Ashton Thomas Private Wealth Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (ASHLPL1768395244)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Ashton Thomas Private Wealth breach identified under incident ID ASHLPL1768395244.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Ashton Thomas Private Wealth's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ashton-thomas-private-wealth, the number of followers: 3489, the industry type: Financial Services and the number of employees: 113 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 754 and after the incident was 666 with a difference of -88 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 Ashton Thomas Private Wealth and their customers.

LPL Financial recently reported "LPL Financial, Ameriprise Financial, and Ashton Thomas Private Wealth Data Breaches", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.

Financial advisors at multiple firms were targeted by cyber criminals, leading to data breaches involving unauthorized access, phishing scams, and potential exposure of personal information.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Advisor Online Accounts (LPL) and Advisor Email Accounts (Ameriprise, Ashton Thomas), and exposing Personal Information, Client Data, Children's PII (Ashton Thomas), with nearly 53 (LPL), 598 (Ameriprise), 1,644 (Ashton Thomas) records at risk.

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Prompt containment (LPL, Ameriprise), Immediate investigation (Ameriprise), and began remediation that includes Bolstered safeguards, Free credit monitoring for affected clients, and stakeholders are being briefed through Client notification letters, Regulatory filings (Maine AG).

The case underscores how Ongoing (LPL), Contained (Ameriprise, Ashton Thomas), with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Notification letters sent to affected clients (All Firms).

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 Phishing: Spearphishing Link (T1566.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating phishing email tricked an advisor into exposing client data (Ameriprise) and Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts (T1078.004) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating foreign threat actors compromised advisor accounts (LPL). Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified Command and Scripting Interpreter (T1059) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating unauthorized transactions executed via compromised accounts (LPL). Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Brute Force: Password Guessing (T1110.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating compromised advisor accounts (LPL, Ashton Thomas) and Credentials from Password Stores (T1555) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating unusual activity in firm email accounts (Ashton Thomas). Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating exposed sensitive data such as SSNs, DOBs, addresses (Ashton Thomas) and Email Collection: Remote Email Collection (T1114.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating unusual activity in firm email accounts (Ashton Thomas). Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating data breaches affecting 53 (LPL), 598 (Ameriprise), 1,644 (Ashton Thomas). Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Destruction (T1485) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating fraudulent trading schemes (LPL pump-and-dump) and Data Manipulation: Stored Data Manipulation (T1565.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating artificially inflating stock prices via unauthorized transactions (LPL). Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts (T1078.004) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating compromised advisor accounts used to bypass security (LPL). These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.