Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (CLO1772548440)
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Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of Cloudflare's Ransomware 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 Cloudflare 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 Cloudflare breach identified under incident ID CLO1772548440.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Cloudflare's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloudflare, the number of followers: 1140726, the industry type: Computer and Network Security and the number of employees: 6899 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 784 and after the incident was 636 with a difference of -148 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 Cloudflare and their customers.
On 18 February 2025, a cybersecurity incident called "Identity-Based Attacks Overtake Malware as Top Ransomware Threat" came to light.
Cloudflare’s latest annual threat report reveals a major shift in ransomware tactics where identity exploitation has surpassed malware as the primary attack vector.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting manufacturing and critical infrastructure, plus an estimated financial loss of $123.5 million (attempted theft in 2025).
Formal response steps have not been shared publicly yet.
The case underscores how teams are taking away lessons such as Identity and access management (IAM) is now the critical attack surface, with attackers prioritizing speed and volume over technical sophistication. AI-driven automation is accelerating exploit development and fraud campaigns, requiring adaptive defenses, and recommending next steps like Strengthen identity and access controls (e.g., multi-factor authentication, password policies), Monitor for abuse of legitimate platforms (e.g., Google Calendar, Azure domains) for C2 operations and Implement AI-driven threat detection to counter automated attack campaigns.
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 Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating stolen credentials, phishing, and weak passwords to bypass defenses, Phishing (T1566) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating phishing...as the primary attack vector, and Trusted Relationship (T1199) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating thread-hijacking attacks, where fraudsters infiltrate legitimate conversations. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Brute Force (T1110) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating weak passwords to bypass defenses and Compromise Accounts (T1586) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating stolen credentials...as the primary attack vector. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating blending into legitimate traffic before launching extortion operations and Subvert Trust Controls (T1553) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating abusing legitimate platforms such as Google Calendar, text-paste sites, and Microsoft Azure domains. Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating weaponizing authorized credentials and insider access to execute high-impact breaches. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating identity theft risk such as high (stolen credentials, PII exploitation). Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating abusing legitimate platforms for command-and-control (C2) operations. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware tactics...launching extortion operations and Defacement (T1491) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating operational disruptions create urgent financial incentives for victims to pay ransoms. Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Web Service (T1102) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating abusing legitimate platforms such as Google Calendar, text-paste sites, and Microsoft Azure domains. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Cloudflare Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cloudflare/incident/CLO1772548440
- Cloudflare CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cloudflare
- Cloudflare Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/clo1772548440-cloudflare-ransomware-january-2025/
- Cloudflare CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cloudflare/history
- Cloudflare CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/ransomware-identity-ai-cloudflare/813319/
- 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