Okta That Provides Authentication Services To Moody's, Sonos And Others Hacked By Lapsus$ Group

Okta that provides authentication services to Fedex, Sonos, Moody's and T-Mobile among others has confirmed that a member from Lapsus$ hacking group had access to one of its staff's laptops.

New Delhi: Access management company Okta which provides authentication services to firms like Fedex, Sonos, Moody's and T-Mobile among others has confirmed that a member from Lapsus$ hacking group had access to one of its employee's laptops in January and that some of its customers may have been hit by the breach. This disclosure comes after hacking group Lapsus$ published a series of posts on Telegram mentioning it was one of Okta's Slack channels, the media has reported.

"As we shared earlier today, we are conducting a thorough investigation into the recent Lapsus$ claims and any impact on our valued customers. The Okta service is fully operational, and there are no corrective actions our customers need to take," David Bradbury, Chief Security Officer, Okta, said in a statement.

After a thorough analysis of these claims, Okta has concluded that a "small percentage" of its customers -- approximately 2.5 per cent -- have potentially been impacted and whose data may have been viewed or acted upon by the Lapsus$ hacking group.

"We have identified those customers and are contacting them directly. If you are an Okta customer and were impacted, we have already reached out directly by email. We are sharing this interim update, consistent with our values of customer success, integrity, and transparency," Bradbury added.

Okta's authentication services are used by thousands of reputed organisations worldwide and any breach could have major ramifications for the companies, universities, and government agencies that depend upon San Fransisco-based Okta to authenticate user access to internal systems, according to a report published by The Verge.

What is Lapsus$ hacking group?

This is a merious hacking group that appeared in December last year. So far, the hacking group has attacked companies such as Samsung and Nvidia and most likely Microsoft too. According to some reports, this group may be from Latin America as its initial victims were from Latin America.

Earlier this month, Lapsus$ had claimed the responsibility of attacking South Korean tech giant Samsung. The same group had targeted Nvidia earlier and shared screenshots reportedly showing almost 200GB of stolen data, including source code used by Samsung for encryption and biometric unlocking functions on the Galaxy line of hardware.