A senior security analyst at a cybersecurity consulting firm appears to have been hacked by a hacker who doesn’t like cybersecurity analysts.
The victim is one Adi Perentz, who is a Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst at Mandiant, a cybersecurity consulting firm that was bought by FireEye for a billion dollars a little over three years ago. The hacker’s message refers to Perentz as “Victim #1,” seeming to hint that there will be many more victims in the future in an operation he or she has dubbed “Op. #LeakTheAnalyst.” The purpose of the project is to embarrass security analysts, as opposed to the usual mission objective of breaching and hurting companies.
The hacker bragged about enjoying being “inside a giant company,” saying “Mandiant knows how deep we breached into its infrastructure.” The information the hacker was able to get was uploaded to a filesharing website in a 32 MB zip file. Despite all the chest-beating by the hacker, the zip file merely contained a few publically-available files and some of Perentz’s personal details and files. Embarrassing, but not damaging, though the hacker does claim to have more. The hacker also defaced Perentz’s LinkedIn account.
If it could happen to a top analyst at a cybersecurity firm, it could happen to you. Don’t get caught off guard when it comes to protecting your data and your identity.