely unchanged is covered: protecting the data itself.