Asahi Group Holdings Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (ASA4832448112725)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Asahi Group Holdings breach identified under incident ID ASA4832448112725.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Asahi Group Holdings's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asahigroup-holdings, the number of followers: 202985, the industry type: Food and Beverage Services and the number of employees: 1129 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 291 and after the incident was 119 with a difference of -172 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 Asahi Group Holdings and their customers.

On 29 September 2023, Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. disclosed Ransomware Attack issues under the banner "Asahi Ransomware Attack Exposing Data of Over 1.5 Million Individuals".

Japanese beer maker Asahi was struck by a ransomware attack, with attackers accessing servers and PCs, stealing personal information from customer service contacts.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Servers in the data center and Company-issued PCs, and exposing True, with nearly 1,825,000 (1,525,000 customers + 300,000 external contacts/employees/family members) records at risk.

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, and stakeholders are being briefed through Public announcement on company website.

The case underscores how Ongoing (no evidence of data misuse confirmed as of report), with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Public announcement acknowledging potential exposure of 1.825 million records.

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 Supply Chain Compromise: Compromise Software Dependencies and Development Tools (T1195.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating attackers infiltrated the company’s network via on-site equipment and Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating deploying ransomware on servers and employee PCs. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating qilin ransomware group claimed responsibility, adding Asahi to its dark web leak site and Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell (T1059.003) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating deploying ransomware on servers and employee PCs. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Server Software Component: Web Shell (T1505.003) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating servers in the data center targeted; no explicit evidence but implied by ransomware deployment. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts: Domain Accounts (T1078.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating deploying ransomware on servers and employee PCs suggests lateral movement with elevated privileges. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Indicator Removal: File Deletion (T1070.004) with moderate confidence (65%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware deployment typically includes cleanup of logs/artifacts (implied by lack of detection until post-encryption) and Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware often disables security tools pre-encryption (implied by successful deployment). Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified OS Credential Dumping: LSASS Memory (T1003.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating lateral movement to servers and employee PCs suggests credential theft (common in ransomware attacks). Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified System Information Discovery (T1082) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating targeting of servers in the data center and company-issued PCs implies reconnaissance and System Owner/User Discovery (T1033) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating exfiltration of 1.825M records (PII) suggests active directory/user store enumeration. Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Remote Services: Remote Desktop Protocol (T1021.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating spread from on-site equipment to servers and PCs implies RDP or similar and Remote Services: SMB/Windows Admin Shares (T1021.002) with moderate confidence (65%), supported by evidence indicating lateral movement across Windows environments (implied by PC/server targeting). Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating exfiltrating data including PII from servers and PCs and Data from Network Shared Drive (T1039) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating servers in the data center likely hosted shared drives with PII. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Unencrypted/Obfuscated Non-C2 Protocols (T1048.003) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating exfiltrating data (1.825M records) to Qilin’s infrastructure and Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating data listed on Qilin’s dark web leak site implies C2-based exfiltration. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (100%), supported by evidence indicating deploying ransomware on servers and employee PCs with data encryption such as true and Data Destruction (T1485) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware may include wiper functionality (implied by high-severity impact). These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.