Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (COM1772800673)
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Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of Comstar, LLC'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 Comstar, LLC 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 Comstar, LLC breach identified under incident ID COM1772800673.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Comstar, LLC's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/comstar-llc, the number of followers: 0, the industry type: Online Audio and Video Media and the number of employees: 3 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 793 and after the incident was 651 with a difference of -142 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 Comstar, LLC and their customers.
On 25 March 2022, Comstar LLC disclosed Ransomware issues under the banner "Comstar LLC Settles with State and Federal Regulators Over 2022 Ransomware Breach".
In a significant enforcement action, ambulance billing firm Comstar LLC has reached settlement agreements with the Attorneys General of Massachusetts and Connecticut, as well as the U.S.
The disruption is felt across the environment, and exposing Protected health information (PHI), names, Social Security numbers, driver’s license details, financial account information, medical records, with nearly 585,621 records at risk, plus an estimated financial loss of $515,000 (state fines) + $415,000 (Massachusetts) + $100,000 (Connecticut).
In response, and began remediation that includes Encryption of PHI at rest and in transit, multi-factor authentication (MFA), zero-trust architecture, enhanced monitoring (SIEM, EDR, DLP, email filtering), data minimization and archiving policies.
The case underscores how Settled, teams are taking away lessons such as The incident highlights the importance of conducting thorough risk assessments, implementing encryption for PHI, adopting zero-trust architecture, and adhering to data minimization and archiving policies to reduce breach risks. It also underscores the dual enforcement risk from federal and state regulators, and recommending next steps like Conduct annual risk assessments and penetration testing, Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all user and admin accounts and Adopt zero-trust architecture and a Written Information Security Program (WISP).
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 moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating unauthorized access...via its internal systems (implied) and Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating failure to conduct thorough risk assessment (HIPAA violation). Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified User Execution: Malicious File (T1204.002) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware attack...encryption of sensitive data. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating unauthorized access...likely via compromised credentials. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating access to PHI, SSNs, financial data (high-privilege data). Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware attack involved encryption of sensitive data and Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating failure to implement encryption, MFA (pre-breach). Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified OS Credential Dumping (T1003) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating exposure of SSNs, driver’s license details (credential theft risk). Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified Account Discovery (T1087) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating access to PHI assets (implied discovery of high-value data). Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating pHI, SSNs, financial data compromised via internal systems. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating data exfiltration confirmed in ransomware attack. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware encryption of sensitive data and Data Destruction (T1485) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware attack may have destroyed data. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Comstar, LLC Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/comstar-llc/incident/COM1772800673
- Comstar, LLC CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/comstar-llc
- Comstar, LLC Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/com1772800673-comstar-llc-ransomware-january-2022/
- Comstar, LLC CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/comstar-llc/history
- Comstar, LLC CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.dataprotectionreport.com/2026/03/hhs-and-state-ags-fine-ambulance-firm-over-500000-require-enhanced-security-privacy-and-data-minimization-practices/
- 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