Santa Fe County hack likely full of hot air
Attackers claim to have stolen source code from the Santa Fe County government website. However, the Cybernews research team believes that they’re peddling outdated information.
Image by Cybernews.
Attackers claim to have stolen source code from the Santa Fe County government website. However, the Cybernews research team believes that they’re peddling outdated information.
The group behind the alleged hack announced it on a popular data leak forum, which is often used to share and sell stolen information. The attackers claim to have obtained the source code for Santa Fe County’s government website, which is used by county officials and citizens alike.
Santa Fe County, located in the state of New Mexico, is home to over 150,000 people.
The Cybernews research team looked into the data that the attackers attached to the post, concluding that the claims don’t entirely match reality. The data that attackers uploaded included:
- A couple of admin usernames and hashed passwords
- Database model and its version that was supported until April 1st, 2017
- A PHP version, which was released in 2010, (support ended in 2011)
According to the team, several tables included in the files had no data included and looked like templates, rather than something that harbored useful data.
Moreover, inspection of the traffic that the current live version of the Santa Fe County website receives revealed that it runs on a different architecture than what the attacker included in the supposed data leak.
“Having this info in mind, it’s likely that the allegedly leaked source code is an old version of the website from way back to the 2010s, which makes the impact relatively low,” the team explained.
There are numerous reasons why attackers would post outdated data. One reason is to showcase their ability to collect details in the first place. While the information may have been obtained in the past or from different sources, attackers may be attempting to demonstrate proof-of-concept.
Another reason is clout. Reputation is currency in data leak forums, and the attacker who posted Santa Fe County appears to be a relatively new actor. Getting attention over a source code leak could, in the attackers’ mind, put them on the map.