The Washington Post Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (WAS1764972327)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the The Washington Post breach identified under incident ID WAS1764972327.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of The Washington Post's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/washingtonpost, the number of followers: 1614652, the industry type: Newspaper Publishing and the number of employees: 3776 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 541 and after the incident was 479 with a difference of -62 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 The Washington Post and their customers.

On 05 December 2025, The Washington Post disclosed Data Breach issues under the banner "Washington Post Employee Data Breach".

The personal information of almost 10,000 current and former employees of The Washington Post may have been compromised in a data breach that occurred between July and August.

The disruption is felt across the environment, and exposing Personal data, including names, Social Security numbers, and banking information, with nearly 9,700 records at risk.

In response, and stakeholders are being briefed through Notified impacted individuals last month.

Overall, the incident is a reminder of why proactive monitoring and strong governance matter.

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 (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (70%), with evidence including former employee filed class action suit, and breach occurred between July and August and Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with moderate confidence (50%), with evidence including post did not adequately secure personal data, and high sensitivity of compromised data. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Credentials from Password Stores (T1555) with moderate confidence (60%), with evidence including banking information and SSNs compromised, and former employee access implied. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (80%), with evidence including 9,700 records exposed including SSNs and banking info, and data breach occurred over a month and Automated Exfiltration (T1020) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating large volume of records (9,700) compromised. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with lower confidence (30%), supported by evidence indicating no ransomware strain identified but data sensitivity high and Data Manipulation: Stored Data Manipulation (T1565.001) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating class action lawsuit filed over compromised data. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.