Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (WAVCEL1789374433)
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Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of Cell C's Breach and lateral movement inside company's environment.
- Overview of affected data sets, including SSNs and PHI, and why they materially increase incident severity.
- How Rankiteo’s incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score.
- How this cyber incident impacts Cell C Rankiteo cyber scoring and cyber rating.
- Rankiteo’s MITRE ATT&CK correlation analysis for this incident, with associated confidence level.
Full Incident Analysis Transcript
In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Cell C breach identified under incident ID WAVCEL1789374433.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Cell C's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cell-c, the number of followers: 115835, the industry type: Telecommunications and the number of employees: 4185 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 690 and after the incident was 627 with a difference of -63 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 Cell C and their customers.
On 09 September 2023, Cell C disclosed Data Breach issues under the banner "Cell C Fibre Customer Data Breach Due to Third-Party Incident".
South African telecom operator Cell C has notified its fibre customers of a potential data breach stemming from a cybersecurity incident at a third-party service provider.
The disruption is felt across the environment, and exposing Names, email addresses, mobile numbers, Cell C account numbers.
In response, and stakeholders are being briefed through Customer notification.
The case underscores how Ongoing, teams are taking away lessons such as Highlights risks associated with third-party vendor security in the telecom sector, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Notification to fibre customers about potential data exposure.
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.
MITRE ATT&CK® Correlation Analysis
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 Trusted Relationship (T1199) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating cybersecurity incident at a third-party service provider and Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating compromised access credentials at the provider enabled unauthorized access. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Credentials In Files (T1552.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating compromised access credentials at the provider and Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating compromised access credentials at the provider enabled unauthorized access. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating exposing names, email addresses, mobile numbers, and Cell C account numbers. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating potential data breach stemming from a cybersecurity incident and Transfer Data to Cloud Account (T1537) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating third-party service provider with potential cloud access. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Destruction (T1485) with lower confidence (30%), supported by evidence indicating no details on extent of breach or data handling and Data Manipulation: Transmitted Data Manipulation (T1565.002) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating potential identity theft risk due to exposed PII. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Cell C Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cell-c/incident/WAVCEL1789374433
- Cell C CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cell-c
- Cell C Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/wavcel1789374433-third-party-service-provider-cell-c-breach-september-2026/
- Cell C CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cell-c/history
- Cell C CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.telecompaper.com/news/cell-c-warns-fibre-customers-about-possible-data-breach--1582561
- Rankiteo A.I CyberSecurity Rating methodology: https://www.rankiteo.com/Images/rankiteo_algo.pdf
- Rankiteo TPRM Scoring methodology: https://static.rankiteo.com/model/rankiteo_tprm_methodology.pdf