MOVEit campaign already impacted at least 1K orgs and 60M individuals

Massive MOVEit campaign already impacted at least 1,000 organizations and 60 million individuals

Pierluigi Paganini
August 28, 2023

The recent wave of MOVEit attacks conducted by the Cl0p ransomware gang impacted 1,000 organizations, experts say.

Cybersecurity firm Emsisoft shared disconcerting details about the recent, massive hacking campaign conducted by the Cl0p ransomware group that targeted the MOVEit Transfer file transfer platform designed by Progress Software Corporation.

According to the experts, the attacks impacted approximately 1,000 Organizations and 60,144,069 individuals. The Cl0p ransomware gang exploited the zero-day vulnerability CVE-2023-34362 to hack the platforms used by organizations worldwide and steal their data.

The data is sourced from state breach notifications, SEC filings, and other public disclosures, as well as the leak site maintained by the Cl0p group, and is current as of August 25, 2023.

The researchers reported that the attacks impacted tens of millions of individuals. Below is the list of organizations with the highest number of impacted individuals:

“U.S.-based organizations account for 83.9 percent of known victims, Germany-based 3.6 percent, Canada-based 2.6 percent, and U.K.-based 2.1 percent.” reads the report published by Emsisoft. “The most heavily impacted sectors are finance and professional services and education, which account for 24.3 percent and 26.0 percent of incidents respectively.”

The experts explained that is impossible to accurately calculate the cost of the MOVEit security breaches. However, using data from IBM’s “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023” report, it is possible to estimate the cost. According to the report, data breaches cost an average of $165 USD per record, while the number of individuals impacted by the MOVEit campaign is 60,144,069, this suggests that the total cost is $9,923,771,385. However, Emsisoft highlighted that only a minority of victims have so far reported the number of individuals impacted.

If the same average number of individuals is confirmed to have been impacted for each of the remaining known incidents, the total cost of this campaign will reach $63,896,282,853.

“The MOVEit incident highlights the challenges organizations face in securing their data. It’s not only their own security they need to be concerned about, it’s their supply chains too. Complicating matters further is the fact that attacks which leverage zero-day vulnerabilities, as this one did, are extremely hard to defend against.” concludes the report. “The incident will undoubtedly be extremely costly. Beyond remediation, organizations and their insurers will need to provide credit monitoring to individuals and will undoubtedly face multiple lawsuits.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, MOVEit)

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AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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