Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (MONLEH1774537045)
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 Lehigh University'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 Lehigh 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 Lehigh University breach identified under incident ID MONLEH1774537045.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Lehigh University's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lehigh-university, the number of followers: 103104, the industry type: Higher Education and the number of employees: 4593 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 785 and after the incident was 671 with a difference of -114 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 Lehigh University and their customers.
Monmouth University recently reported "PEAR Ransomware Group Claims 16TB Data Theft from Monmouth University", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.
A ransomware group known as PEAR (Pure Extraction and Ransom) has taken responsibility for a cyberattack on Monmouth University, a private institution in New Jersey, earlier this month.
The disruption is felt across the environment, and exposing 16TB.
In response, teams activated the incident response plan, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Underway, and stakeholders are being briefed through Statement to students from President Patrick Leahy.
The case underscores how Ongoing (may take weeks), with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Statement to students from President Patrick Leahy.
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 moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating unauthorized access incident acknowledged by university and Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating attack on education sector with growing vulnerability. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Adversary-in-the-Middle (T1557) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating unauthorized access incident, data theft via unknown vector and OS Credential Dumping (T1003) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating 16TB data theft suggests broad access to systems. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating 16TB of data allegedly stolen from university systems and Data from Information Repositories (T1213) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating education sector data breach, likely targeting student/faculty records. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating 16TB data theft, PEAR specializes in data exfiltration and Exfiltration Over Web Service (T1567) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating threatened to leak or sell data if ransom unpaid. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1471) with lower confidence (10%), supported by evidence indicating pEAR specializes in data theft, not encryption and Defacement (T1491) with lower confidence (30%), supported by evidence indicating sample documents posted as proof of breach. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Indicator Removal (T1070) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating investigation may take weeks, containment underway and Hide Artifacts (T1564) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating university has not confirmed specifics of compromised data. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Lehigh University Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/lehigh-university/incident/MONLEH1774537045
- Lehigh University CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/lehigh-university
- Lehigh University Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/monleh1774537045-monmouth-university-lehigh-carbon-community-college-ransomware-march-2026/
- Lehigh University CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/lehigh-university/history
- Lehigh University CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.comparitech.com/news/cybercriminal-group-says-it-hacked-monmouth-university-stole-data/
- 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