Congressional Budget Office Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (CON5793057110725)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Congressional Budget Office breach identified under incident ID CON5793057110725.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Congressional Budget Office's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/congressional-budget-office, the number of followers: 6165, the industry type: Government Administration and the number of employees: 274 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 644 and after the incident was 575 with a difference of -69 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 Congressional Budget Office and their customers.

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently reported "Cybersecurity Breach at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) by Suspected Foreign Threat Actor", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Congress’s independent financial analyst, was compromised by a suspected foreign threat actor in a significant cybersecurity breach targeting U.S.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting CBO internal networks, email systems and communication platforms, and exposing sensitive communications, internal emails and office chat logs between congressional staff and CBO researchers.

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like immediate containment actions and isolation of affected systems, and began remediation that includes implementation of additional security monitoring and enhanced controls, and stakeholders are being briefed through public statement by CBO spokeswoman Caitlin Emma and notifications to lawmakers.

The case underscores how ongoing, teams are taking away lessons such as heightened cybersecurity vulnerabilities in federal legislative infrastructure, need for robust protections against advanced persistent threats (APTs) and importance of early detection in limiting breach scope, and recommending next steps like strengthen cybersecurity defenses for legislative agencies, enhance monitoring of communications between lawmakers and analytical bodies and review access controls for sensitive budgetary data, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering notifications to congressional offices and suspension of email correspondence with CBO.

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 Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts (T1078.004) with moderate to high confidence (70%), with evidence including compromised sensitive communications, including internal emails and chat logs, and suspected foreign threat actor (potentially state-sponsored) targeting legislative systems and Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with moderate confidence (60%), with evidence including cBO internal networks, email systems, communication platforms affected, and no specific vector listed, but APTs often exploit public-facing apps. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Email Collection: Remote Email Collection (T1114.002) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including internal emails and office chat logs between lawmakers’ offices and CBO researchers compromised, and sensitive communications targeted for exfiltration and Data from Local System (T1005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating internal emails, chat logs, and budget analysis data accessed from CBO systems. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Unencrypted/Obfuscated Non-C2 Protocol (T1048.003) with moderate to high confidence (70%), with evidence including data exfiltration such as suspected (not confirmed), and aPT tradecraft often uses obfuscated channels for sensitive legislative data. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with lower confidence (10%), supported by evidence indicating no ransomware mentioned, but disruptions to legislative scoring and budget analysis and Endpoint Denial of Service: Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004) with moderate confidence (50%), with evidence including suspension of email correspondence between congressional offices and CBO, and delays in supporting lawmakers with timely financial assessments. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Credentials (T1098.003) with moderate confidence (60%), with evidence including advanced persistent threat (APT) suggests long-term access, and high-value targets include ongoing access to budget/legislative data. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Obfuscated Files or Information (T1027) with moderate to high confidence (70%), with evidence including sophisticated cyber breach by state-sponsored actor implies evasion techniques, and no detection until recent days suggests stealthy operations. Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols (T1071.001) with moderate confidence (60%), with evidence including communication platforms compromised—common C2 vector for APTs, and enhanced security monitoring implemented post-breach suggests C2 traffic. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.