Earlier this month, the administrator of the cybercrime discussion board Breached obtained a cease-and-desist letter from a cybersecurity agency. The missive alleged that an public sale on the positioning for knowledge stolen from 10 million prospects of Mexico’s second-largest financial institution was faux information and harming the financial institution’s repute. The administrator responded to this empty risk by buying the stolen banking knowledge and leaking it on the discussion board for everybody to obtain.
On August 3, 2022, somebody utilizing the alias “Holistic-K1ller” posted on Breached a thread promoting knowledge allegedly stolen from Grupo Financiero Banorte, Mexico’s second-biggest monetary establishment by complete loans. Holistic-K1ller stated the database included the total names, addresses, cellphone numbers, Mexican tax IDs (RFC), electronic mail addresses and balances on greater than 10 million residents.
There was no motive to imagine Holistic-K1ller had fabricated their breach declare. This identification has been extremely energetic on Breached and its predecessor RaidForums for greater than two years, largely promoting databases from hacked Mexican entities. Final month, they offered buyer data on 36 million prospects of the Mexican cellphone firm Telcel; in March, they offered 33,000 pictures of Mexican IDs — with the entrance image and a selfie of every citizen. That very same month, additionally they offered knowledge on 1.4 million prospects of Mexican lending platform Yotepresto.
However this historical past was both ignored or ignored by Group-IB, the Singapore-based cybersecurity agency apparently employed by Banorte to assist reply to the information breach.
“The Group-IB staff has found a useful resource containing a fraudulent submit providing to purchase Grupo Financiero Banorte’s leaked databases,” reads a letter the Breach administrator stated they obtained from Group-IB. “We ask you to take away this submit containing Banorte knowledge. Thanks on your cooperation and immediate consideration to this pressing matter.”
The administrator of Breached is “Pompompurin,” the identical particular person who alerted this writer in November 2021 to a obtrusive safety gap in a U.S. Justice Division web site that was used to spoof safety alerts from the FBI. In a submit to Breached on Aug. 8, Pompompurin stated they purchased the Banorte database from Hacker-K1ller’s gross sales thread as a result of Group-IB was sending emails complaining about it.
“Additionally they tried to submit DMCA’s in opposition to the web site,” Pompompurin wrote, referring to authorized takedown requests below the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. “Be sure to inform Banorte that now they should fear concerning the knowledge being leaked as a substitute of simply being offered.”
Banorte didn’t reply to requests for remark. Nor did Group-IB. However in a short written assertion picked up on Twitter, Banorte stated there was no breach involving their infrastructure, and the information being offered is outdated.
“There was no violation of our platforms and technological infrastructure,” Banorte stated. “The set of data referred to is inaccurate and outdated, and doesn’t put our customers and prospects in danger.”
That assertion could also be one hundred pc true. Nonetheless, it’s troublesome to think about a greater instance of how not to do breach response. Banorte shrugging off this incident as a nothingburger is baffling: Whereas it’s virtually definitely true that the financial institution steadiness data within the Banorte leak is now old-fashioned, the remainder of the knowledge (tax IDs, cellphone numbers, electronic mail addresses) is more durable to alter.
“Is there one particular person from our neighborhood that suppose sending stop and desist letter to a hackers discussion board operator is a good suggestion?,” asked Ohad Zaidenberg, founding father of CTI League, a volunteer emergency response neighborhood that emerged in 2020 to assist battle COVID-19 associated scams. “Who does it? As an alternative of serving to, they pushed the group from the hill.”
Kurt Seifried, director of IT for the CloudSecurityAlliance, was equally perplexed by the response to the Banorte breach.
“If the information wasn’t actual….did the financial institution suppose a stop and desist would end result within the itemizing being eliminated?” Seifried wondered on Twitter. “I imply, isn’t promoting breach knowledge a worse crime normally than slander or libel? What was their thought course of?”
A extra typical response when a big financial institution suspects a breach is to method the vendor privately by way of an middleman to determine if the knowledge is legitimate and what it may cost to take it off the market. Whereas it might appear odd to count on cybercriminals to make good on their claims to promote stolen knowledge to just one celebration, eradicating offered stolen gadgets from stock is a reasonably primary operate of nearly all cybercriminal markets right this moment (aside from maybe websites that visitors in stolen identification knowledge).
At a minimal, negotiating or just participating with a knowledge vendor can purchase the sufferer group further time and clues with which to research the declare and ideally notify affected events of a breach earlier than the stolen knowledge winds up on-line.
It’s true that numerous hacked databases put up on the market on the cybercrime underground are offered solely after a small subset of in-the-know thieves have harvested all the low-hanging fruit within the knowledge — e.g., entry to cryptocurrency accounts or person credentials which can be recycled throughout a number of web sites. And it’s definitely not unprecedented for cybercriminals to return on their phrase and re-sell or leak data that they’ve offered beforehand.
However firms within the throes of responding to an information safety incident do themselves and prospects no favors once they underestimate their adversaries, or attempt to intimidate cybercrooks with authorized threats. Such responses usually accomplish nothing, besides unnecessarily upping the stakes for everybody concerned whereas displaying a harmful naiveté about how the cybercrime underground works.
