this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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  • The New York Times suffered a breach of its GitHub repositories in January 2024, leading to the theft and leak of sensitive personal information of freelancers.
  • Attackers accessed the repos using exposed credentials, but the breach did not impact the newspaper's internal systems or operations.
  • The stolen data, amounting to 273GB, was leaked on 4chan and included various personal details of contributors as well as information related to assignments and source code, including the viral Wordle game.
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

As The Times told BleepingComputer last week, the attackers used exposed credentials to hack into the newspaper's GitHub repos.

I don't know what "exposed credentials" are but if they were accessed with "stolen" creds there would be no "hacking", just logging in.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So... Unless Microsoft directly leaked those credentials, I don't see how it would be their responsibility.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

...because they didn't adequately protect them?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is not Microsoft's job to protect your password, it is yours.

Or did you assume it was GitHub itself that was compromised? The article doesn't say where the creds were obtained. My guess is plain old phishing. Though it could also be cred-stealing malware, that seems to be making a comeback, in the form of browser extensions and mobile apps. Either way, those aren't Microsoft's fault.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or did you assume it was GitHub itself that was compromised?

That's the way it reads to me.

My guess is plain old phishing.

Going back to my previous comment, if it was obtained through fishing, there would be no need for "hacking".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“Hacking” is a catch all term for security breaches, including phishing to the general public.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes it is. You can be a pedantic a-hole all you want, but “hacking” includes phishing, social engineering and pretty much any other form of access control circumvention to the general public.

Edit:

Also from the article itself

A 'readme' file in the archive states that the threat actor used an exposed GitHub token to access the company's repositories and steal the data.

Exposed GitHub token is very likely someone messed up and either exposed a token or was victim to an attack that could pull the token. Those are not uncommon and have happened to a lot of companies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Assuming the writer is using the word properly is not being pedantic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reading the article proves your assumption wrong

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My guy, the citation is this entire article.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Please point out where it states that Microsoft leaked it, rather than the more likely case of NYT leaking their credentials.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It doesn't say they leaked anything, it says they were hacked.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As The Times told BleepingComputer last week, the attackers used exposed credentials to hack into the newspaper's GitHub repos.

It explicitly says the credentials were leaked. If you're really going to insist the word "hack" implies something else, I'm afraid you're too far on the spectrum for me to continue this conversation. Cya!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I've already explained this several times and I won't do it again. If you're still confused, scroll up and read again.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is "hack" like the kid that guessed your grandma's Facebook password is "ilovecats1953", "hacked" Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I realize that's possible but I don't have any information outside of what's in this article, so that's all I can speculate on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Exposed credentials means that somebody got sloppy the password. So yeah, "stolen creds". Give the fact that a) NYT seems knows which credentials were exposed, and b) We haven't seen hundreds of other high(er) profile companies have their private repos breached, it is far more likely that NYT fucked up, and not Microsoft (which is what you implied, with nothing to back it up - other than a very narrow-minded definition of the word hack).