Hundreds of UK Ministry of Defence passwords found circulating on the dark web

Some particulars within the story are missing. First, it’s not clear whether or not the stolen credentials had been ever used efficiently. That might give entry to private knowledge, one thing which isn’t talked about. That may be as a result of the positioning is individually reported to have been utilizing multi-factor authentication (MFA), an extra barrier in opposition to assault that every one public-facing authorities web sites now use. Relying on how stealthy the attackers had been, a deeper compromise would even have been more likely to have left a forensic hint someplace in log information.

An essential query is who stole the credentials, and whether or not this was opportunistic or half of a bigger marketing campaign. The belief is that the assaults had been carried out by criminals with hyperlinks to the Russian authorities, although the proof for such hyperlinks stays circumstantial.

Nonetheless, if Russian intelligence did profit, it was extremely sloppy to permit the credentials to be posted to a darkish website the place they should have recognized the loss would finally be detected.