Crunchbase confirms hack by ShinyHunters, 2M records up for grabs

Crunchbase, a predictive private company intelligence platform, has confirmed a data breach after the notorious ShinyHunters cybercrime group published files supposedly stolen from its systems.

ShinyHunters claims to have stolen more than 2 million records containing personal data from Crunchbase. Moreover, the gang has made these files available for download on its website after the firm refused to pay a ransom.

Data samples include user lists with full names, contact information, addresses, job data, contracts between Crunchbase and partner firms, and other internal documents detailing business operations.

After a few days of silence, Crunchbase finally admitted that it had indeed been breached. In a statement to SecurityWeek, the company said that a threat actor exfiltrated “certain documents” from its corporate network.

“No business operations have been disrupted by this incident. We have contained the incident, and our systems are secure,” Crunchbase said.

“Crunchbase is aware that the threat actor posted certain information online. As part of our incident response procedures, we are reviewing the impacted information to determine if any notifications are required consistent with applicable legal requirements.”

According to Cybernews researchers, Crunchbase took a risk by reportedly refusing to pay a ransom to ShinyHunters, as the data of its clients can now be used for social engineering, identity theft, and fraud.

The infamous cybercrime group has also published material allegedly stolen from other well-known companies, including SoundCloud, Betterment, and Edmunds, a major US car shopping platform.

SoundCloud confirmed this particular data breach in mid-December, saying that passwords and financial information weren’t compromised. But ShinyHunters only published the stolen data last week, so the music streaming service now has to review the leaked files.

There are also reports that ShinyHunters is behind an active voice phishing campaign, aimed at stealing single sign-on (SSO) credentials for Okta, Microsoft, and Google accounts.

Crunchbase took a risk by reportedly refusing to pay a ransom to ShinyHunters, as the data of its clients can now be used for social engineering, identity theft, and fraud.

ShinyHunters is a well-known cybercrime and extortion gang, previously linked to multiple high-profile breaches and large-scale data theft campaigns, including last year’s Salesforce CRM data heist that targeted enterprise cloud services and customer databases.

The latest activity marks a shift in emphasis towards human-driven social engineering, an approach designed to bypass security controls by persuading employees to cooperate in the compromise.

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