[BreachExchange] Fortune 100 company data exposed by misconfigured Attunity AWS instance

[Destry Winant]

https://siliconangle.com/2019/06/30/fortune-100-company-data-exposed-misconfigured-attunity-aws-instance/

Data relating to a range of Fortune 100 companies has been found
exposed on three Amazon Web Services Inc. S3  storage instances
belonging to Attunity Inc., a data integration and big data management
firm acquired by QlikTech International AB in February.

Discovered by researchers at UpGuard Inc. and publicized late last
week, the exposed data, which totaled at least 1 terabyte, included a
large collection of internal business documents, email correspondence,
system passwords, sales and marketing contact information and project
specifications.

That data also included documents from Attunity clients, including
Ford Motor Co., Netflix Inc. and Toronto-Dominion Bank.

The researchers did not analyze all the files they downloaded, noting
that “exhaustively documenting the files associated with each of
thousands of companies is not feasible or necessary for the research
team’s purpose of raising awareness of the risk of data leaks.”

“Attunity’s business is to replicate and migrate data into data lakes
for centralized analytics,” the researchers added. “The risks to
Attunity posed by exposed credentials, information and communications,
then are risks to the security of the data they process.”

Qlik, now the owner of Attunity, confirmed the data breach, saying
personnel responded quickly to ensure that data was secured. While not
addressing how it occurred in the first place, the company went on to
note that it has “engaged outside security firms to conduct
independent security evaluations.”

“We take this matter seriously and are committed to concluding this
investigation as soon as possible,” a spokesperson said. As to whether
the data had been accessed for nefarious purposes, the spokesperson
added that “at this point in the investigation, indications are that
the only external access to data was by the security firm that
contacted us.”

Tim Erlin, vice president of product management and strategy at
cybersecurity firm Tripwire Inc., told SiliconANGLE that there’s no
excuse for leaving data unprotected in AWS storage.

“This isn’t a new problem and it’s not a technically complex issue to
address,” Erlin said. “Amazon has taken steps to make the access
status of storage buckets more obvious and security vendors offer
tools to automate checking these kinds of settings. It’s time to start
asking your suppliers and partners tough questions about data
security.”