Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (INSRUTUDEHARCOL1782312004)
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Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of Harvard University's Cyber Attack 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 Harvard University 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 Harvard University breach identified under incident ID INSRUTUDEHARCOL1782312004.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Harvard University's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvard-university, the number of followers: 2927684, the industry type: Higher Education and the number of employees: 35447 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 647 and after the incident was 618 with a difference of -29 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 Harvard University and their customers.
Udemy recently reported "Cyberattacks on Education Sector: Identity Abuse and SaaS Exploitation Drive Surge in Breaches", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.
Cyberattacks targeting educational institutions have shifted from opportunistic ransomware campaigns to sophisticated, identity-driven intrusions leveraging trusted platforms and valid credentials.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Canvas, and exposing PII, Instructor Payout Data and Corporate Details, with nearly ['1.4 million (Udemy)', '3.65TB (Canvas)'] records at risk.
Formal response steps have not been shared publicly yet.
The case underscores how teams are taking away lessons such as The education sector's open, collaborative model reliant on shared SaaS platforms, federated identities, and decentralized administration creates systemic vulnerabilities. Attackers now focus on detecting abuse of legitimate credentials and mitigating cross-institution propagation. Vendor compromise now equals institutional compromise, with single intrusions capable of disrupting thousands of schools simultaneously.
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 (95%), with evidence including exploiting SaaS access, federated identities, and operational trust, and free-for-Teacher accounts to pivot into the SaaS platform, Trusted Relationship (T1199) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including vendor compromise now equals institutional compromise, and federated identity risks, and Phishing: Spearphishing Link (T1566.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating downstream phishing and credential-stuffing risks. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified User Execution: Malicious Link (T1204.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating iT impersonation and social engineering. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Account Manipulation (T1098) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including oAuth abuse (e.g., granting Mail.Read or Files.Read.All permissions), and mailbox manipulation (forwarding rules) and Create Account (T1136) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating free-for-Teacher accounts exploited. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (95%), with evidence including valid but unmanaged identities to move laterally, and operate within systems using valid credentials and Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism: Bypass User Account Control (T1548.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating iT impersonation to initiate MFA resets or password changes. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (95%), with evidence including exploiting valid credentials to evade detection, and identity-driven intrusions, Hide Artifacts: Email Hiding Rules (T1564.008) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating mailbox manipulation (suppressed security alerts), and BITS Jobs (T1197) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating aPI-driven access to reduce visibility. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Steal Application Access Token (T1528) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating oAuth abuse (e.g., granting Mail.Read or Files.Read.All permissions), Brute Force: Password Spraying (T1110.003) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating downstream credential-stuffing risks, and Unsecured Credentials: Cloud Instance Metadata API (T1552.005) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating unmanaged credentials from alumni, shared lab access. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified Account Discovery (T1087) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating identity debt such as accumulated credentials from alumni, shared lab access and Permission Groups Discovery (T1069) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating federated identity exploitation. Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (95%), with evidence including valid but unmanaged identities to move laterally, and cross-institution propagation and Use Alternate Authentication Material: Application Access Token (T1550.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating oAuth abuse for lateral movement. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Information Repositories (T1213) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including 3.65TB of data exfiltrated from Canvas, and pII, instructor payout data, corporate details and Email Collection: Remote Email Collection (T1114.002) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating mailbox manipulation (forwarding rules). Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Ingress Tool Transfer (T1105) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating aPI-driven access to reduce visibility and Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols (T1071.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating saaS platforms (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Canvas) used for C2. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including 3.65TB of data exfiltrated, and data theft prioritized over encryption and Transfer Data to Cloud Account (T1537) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating data later indexed by Have I Been Pwned. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Defacement: Internal Defacement (T1491.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating defacing 330 institution login portals (e.g., Harvard, Stanford), Service Stop (T1489) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating disrupting operations during critical academic periods, and Inhibit System Recovery (T1490) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating operational disruption during finals season. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Harvard University Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/harvard-university/incident/INSRUTUDEHARCOL1782312004
- Harvard University CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/harvard-university
- Harvard University Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/insrutudeharcol1782312004-instructure-udemy-harvard-rutgers-columbia-cyber-attack-may-2026/
- Harvard University CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/harvard-university/history
- Harvard University CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://vmblog.com/bylines/inherited-trust-why-education-environments-keep-getting-breached-globally/
- 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