Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (INOCEN1775802306)
The details regarding individual company incidents & reports gives you full view from every side.
Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of Cencora'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 Cencora 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 Cencora breach identified under incident ID INOCEN1775802306.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Cencora's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cencoraglobal, the number of followers: 201207, the industry type: Hospitals and Health Care and the number of employees: 27718 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 776 and after the incident was 723 with a difference of -53 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 Cencora and their customers.
Inotiv recently reported "Pharmaceutical Sector’s Outdated Web Forms Expose Critical Cybersecurity Risks", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.
The pharmaceutical and life sciences industry remains vulnerable due to reliance on outdated web forms lacking modern security protocols.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting legacy web forms, IT systems (partial encryption in AEP case) and third-party vendor platforms, and exposing 170 GB of sensitive data (Inotiv), clinical trial data and adverse event reports, plus an estimated financial loss of $5.1 million per incident (average data breach cost).
Formal response steps have not been shared publicly yet.
The case underscores how teams are taking away lessons such as Legacy web forms lacking audit trails, encryption, and role-based access controls must be modernized to comply with regulatory standards and mitigate cyber risks. Third-party vendor ecosystems pose significant additional risks, and recommending next steps like Replace outdated web forms with modern, secure alternatives featuring tamper-proof audit trails, encrypted data transmission, and strong authentication. Implement data localization controls and GDPR-compliant transfer safeguards for clinical trial data. Allocate IT budgets to prioritize modernization over legacy system maintenance.
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 Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including outdated web forms lacking modern security protocols, and sQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), session hijacking, Drive-by Compromise (T1189) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating legacy web forms used for clinical trial recruitment, adverse event reporting, and Phishing: Spearphishing Link (T1566.002) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating third-party breaches accounting for 30% of incidents. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating sQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) as attack vectors. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified External Remote Services (T1133) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating third-party vendor platforms as attack surface. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating weak authentication in legacy web forms. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating weak authentication leaving systems vulnerable and Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating lack of tamper-proof audit trails. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Brute Force: Password Guessing (T1110.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating weak authentication in legacy systems and Adversary-in-the-Middle (T1557) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating unencrypted data transmission exposing sensitive information. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified Account Discovery: Domain Account (T1087.002) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating clinical trial data, adverse event reports compromised. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including 170 GB of sensitive data compromised (Inotiv), and clinical trial data worth hundreds of millions and Data from Information Repositories: Sharepoint (T1213.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating regulatory submission data compromised via legacy web forms. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating 170 GB of sensitive data exfiltrated (Inotiv) and Exfiltration Over Web Service: Exfiltration to Cloud Storage (T1567.002) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating third-party vendor platforms as attack surface. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including ransomware attack encrypted systems (Inotiv), and partial IT encryption (AEP), Defacement: Internal Defacement (T1491.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating disrupted operations, medicine delivery threats, and Data Manipulation: Stored Data Manipulation (T1565.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating lack of tamper-proof audit trails violating ALCOA+ principles. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Cencora Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cencoraglobal/incident/INOCEN1775802306
- Cencora CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cencoraglobal
- Cencora Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/inocen1775802306-cencora-inotiv-breach-january-2025/
- Cencora CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cencoraglobal/history
- Cencora CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.pharmtech.com/view/hidden-liability-why-legacy-web-forms-put-life-sciences-organizations-at-critical-risk
- 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