Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (QUE1774275950)
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Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of Quest Global's Vulnerability 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 Quest Global 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 Quest Global breach identified under incident ID QUE1774275950.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Quest Global's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/quest-global, the number of followers: 683444, the industry type: Engineering Services and the number of employees: 20185 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 791 and after the incident was 791 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 Quest Global and their customers.
On 09 March 2026, Quest KACE SMA Users disclosed Authentication Bypass issues under the banner "Critical Quest KACE SMA Vulnerability Exploited in Active Attacks".
Security researchers have uncovered active exploitation of a severe authentication bypass flaw in Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), tracked as CVE-2025-32975, allowing attackers to gain full administrative control over vulnerable systems.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Endpoint Management Systems, Domain Controllers and Backup Systems, and exposing True.
In response, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Removing KACE SMA from public internet exposure and Restricting access via VPNs or secure network boundaries, and began remediation that includes Applying patches (13.0.385, 13.1.81, 13.2.183 or later) and Applying Patch 5 (14.0.341) and Patch 4 (14.1.101) for newer deployments.
The case underscores how teams are taking away lessons such as The campaign underscores the dangers of unpatched systems and the rapid weaponization of known vulnerabilities, and recommending next steps like Apply patches immediately, Remove KACE SMA from public internet exposure and Restrict access via VPNs or secure network boundaries.
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 Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating active exploitation of a severe authentication bypass flaw in Quest KACE SMA. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Create Account (T1136) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating create rogue administrative accounts via runkbot.exe and Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder (T1547.001) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating powerShell scripts modify registry settings to maintain access across reboots. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating gain full administrative control over vulnerable systems via SSO bypass. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Masquerading (T1036) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating mimikatz disguised as asd.exe and Obfuscated Files or Information (T1027) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating base64-encoded payloads used for remote command execution. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified OS Credential Dumping (T1003) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating harvest credentials using Mimikatz (disguised as asd.exe). Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Remote Desktop Protocol (T1021.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating conduct lateral movement via RDP. Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Ingress Tool Transfer (T1105) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating curl commands to fetch additional malware from C2 server (216.126.225.156). Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating data theft risks due to credential harvesting and lateral movement. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating increases risks of ransomware or full network compromise. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Quest Global Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/quest-global/incident/QUE1774275950
- Quest Global CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/quest-global
- Quest Global Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/que1774275950-quest-vulnerability-march-2026/
- Quest Global CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/quest-global/history
- Quest Global CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://cyberpress.org/quest-kace-sma-flaw/
- 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