Cisco confirms attackers stole data, shuts down access to compromised DevHub environment

Cisco has closed public access to one of its third-party developer environments after threat actors successfully stole data from a public-facing DevHub environment.

On 14 October, the prominent threat actor IntelBroker posted on BreachForums that they compromised data including source code, hard-coded credentials, certificates, API tokens, private and public keys, AWS private buckets, Docker builds, and Azure storage buckets as well as GitHub and GitLab projects.

The listing also claimed to have access to confidential documents and premium products belonging to Cisco.

IntelBroker listed a number of companies that had their production source code taken during the attack, including Verizon, AT&T, Bank of America, Barclays, British Telecoms, Microsoft, Vodafone, Chevron and Charter Communications.

On 15 October, Cisco announced it was investigating reports that a threat actor had claimed to have gained access to data belonging to Cisco and its customers.

The firm updated this advisory on 18 October, confirming that the data the unauthorized actors gained access to was hosted in a public-facing DevHub environment used as a resource center for community support.

“At this stage in our investigation, we have determined that a small number of files that were not authorized for public download may have been published,” the statement added.

“As of now, we have not observed any confidential information such as sensitive PII or financial data to be included but continue to investigate to confirm.”

Evidence points towards compromised third-party as Cisco maintains none of its systems were breached

IntelBroker, a Russia-based Serbian hacker, has been active in the black hat community since October 2022, and came to prominence after their attack on US food delivery service Weee! In 2023.

Since then IntelBroker has targeted major organizations including Europol, Pandabuy, Apple, and AMD, although in these most recent cases the victims have all queried the scope of the breach, claiming the threat actor’s access was limited to a small amount of data.

IntelBroker took to X on 16 October to goad Cisco, claiming they still had access to the developer environment.

The post noted that Cisco had previously attempted to disable its access but had used hard-coded credentials on an SSH server IntelBroker identified within the exfiltrated data.

Two days later, Cisco announced it had disabled public access to the site while it continued its investigation, which IntelBroker confirmed shortly afterward on X, stating that the company had “finally revoked all our access. Closed our Docker, Maven hub[s] and SSH access.”

In its latest update, Cisco maintains it is confident there was no breach to its systems.

ITPro has approached Cisco for clarification on this matter but has not received a response.