Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (PEN2492824111825)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General breach identified under incident ID PEN2492824111825.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pennsylvania-office-of-attorney-general, the number of followers: 6864, the industry type: Law Enforcement and the number of employees: 802 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 100 and after the incident was 100 with a difference of 0 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 Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General and their customers.

Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General (OAG) recently reported "Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General Ransomware Attack and Data Breach", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.

The Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General (OAG) suffered a ransomware attack in 2023, leading to a data breach where 5.7 TB of data was allegedly stolen by the Inc Ransom group.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting website, email accounts and phone lines, and exposing personal information (names, SSNs, medical records), investigative unit files and Cellebrite software usage details.

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, while recovery efforts such as restoration of website, email, and phone services after ~3 weeks continue, and stakeholders are being briefed through public disclosure via data incident notice.

The case underscores how ongoing (potential access confirmed, but no evidence of misuse), with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Data incident notice published (2023-09, exact date unclear).

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 Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with high confidence (100%), with evidence including exploitation of the CitrixBleed2 vulnerability (Citrix Netscaler), and attack was likely conducted via exploitation of the CitrixBleed2 vulnerability. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Server Software Component: Web Shell (T1505.003) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating disrupted websites, emails, and phone lines for three weeks (suggests sustained access). Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating citrixBleed2 vulnerability (often enables privilege escalation post-exploitation). Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Indicator Removal: File Deletion (T1070.004) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating no evidence of misuse (suggests potential log/trace cleanup by threat actor) and Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating disrupted ... email accounts, and phone lines for three weeks (may indicate security tool tampering). Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Credentials from Password Stores: Credentials from Web Browsers (T1555.003) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating email accounts disrupted (possible credential harvesting from browser sessions). Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified File and Directory Discovery (T1083) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating investigative unit files and Cellebrite software usage details targeted (implies internal reconnaissance) and Network Service Discovery (T1046) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating internal network access gained via Citrix vulnerability (suggests network mapping). Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Remote Services: Remote Desktop Protocol (T1021.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating internal network compromise (commonly involves RDP for lateral movement). Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (100%), with evidence including 5.7 TB of sensitive data ... allegedly stolen, and personal information (names, Social Security numbers, medical records) and Data from Network Shared Drive (T1039) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating investigative unit files (likely stored on shared drives). Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Unencrypted/Obfuscated Non-C2 Protocol (T1048.003) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating 5.7 TB of sensitive data ... allegedly stolen (large-scale exfiltration implies non-C2 protocols) and Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating data sold on dark web (implies C2 used for exfiltration to actor-controlled servers). Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (100%), with evidence including file-encrypting malware deployed, and ransomware attack, Data Destruction (T1485) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating disrupted ... services for three weeks (possible corruption/deletion of system files), and Endpoint Denial of Service: Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating websites, emails, and phone lines ... disrupted for three weeks. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.