A wave of knowledge breaches impacting firms like Qantas, Allianz Life, LVMH, and Adidas has been linked to the ShinyHunters extortion group, which has been utilizing voice phishing assaults to steal knowledge from Salesforce CRM situations.
In June, Google’s Risk Intelligence Group (GTIG) warned that menace actors tracked as UNC6040 had been focusing on Salesforce clients in social engineering assaults.
In these assaults, the menace actors impersonated IT help workers in telephone calls to focused staff, making an attempt to steer them into visiting Salesforce’s linked app setup web page. On this web page, they had been instructed to enter a “connection code”, which linked a malicious model of Salesforce’s Information Loader OAuth app to the goal’s Salesforce surroundings.
In some circumstances, the Information Loader part was renamed to “My Ticket Portal,” to make it extra convincing within the assaults.
Supply: Google
GTIG says that these assaults had been often carried out by way of vishing (voice phishing), however credentials and MFA tokens had been additionally stolen by way of phishing pages that impersonated Okta login pages.
Across the time of this report, a number of firms reported knowledge breaches involving third-party customer support or cloud-based CRM techniques.
LVMH subsidiaries Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Tiffany & Co. every disclosed unauthorized entry to a buyer info database, with Tiffany Korea notifying clients the attackers breached a “vendor platform used for managing buyer knowledge.”
Adidas, Qantas, and Allianz Life additionally reported breaches involving third-party techniques, with Allianz confirming it was a third-party buyer relationship administration platform.
“On July 16, 2025, a malicious menace actor gained entry to a third-party, cloud-based CRM system utilized by Allianz Life Insurance coverage Firm of North America (Allianz Life),” an Allianz Life spokesperson instructed BleepingComputer.
Whereas BleepingComputer has realized that the Qantas knowledge breach additionally concerned a third-party buyer relationship administration platform, the corporate won’t verify it’s Salesforce. Nonetheless, earlier reporting from native media claims the info was stolen from Qantas’ Salesforce occasion.
Moreover, court docket paperwork state that the menace actors focused “Accounts” and “Contacts” database tables, each of that are Salesforce objects.
Whereas none of those firms have publicly named Salesforce, BleepingComputer has since confirmed that each one had been focused in the identical marketing campaign detailed by Google.
The assaults haven’t led to public extortion or knowledge leaks but, with BleepingComputer studying that the menace actors try to privately extort firms over electronic mail, the place they identify themselves as ShinyHunters.
It’s believed that when these extortion makes an attempt fail, the menace actors will launch stolen info in a protracted wave of leaks, much like ShinyHunter’s earlier Snowflake assaults.
Who’s ShinyHunters
The breaches have prompted confusion among the many cybersecurity group and the media, together with BleepingComputer, with the assaults attributed to Scattered Spider (tracked by Mandiant as UNC3944), as these menace actors had been additionally focusing on the aviation, retail, and insurance coverage sectors across the identical time and demonstrated related techniques.
Nonetheless, menace actors related to Scattered Spider are likely to carry out full-blown community breaches, culminating with knowledge theft and, typically, ransomware. ShinyHunters, tracked as UNC6040, then again, tends to focus extra on data-theft extortion assaults focusing on a specific cloud platform or internet software.
It’s BleepingComputer’s and a few safety researchers’ perception that each UNC6040 and UNC3944 include overlapping members that talk throughout the identical on-line communities. The menace group can also be believed to overlap with “The Com,” a community of skilled English-speaking cybercriminals.
“Based on Recorded Future intelligence, the overlapping TTPs between identified Scattered Spider and ShinyHunters assaults point out probably some crossover between the 2 teams,” Allan Liska, an Intelligence Analyst for Recorded Future, instructed BleepingComputer.
Different researchers have instructed BleepingComputer that ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider look like working in lockstep, focusing on the identical industries on the identical time, making it tougher to attribute assaults.
Some additionally consider that each teams have ties to menace actors from the now-defunct Lapsus$ hacking group, with studies indicating that one of many not too long ago arrested Scattered Spider hackers was additionally in Lapsus$.
One other concept is that ShinyHunters is appearing as an extortion-as-a-service, the place they extort firms on behalf of different menace actors in alternate for a income share, much like how ransomware-as-a-service gangs function.
This concept is supported by earlier conversations BleepingComputer has had with ShinyHunters, the place they claimed to not be behind a breach, however simply appearing as the vendor of the stolen knowledge.
These breaches embrace PowerSchool, Oracle Cloud, the Snowflake data-theft assaults, AT&T, NitroPDF, Wattpad, MathWay, and many extra.
Supply: BleepingComputer
To muddy the waters additional, there have been quite a few arrests of individuals linked to the identify “ShinyHunters,” together with those that have been arrested for the Snowflake data-theft assaults, breaches at PowerSchool, and the operation of the Breached v2 hacking discussion board.
But even after these arrests, new assaults happen with firms receiving extortion emails stating, “We’re ShinyHunters,” referring to themselves as a “collective.”
Defending Salesforce situations from assaults
In an announcement to BleepingComputer, Salesforce emphasised that the platform itself was not compromised, however quite, clients’ accounts are being breached by way of social engineering.
“Salesforce has not been compromised, and the problems described should not attributable to any identified vulnerability in our platform. Whereas Salesforce builds enterprise-grade safety into all the things we do, clients additionally play a crucial function in retaining their knowledge secure — particularly amid an increase in refined phishing and social engineering assaults,” Salesforce instructed BleepingComputer.
“We proceed to encourage all clients to comply with safety finest practices, together with enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA), implementing the precept of least privilege, and punctiliously managing linked purposes. For extra info, please go to: https://www.salesforce.com/weblog/protect-against-social-engineering/.”
Salesforce is urging clients to strengthen their safety posture by:
- Implementing trusted IP ranges for logins
- Following the precept of least privilege for app permissions
- Enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Limiting use of linked apps and managing entry insurance policies
- Utilizing Salesforce Protect for superior menace detection, occasion monitoring, and transaction insurance policies
- Including a delegated Safety Contact for incident communication
Additional particulars on these mitigations will be present in Salesforce’s steerage linked above.
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