Penn Arts & Sciences, University of Pennsylvania Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (PEN5203252111925)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Penn Arts & Sciences, University of Pennsylvania breach identified under incident ID PEN5203252111925.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Penn Arts & Sciences, University of Pennsylvania's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pennsas, the number of followers: 2975, the industry type: Higher Education and the number of employees: 52 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 692 and after the incident was 599 with a difference of -93 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 Arts & Sciences, University of Pennsylvania and their customers.

On 03 November 2023, University of Pennsylvania (Penn) disclosed data breach, unauthorized access and phishing/scam emails issues under the banner "University of Pennsylvania (Penn) Mass Cybersecurity Breach and Data Leak".

Penn reported a cybersecurity breach to the FBI after hackers compromised data for millions of individuals, including students, alumni, and donors.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Salesforce Marketing Cloud and select University information systems, and exposing donation history, estimated donor net worth and demographic details (names, race), with nearly 1,200,000 records at risk.

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like stopping mass emails and securing compromised accounts, and began remediation that includes investigation into breach scope and securing Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and stakeholders are being briefed through statements to media (The Daily Pennsylvanian), email to Penn GSE community and acknowledgment of FBI involvement.

The case underscores how ongoing (Penn IT and Crisis Response Teams, FBI involved), with advisories going out to stakeholders covering email to Penn GSE community and statements to media.

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 high confidence (95%), with evidence including compromised employee account, and exploitation of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Unsecured Credentials: Credentials In Files (T1552.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating compromised employee account leading to Salesforce access. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Credentials (T1098.003) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating hackers compromised select information systems, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating stolen data such as donation histories, estimated net worth, names, race, demographic details and Data from Cloud Storage: Cloud Email Storage (T1213.002) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating mass scam emails sent to ~700,000 recipients via Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration to Cloud Storage (T1048.002) with high confidence (95%), with evidence including exfiltrated data belonging to 1.2 million individuals, and salesforce Marketing Cloud exploitation implied in data theft. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Destruction: Targeted Data Destruction (T1589.002) with lower confidence (30%), supported by evidence indicating threats to leak all stolen data (conditional destruction), Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with lower confidence (10%), supported by evidence indicating no ransomware was confirmed (low confidence; ruled out but included for completeness), and Compromise Infrastructure: Email Servers (T1584.004) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating mass scam emails sent from University-affiliated accounts to ~700,000 recipients. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts (T1078.004) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating compromised employee account used to evade detection and Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating no explicit defense impairment mentioned, but prolonged access implies evasion. Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Internal Spearphishing (T1534) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating mass scam emails sent via compromised Salesforce Marketing Cloud (internal system abuse). These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.