Penn Admissions Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (PEN3202032111825)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Penn Admissions breach identified under incident ID PEN3202032111825.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Penn Admissions's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/penn-admissions, the number of followers: 2230, the industry type: Higher Education and the number of employees: 8 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 767 and after the incident was 653 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 Penn Admissions and their customers.

On 31 October 2023, University of Pennsylvania (Penn) disclosed Data Breach, Social Engineering Attack and Unauthorized Access issues under the banner "Cybersecurity Breach at the University of Pennsylvania".

An anonymous hacker claimed to have compromised data for ~1.2 million students, donors, and alumni at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) via a sophisticated social engineering attack.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - Salesforce, File repositories - SharePoint and File repositories - Box, and exposing True, with nearly Undetermined (hacker claimed 1.2 million; Penn disputes this) records at risk.

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Breach contained (as stated by Penn), while recovery efforts such as Ongoing forensic investigation; planned notifications to affected individuals continue, and stakeholders are being briefed through Public information page with updates, Warnings about phishing/suspicious emails and Advisories to review credit reports and activate fraud alerts.

The case underscores how Ongoing (forensic analysis incomplete; no timeline provided), and recommending next steps like Enhance social engineering defenses (e.g., employee training, multi-factor authentication), Improve incident response timelines for forensic investigations and Proactive communication with stakeholders during breaches, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Warnings about phishing/suspicious emails and Advisories to review credit reports and activate fraud alerts.

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 Phishing: Spearphishing Link (T1566.002) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating sophisticated social engineering (identity impersonation) to gain unauthorized access and Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts (T1078.004) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating exploited sophisticated social engineering to access Salesforce, SharePoint, Box, QlikView. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Steal Web Session Cookie (T1539) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating identity impersonation suggests possible session hijacking for cloud services and Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment (T1566.001) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating fraudulent emails sent post-breach; initial access likely via deceptive credentials harvest. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Credentials (T1098.003) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating access maintained across Salesforce, SharePoint, Box, and QlikView suggests credential reuse/persistence. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts: Default Accounts (T1078.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating access to high-value systems (CRM, SharePoint) implies elevated privileges via impersonation. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts (T1078.004) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating used legitimate cloud accounts (Salesforce, Box) to evade detection during exfiltration and Hide Artifacts: Email Hiding Rules (T1564.008) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating fraudulent emails sent post-breach suggest manipulation of email systems to avoid scrutiny. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified System Information Discovery (T1082) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating accessed multiple systems (Salesforce, SharePoint, QlikView) implying reconnaissance for high-value data and File and Directory Discovery (T1083) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating exfiltrated documents, memos, and transaction receipts from file repositories (SharePoint, Box). Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating exfiltrated donor memos, bank transaction receipts, personal information from SharePoint/Box and Data from Cloud Storage: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Data (T1213.002) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating compromised Penn’s CRM (Salesforce) to collect donor and high-profile individual data. 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 (80%), supported by evidence indicating data exfiltrated from cloud services (Salesforce, Box) likely via legitimate but abused protocols and Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating hacker planned to sell data before public release implies staged exfiltration via controlled channels. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with lower confidence (10%), supported by evidence indicating no evidence of encryption; included for completeness (ransomware section was null), Inter Process Communication (T1659) with lower confidence (30%), supported by evidence indicating fraudulent emails sent internally may have abused IPC or email systems for disruption, Defacement (T1491) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating fraudulent emails criticizing Penn’s hiring practices sent to disrupt operations/reputation, and Data from Cloud Storage Object (T1530) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating exfiltrated and planned to sell data from Salesforce/Box, causing reputational/legal impact. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.