Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters release stolen data from Salesforce customers

The Salesforce hacking case has gone into its next phase as reportedly Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters said over the weekend that it leaked data stolen from at least six victims, not long after the FBI took down the attacker’s data breach site.

Among the victims are grocery chain Albertsons, energy company Engie Resources, Fuji Film, clothing retailer The Gap, and two airlines, Qantas and Vietnam Airlines.

SC Media reported that Salesforce on Oct. 7 refused to negotiate or pay a ransom in attacks that targeted at least 39 of its customers, many of them high-profile companies such as FedEx, Disney, and Google.

Apparently Salesforce customers are following suit as the threat group has clearly started to leak the stolen data.

Have I Been Pwned reported Oct. 11 that Vietnam Airlines was affected after having 7.3 million unique customer email addresses exposed. And Qantas reported Oct. 12 that it was working with a cybersecurity specialist to determine which data was released.

These attacks on Salesforce customers occurred after attackers stole OAuth tokens from third-party applications, such as Drift, to gain unauthorized access to Salesforce data. Because OAuth tokens grant access on behalf of a user without requiring a password or MFA, stolen tokens can bypass security measures and get used to exfiltrate data.

Lydia Zhang, president of Ridge Security, added that here’s the simple truth about the Salesforce supply chain breach: attackers don’t need to break down the front door when users willingly hand them the keys in the form of legitimate OAuth tokens.

“The sad reality is that once these ‘keys’ become unreadable character strings — passed from app to app — visibility, tracking, and understanding are lost,” said Zhang. “Security teams are left blind. CISOs must adapt by recognizing tokens as high-value assets, requiring governance equal to credentials and certificates, and by enforcing strict policies to maintain security hygiene.”

Dominic Tippabattuni, associate principal consultant at Black Duck, said even for companies not directly affected by the recent leaks involving Qantas, Vietnam Airlines, The Gap, and others, we’re at an important moment to reassess how the organization manages the trust it places in third-party platforms. 

Tippabattuni said security teams should activate their incident response around Salesforce applications, especially those handling customer or identity data, and engage the company’s threat intelligence teams to watch for secondary risks such as phishing campaigns, credential stuffing, and dark web chatter. 

“Teams should also improve their security posture by strengthening continuous monitoring, vendor risk reviews, and secure development practices,” said Tippabattuni.

Andy Bennett, chief information security officer at Apollo Information Systems, said Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters has almost certainly been feeding all the information about every individual they have ever stolen information about into an AI system, then asking the AI system to scan the internet and other resources for additional information about all of them.

“With enough information, they can rapidly develop a deep understanding of any person and any company,” said Bennett. “From there it’s trivial to create custom attacks targeting thousands of specific individuals across tens or hundreds of organizations at a time.”

Graham Neray, chief executive officer at OSO, added that most enterprise systems are built on legacy infrastructure that makes it difficult to update weak links without risking outages or regressions. Neray explained that OAuth is one of those legacy components, and it wasn’t designed for agentic AI.

“As organizations roll out AI agents that act autonomously and access sensitive data, the cost of leaving legacy identity models in place will only grow,” said Neray. “CISOs should be asking whether their current identity layer can safely support this new mode of computing. Getting that foundation right is essential to enabling secure, enterprise-scale AI.”