Earlier this month, the administrator of the cybercrime discussion board Breached acquired a cease-and-desist letter from a cybersecurity agency. The missive alleged that an public sale on the positioning for information stolen from 10 million prospects of Mexico’s second-largest financial institution was pretend information and harming the financial institution’s popularity. The administrator responded to this empty risk by buying the stolen banking information 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 information allegedly stolen from Grupo Financiero Banorte, Mexico’s second-biggest monetary establishment by whole loans. Holistic-K1ller stated the database included the complete names, addresses, telephone numbers, Mexican tax IDs (RFC), e mail addresses and balances on greater than 10 million residents.
There was no motive to consider Holistic-K1ller had fabricated their breach declare. This id has been extremely lively 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 telephone firm Telcel; in March, they offered 33,000 photographs of Mexican IDs — with the entrance image and a selfie of every citizen. That very same month, additionally they offered information 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 acquired from Group-IB. “We ask you to take away this submit containing Banorte information. Thanks to 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 obvious 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 Holistic-K1ller’s gross sales thread as a result of Group-IB was sending emails complaining about it.
“Additionally they tried to submit DMCA’s towards the web site,” Pompompurin wrote, referring to authorized takedown requests beneath the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. “Ensure that to inform Banorte that now they should fear in regards to the information being leaked as an alternative of simply being offered.”
Group-IB CEO Dmitriy Volkov stated the corporate has seen some success up to now asking hackers to take away or take down sure data, however that making such requests just isn’t a typical response for the safety agency.
“It’s not a typical apply to ship takedown notifications to such boards demanding that such content material be eliminated,” Volkov stated. “However these abuse letters are legally binding, which helps construct a basis for additional steps taken by legislation enforcement companies. Actions opposite to worldwide guidelines within the regulated area of the Web solely result in extra extreme crimes, which — as we all know from the case of Raidforums — are efficiently investigated and stopped by legislation enforcement.”
Banorte didn’t reply to requests for remark. 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 previous.
“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 tough to consider a greater instance of how not to do breach response. Banorte shrugging off this incident as a nothingburger is baffling: Whereas it’s nearly actually true that the financial institution steadiness data within the Banorte leak is now outdated, the remainder of the data (tax IDs, telephone numbers, e mail addresses) is tougher to vary.
“Is there one individual from our neighborhood that suppose sending stop and desist letter to a hackers discussion board operator is a good suggestion?,” requested Ohad Zaidenberg, founding father of CTI League, a volunteer emergency response neighborhood that emerged in 2020 to assist combat 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 questioned on Twitter. “I imply, isn’t promoting breach information a worse crime often than slander or libel? What was their thought course of?”
A extra typical response when a big financial institution suspects a breach is to strategy the vendor privately by an middleman to determine if the data is legitimate and what it may cost a little to take it off the market. Whereas it might appear odd to anticipate cybercriminals to make good on their claims to promote stolen information to just one social gathering, eradicating offered stolen objects from stock is a reasonably fundamental perform of nearly all cybercriminal markets right now (aside from maybe websites that visitors in stolen id information).
At a minimal, negotiating or just participating with an information 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 information 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 information — e.g., entry to cryptocurrency accounts or consumer credentials which are recycled throughout a number of web sites. And it’s actually 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 a knowledge safety incident do themselves and prospects no favors once they underestimate their adversaries, or attempt to intimidate cybercrooks with authorized threats. Such responses typically accomplish nothing, besides unnecessarily upping the stakes for everybody concerned whereas displaying a harmful naiveté about how the cybercrime underground works.
Replace, Aug. 17, 10:32 a.m.: Due to a typo by this writer, a request for remark despatched to Group-IB was not delivered prematurely of this story. The copy above has been up to date to incorporate a remark from Group-IB’s CEO.
