Research and consulting firm Frost & Suvillan is alleged to have suffered from a breach after a folder containing data of the firm’s employees and clients were found on sale on a hacker forum.
In a report, Bleeping Computer said a group called 'KelvinSecurity Team' posted about the sale of the databases on Monday. In the said post, the group claimed that the data being sold contains 6,000 Frost & Sullivan's customer records and another 6,146 company records.
Among the exposed customer records included the names of clients, their email addresses, the company contact, and other non-sensitive data. Meanwhile, employees of Frost & Suvillan had their first names and last names exposed, along with their login names, email addresses, and hashed passwords.
When contacted by Bleeping Computer, KelvinSecurity Team said they had discovered the folder during a “daily monitoring routine.” According to the group, they had tried contacting the company about the leaky folder but received no response. They then decided to sell the data to “generate alarm” and get a response from the firm.
"It was not a purpose to take a database and sell it. We have tried to get in contact, but like many companies, they do not answer our requests, and we sell the database to generate an alarm and quote with these companies," KelvinSecurity Team explained.
According to the news outlet, KelvinSecurity described themselves as 'Business Intelligence Contractors.' However, a report by InfoArmor suggests that the team is a probable Russian hacking organization.
To date, the KelvinSecurity said they have not yet sold the database but are hoping that the Frost & Sullivan will contact them to stop the sale attempt.
Founded in 1961, Frost & Sullivan operates as a popular business consulting firm focusing on market research and analysis, growth strategy consulting, and corporate training. The company currently has a presence in 40 locations worldwide and houses more than 1,800 employees.
“In a conversation with Beenu Arora, CEO of cybersecurity intelligence firm Cyble, BleepingComputer was told that the data breach was caused by an unsecured backup folder that contained databases and company documents.” BleepingComputer wrote.
“The breach occurred to a misconfigured backup directory on one of Frost and Sullivan public-facing servers. The backup directory had its employees and customers records, along with other confidential information,” explain Aurora during the talk.
To date, Frost & Sullivan hasn’t yet provided a response to the issue.