LexisNexis Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (LEX1772555037)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the LexisNexis breach identified under incident ID LEX1772555037.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of LexisNexis's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lexisnexis, the number of followers: 391074, the industry type: IT Services and IT Consulting and the number of employees: 10705 employees

After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 664 and after the incident was 585 with a difference of -79 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.

In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on LexisNexis and their customers.

On 24 February 2024, LexisNexis Legal & Professional disclosed Data Breach issues under the banner "LexisNexis Data Breach After Hackers Exploit Unpatched React App".

LexisNexis Legal & Professional confirmed a data breach after hackers exploited an unpatched React frontend application to gain access to its AWS infrastructure.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting AWS infrastructure, ECS task roles, Redshift tables, VPC database tables, and exposing 2GB of data leaked, including customer names, user IDs, business contact details, IP addresses, survey responses, support tickets, employee password hashes, AWS Secrets Manager secrets, cloud user profiles, and government email accounts, with nearly 3.9 million database records records at risk.

In response, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Intrusion contained, and stakeholders are being briefed through Notified affected customers.

The case underscores how Ongoing, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Affected customers notified.

Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.

Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating exploited an unpatched React frontend application to gain access. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating react2Shell vulnerability allowed attackers to infiltrate cloud environment. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating eCS task role had excessive read access, including production Redshift master credential. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Unsecured Credentials: Credentials In Files (T1552.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating 53 AWS Secrets Manager secrets in plaintext accessed by attackers and OS Credential Dumping (T1003) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating 45 employee password hashes exfiltrated. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified Account Discovery (T1087) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating 400,000 cloud user profiles (names, emails, job functions) accessed and Network Service Discovery (T1046) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating complete mapping of LexisNexis’ VPC infrastructure obtained. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating 536 Redshift tables and 430+ VPC database tables accessed and Data from Information Repositories (T1213) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating 21,042 customer accounts, 5,582 attorney survey responses collected. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating 2GB data leak by FulcrumSec across underground forums and Transfer Data to Cloud Account (T1537) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating 3.9 million database records exfiltrated. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Destruction (T1485) with lower confidence (30%), supported by evidence indicating no evidence of product or service disruption, but data exfiltrated. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.