Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (CLOUSDSSA1769016836)
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Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of U.S. Department of Justice's Cyber Attack 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 U.S. Department of Justice 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 U.S. Department of Justice breach identified under incident ID CLOUSDSSA1769016836.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of U.S. Department of Justice's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/usdoj, the number of followers: 369430, the industry type: Law Enforcement and the number of employees: 24809 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 736 and after the incident was 717 with a difference of -19 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 U.S. Department of Justice and their customers.
On 03 March 2025, Social Security Administration (SSA) disclosed Data Misuse, Election Interference, Unauthorized Data Access issues under the banner "DOGE Employees Alleged Election Interference and Data Misuse".
The U.S.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting SSA systems, Third-party servers (Cloudflare), and exposing Social Security data, Voter rolls, Private data of ~1,000 individuals, with nearly ~1,000 records at risk.
Formal response steps have not been shared publicly yet.
The case underscores how Ongoing.
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%), supported by evidence indicating dOGE team members at SSA engaged in undisclosed communications and Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment (T1566.001) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating password-protected file with private data of ~1,000 individuals. 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 password-protected file with private data shared via email. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating matching Social Security data with state voter rolls and Data from Information Repositories (T1213) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating social Security data, voter rolls, PII of ~1,000 individuals. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over Web Service: Exfiltration to Cloud Storage (T1567.002) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating unauthorized use of third-party servers (Cloudflare) and Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Unencrypted/Obfuscated Non-C2 Protocol (T1048.003) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating email containing password-protected file with private data. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Hide Artifacts: Hidden Files and Directories (T1564.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating password-protected file with private data and Valid Accounts: Local Accounts (T1078.003) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating dOGE team members used SSA systems for unauthorized activities. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Destruction (T1485) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating potential legal and regulatory scrutiny, reputational damage and Disk Wipe: Disk Structure Wipe (T1561.002) with lower confidence (30%), supported by evidence indicating lack of details on data access or exploitation. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- U.S. Department of Justice Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/usdoj/incident/CLOUSDSSA1769016836
- U.S. Department of Justice CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/usdoj
- U.S. Department of Justice Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/clousdssa1769016836-cloudflare-us-department-of-justice-social-security-administration-cyber-attack-march-2025/
- U.S. Department of Justice CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/usdoj/history
- U.S. Department of Justice CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/doge-might-have-misused-social-security-data-trump-administration-admits
- 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