A wave of knowledge breaches impacting corporations 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 cases.
In June, Google’s Menace Intelligence Group (GTIG) warned that risk actors tracked as UNC6040 had been concentrating on Salesforce clients in social engineering assaults.
In these assaults, the risk actors impersonated IT assist workers in cellphone calls to focused workers, trying to steer them into visiting Salesforce’s related app setup web page. On this web page, they had been advised to enter a “connection code”, which linked a malicious model of Salesforce’s Knowledge Loader OAuth app to the goal’s Salesforce surroundings.
In some instances, the Knowledge Loader element was renamed to “My Ticket Portal,” to make it extra convincing within the assaults.
Supply: Google
GTIG says that these assaults had been normally carried out via vishing (voice phishing), however credentials and MFA tokens had been additionally stolen via phishing pages that impersonated Okta login pages.
Across the time of this report, a number of corporations reported knowledge breaches involving third-party customer support or cloud-based CRM programs.
LVMH subsidiaries Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Tiffany & Co. every disclosed unauthorized entry to a buyer data 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 programs, with Allianz confirming it was a third-party buyer relationship administration platform.
“On July 16, 2025, a malicious risk 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 advised BleepingComputer.
Whereas BleepingComputer has realized that the Qantas knowledge breach additionally concerned a third-party buyer relationship administration platform, the corporate is not going to affirm it’s Salesforce. Nonetheless, earlier reporting from native media claims the information was stolen from Qantas’ Salesforce occasion.
Moreover, court docket paperwork state that the risk actors focused “Accounts” and “Contacts” database tables, each of that are Salesforce objects.
Whereas none of those corporations have publicly named Salesforce, BleepingComputer has since confirmed that every 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 risk actors are trying to privately extort corporations over e mail, the place they identify themselves as ShinyHunters.
It’s believed that when these extortion makes an attempt fail, the risk actors will launch stolen data in an extended wave of leaks, just like ShinyHunter’s earlier Snowflake assaults.
Who’s ShinyHunters
The breaches have precipitated confusion among the many cybersecurity neighborhood and the media, together with BleepingComputer, with the assaults attributed to Scattered Spider (tracked by Mandiant as UNC3944), as these risk actors had been additionally concentrating on the aviation, retail, and insurance coverage sectors across the identical time and demonstrated related ways.
Nonetheless, risk actors related to Scattered Spider are likely to carry out full-blown community breaches, culminating with knowledge theft and, generally, ransomware. ShinyHunters, tracked as UNC6040, then again, tends to focus extra on data-theft extortion assaults concentrating on a selected cloud platform or internet utility.
It’s BleepingComputer’s and a few safety researchers’ perception that each UNC6040 and UNC3944 include overlapping members that talk inside the identical on-line communities. The risk group can be believed to overlap with “The Com,” a community of skilled English-speaking cybercriminals.
“In line with Recorded Future intelligence, the overlapping TTPs between identified Scattered Spider and ShinyHunters assaults point out doubtless some crossover between the 2 teams,” Allan Liska, an Intelligence Analyst for Recorded Future, advised BleepingComputer.
Different researchers have advised BleepingComputer that ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider seem like working in lockstep, concentrating on the identical industries on the identical time, making it tougher to attribute assaults.
Some additionally imagine that each teams have ties to risk actors from the now-defunct Lapsus$ hacking group, with studies indicating that one of many lately 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 corporations on behalf of different risk actors in alternate for a income share, just 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 corporations receiving extortion emails stating, “We’re ShinyHunters,” referring to themselves as a “collective.”
Defending Salesforce cases from assaults
In an announcement to BleepingComputer, Salesforce emphasised that the platform itself was not compromised, however reasonably, clients’ accounts are being breached by way of social engineering.
“Salesforce has not been compromised, and the problems described are usually not because of any identified vulnerability in our platform. Whereas Salesforce builds enterprise-grade safety into every thing we do, clients additionally play a crucial position in conserving their knowledge protected — particularly amid an increase in refined phishing and social engineering assaults,” Salesforce advised BleepingComputer.
“We proceed to encourage all clients to comply with safety greatest practices, together with enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA), implementing the precept of least privilege, and punctiliously managing related functions. For extra data, please go to: https://www.salesforce.com/weblog/protect-against-social-engineering/.”
Salesforce is urging clients to strengthen their safety posture by:
- Imposing trusted IP ranges for logins
- Following the precept of least privilege for app permissions
- Enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Limiting use of related apps and managing entry insurance policies
- Utilizing Salesforce Defend for superior risk detection, occasion monitoring, and transaction insurance policies
- Including a delegated Safety Contact for incident communication
Additional particulars on these mitigations might be present in Salesforce’s steerage linked above.
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