Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (ROY3492934112625)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea breach identified under incident ID ROY3492934112625.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/royal-borough-of-kensington-and-chelsea, the number of followers: 21962, the industry type: Government Administration and the number of employees: 1983 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 699 with a difference of -68 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 Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and their customers.

On 25 November 2024, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) disclosed Account Takeover Fraud and Cyberattack issues under the banner "Major Cybersecurity Incident Affecting Three London Councils (RBKC, WCC, Hammersmith and Fulham)".

Three London councils (Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster City Council, and Hammersmith and Fulham Council) are responding to a serious Account Takeover Fraud–related cyber incident disrupting public services.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting IT systems, online portals and phone lines.

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Temporary shutdown of computer networks, Increased monitoring and Mitigation measures applied overnight, while recovery efforts such as Restoration of essential services, Business continuity plans and Additional staff assigned to monitor communications continue, and stakeholders are being briefed through Public statements via X (formerly Twitter) and council websites, Emergency contact numbers provided and Regular updates promised to residents.

The case underscores how Ongoing (early stages, root cause and extent not yet determined), with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Residents advised to expect delays in accessing services and Emergency contact numbers provided for urgent issues.

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 moderate to high confidence (85%), with evidence including account Takeover Fraud disrupting shared IT systems across London councils, and temporary shutdown of computer networks due to unauthorized access and Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating serious cybersecurity incident involving Account Takeover Fraud. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Account Manipulation (T1098) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating account Takeover Fraud suggests hijacked credentials for sustained access. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating temporary shutdown of computer networks implies attacker actions triggered defensive measures and Indicator Removal: File Deletion (T1070.004) with moderate confidence (65%), supported by evidence indicating mitigation measures applied overnight suggests attacker may have cleared logs/traces. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Endpoint Denial of Service: Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including disruption of public services, online portals, and phone lines, and activation of business continuity plans due to system unavailability and Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating no confirmation of data exfiltration but downtime suggests possible encryption. Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Remote Services: Windows Admin Shares (T1021.006) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating shared IT systems across multiple London councils (RBKC, WCC, Hammersmith) affected and Account Discovery: Local Account (T1087.001) with moderate confidence (65%), supported by evidence indicating account Takeover Fraud implies internal account enumeration for movement. 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 account Takeover Fraud suggests credential theft from stored sessions/cookies and Credentials in Files (T1081) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating shared systems compromise may involve credential files (e.g., config files, scripts). Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols (T1071.001) with moderate to high confidence (75%), with evidence including online portals disruption suggests C2 over HTTP/HTTPS, and increased monitoring implies detection of anomalous web traffic. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.