Okta, a prominent identity and access management company, disclosed that its support system experienced a breach using stolen credentials. Attackers accessed files containing cookies and session tokens that customers had uploaded to the support management system. Okta’s Chief Security Officer, David Bradbury, noted that the support system is separate from the production Okta service, which remains fully operational and unaffected.
Although specific customer information exposed in the breach was not detailed, the compromised system contained HTTP Archive (HAR) files used for troubleshooting, which could contain sensitive data like cookies and session tokens. Okta recommended customers sanitize HAR files before sharing and revoked session tokens embedded in shared files.
Identity management company BeyondTrust, one of the affected customers, detected and blocked an attempt to log into an Okta administrator account using a stolen cookie, which led to the breach’s discovery. It took over two weeks for Okta to confirm the breach after initial reports from BeyondTrust. Although the attack was thwarted by custom policy controls, limitations in Okta’s security model allowed the threat actor to perform some confined actions. Fortunately, this intrusion did not result in any access to BeyondTrust’s systems or impact its customers.
This incident is one of several security issues Okta has faced in recent years, including data exposure due to the Lapsus$ data extortion group, the theft of one-time passwords by the Scatter Swine threat group, and the theft of source code repositories from Auth0, an Okta-owned authentication service provider. These incidents highlight the ongoing challenges in safeguarding sensitive data and systems from determined threat actors.
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