The attackers behind the Adobe hack and breaches against data brokers such as LexisNexis have also been linked to similar intrusions against other unnamed organizations. Security expert Alex Holden, who along with security blogger Brian Krebs uncovered the data lost in the Adobe breach, said those compromised organizations are being notified.
“I would characterize the breach as one of the worst in U.S. history,” Holden said, “because the source code of an end user product such as Adobe Reader and Adobe Publisher was breached and leaked. This allows additional attack vectors to be discovered and viruses to be written for which there are no defenses.
In addition, Holden said this gang has been using ColdFusion exploits in other attacks since the beginning of this year—perhaps back into December—adding that he and Krebs also saw a list of 1.2 million potential .org domains running ColdFusion that the attackers could use as targets stored among the stolen data. Such domain lists are available for sale on the underground, Holden said, though he added he was not certain whether this gang had bought such a service.
In the meantime, Holden said today he was still unsure of whether the attacks on Adobe and the data brokers were a criminal operation or nation-state funded, though the attackers are Russian-speaking, he said.
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