Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (OPEEUR1776099017)
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 OpenAI'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 OpenAI 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 OpenAI breach identified under incident ID OPEEUR1776099017.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of OpenAI's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/openai, the number of followers: 9569287, the industry type: Research Services and the number of employees: 6888 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 594 and after the incident was 570 with a difference of -24 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 OpenAI and their customers.
On 31 March 2026, OpenAI disclosed Supply Chain Attack issues under the banner "OpenAI Supply Chain Attack Linked to North Korean Hackers".
OpenAI disclosed a supply chain attack where a GitHub Actions workflow used to sign its macOS applications inadvertently downloaded a malicious version of the Axios npm library.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting macOS app-signing workflow, ChatGPT Desktop and Codex, and exposing No user data compromised, but signing certificate and notarization material were exposed.
In response, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Revoking compromised signing certificate by May 8, 2026 and Blocking older macOS app versions signed with the old certificate, and began remediation that includes Working with Apple to prevent further notarization of software signed with the compromised certificate, Pinning packages by digest and Using hardened Docker images.
The case underscores how Ongoing, teams are taking away lessons such as The incidents underscore the risks of implicit trust in open-source dependencies and the need for explicit verification at every layer of the software supply chain, and recommending next steps like Pin packages by digest (not mutable tags), Use hardened Docker images and enforce minimum release age delays and Short-lived, scoped credentials and sandboxed CI runners, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Older macOS app versions signed with the compromised certificate will no longer receive updates and will be blocked by macOS security protections.
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 Supply Chain Compromise: Compromise Software Supply Chain (T1195.002) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating inadvertently downloaded a malicious version of the Axios npm library and Supply Chain Compromise (T1195) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating supply chain attack attributed to UNC1069, a North Korean hacking group. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified User Execution: Malicious File (T1204.002) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating openAI’s macOS app-signing workflow executed Axios 1.14.1 (malicious) and Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript (T1059.007) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating malicious dependency called plain-crypto-js embedded in Axios. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Compromise Client Software Binary (T1554) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating poisoned versions (1.14.1 and 0.30.4) of Axios npm library deployed and Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: XDG Autostart Entries (T1547.013) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating wAVESHAPER.V2, a cross-platform backdoor targeting macOS. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism: Setuid and Setgid (T1548.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating security tools (e.g., Trivy) often run with elevated privileges. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Subvert Trust Controls: Code Signing (T1553.002) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating malicious Axios had access to a signing certificate and notarization material and Masquerading: Match Legitimate Name or Location (T1036.005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating poisoned versions of Axios (1.14.1 and 0.30.4) mimicked legitimate releases. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Unsecured Credentials: Credentials In Files (T1552.001) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating sANDCLOCK, a credential stealer, deployed via Trivy compromise and Steal Application Access Token (T1528) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating hundreds of thousands of stolen secrets from these attacks. Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Account Discovery: Cloud Account (T1087.004) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating stolen secrets could fuel SaaS compromises and Lateral Tool Transfer (T1570) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating canisterWorm, a self-propagating worm via malicious npm packages. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Cloud Storage (T1213.003) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating european Commission such as exfiltrated AWS-hosted data from 71 Europa clients. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating wAVESHAPER.V2 backdoor targets Windows, macOS, and Linux and Transfer Data to Cloud Account (T1537) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating 4TB of data allegedly stolen from Mercor via Trivy compromise. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Resource Hijacking (T1496) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating cryptocurrency theft mentioned as potential motivation and Service Stop (T1489) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating older macOS app versions will no longer receive updates and will be blocked. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- OpenAI Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/openai/incident/OPEEUR1776099017
- OpenAI CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/openai
- OpenAI Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/opeeur1776099017-openai-european-commission-cyber-attack-march-2026/
- OpenAI CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/openai/history
- OpenAI CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://thehackernews.com/2026/04/openai-revokes-macos-app-certificate.html
- 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