Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (TEL1789490843)
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Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of TELUS Communications's Breach 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 TELUS Communications 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 TELUS Communications breach identified under incident ID TEL1789490843.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of TELUS Communications's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/telus-communications, the number of followers: 12145, the industry type: Telecommunications and the number of employees: 1419 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 759 and after the incident was 628 with a difference of -131 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 TELUS Communications and their customers.
Telus recently reported "Telus Prolonged Data Breach Exposing Customer Information", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.
Canada’s telecommunications giant Telus disclosed a significant data breach affecting an undisclosed number of customers, with cybercriminals exploiting compromised accounts for months.
The disruption is felt across the environment, and exposing Names, account numbers, phone numbers, billing addresses, email addresses, partial payment card details, subscription information, payment histories.
In response, teams activated the incident response plan, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Reset compromised credentials, strengthened account security, and began remediation that includes Offered free identity theft protection services to affected customers, and stakeholders are being briefed through Public disclosure, customer advisories.
The case underscores how Ongoing, and recommending next steps like Strengthen account security, monitor for credential reuse, enhance customer awareness on phishing and account protection, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Affected customers notified and offered free identity theft protection services.
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 Valid Accounts (T1078) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including attackers gained access using stolen credentials, and credential theft or an account takeover campaign and Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts (T1078.004) with moderate to high confidence (70%), with evidence including exploiting compromised accounts for months, and telus Digital provides AI, software development services. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Compromise Accounts (T1586) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including stolen credentials, and credential theft or an account takeover campaign and Compromise Accounts: Email Accounts (T1586.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), with evidence including email addresses compromised, and reused third-party passwords. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating extracting sensitive data including names, account numbers, phone numbers and Data from Information Repositories (T1213) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating subscription information, payment histories compromised. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (80%), with evidence including data breach affecting an undisclosed number of customers, and data exfiltration such as Yes and Transfer Data to Cloud Account (T1537) with moderate confidence (60%), with evidence including telus Digital provides cloud-based services, and 1 petabyte of data stolen in prior breach. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Destruction (T1485) with lower confidence (30%), supported by evidence indicating account manipulation, unauthorized service changes and Account Access Removal (T1531) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating telus has since reset compromised credentials. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (80%), with evidence including exploiting compromised accounts for months, and stolen credentials and Use Alternate Authentication Material: Application Access Token (T1550.001) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating credential theft or an account takeover campaign. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- TELUS Communications Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/telus-communications/incident/TEL1789490843
- TELUS Communications CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/telus-communications
- TELUS Communications Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/tel1789490843-telus-telus-digital-breach-february-2025/
- TELUS Communications CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/telus-communications/history
- TELUS Communications CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.escudodigital.com/en/cybersecurity/canadian-telecom-giant-telus-alerts-customers-to-data-breach.html
- 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