U.S. Department of Transportation Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (USD1765223885)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the U.S. Department of Transportation breach identified under incident ID USD1765223885.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of U.S. Department of Transportation's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/usdot, the number of followers: 259416, the industry type: Government Administration and the number of employees: 5366 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 781 and after the incident was 470 with a difference of -311 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 Transportation and their customers.

U.S. companies (general) recently reported "U.S. Companies Ransomware Payments (2022-2024)", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.

U.S.

The disruption is felt across the environment, plus an estimated financial loss of $2.1 billion (2022-2024).

Formal response steps have not been shared publicly yet.

The case underscores how Ongoing (report published), teams are taking away lessons such as Law enforcement disruption of major ransomware groups (e.g., ALPHV/BlackCat, LockBit) can significantly reduce ransomware payments.

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 moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating proliferation of ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) models and Trusted Relationship (T1199) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating lack of robust cybersecurity measures in some organizations. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (95%), with evidence including data encryption such as Yes (ransomware-related), and ransomware strain such as ALPHV/BlackCat, LockBit. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol (T1048) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware groups often exfiltrate data before encryption (implied). Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Application Layer Protocol (T1071) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating raaS models require C2 for ransomware deployment. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Obfuscated Files or Information (T1027) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware strains like ALPHV/BlackCat use obfuscation and Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion (T1497) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating advanced ransomware often evades detection environments. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.