PowerSchool Data Breach Affects 62 Million Students and 880,000 Texans

Kazakhstan's state-owned oil and gas company KazMunayGas conducted a phishing test in May 2025, which was initially misinterpreted as a cyber espionage campaign by a new threat group named Noisy Bear. The test involved phishing emails targeting KazMunayGas employees with fake documents related to internal communications and policy updates. The phishing emails were sent from a compromised internal email address and included a ZIP attachment with a Windows shortcut (LNK) downloader, a decoy document, and a README.txt file with instructions. The campaign was designed to mimic official internal communications and included themes such as policy updates, internal certification procedures, and salary adjustments. The phishing test was conducted to train employees on identifying and responding to phishing attempts. However, it was mistakenly reported as a cyber espionage campaign by Seqrite Labs, which attributed the activity to a new threat group tracked as Noisy Bear. The threat actor was believed to be of Russian origin and had been active since at least April 2025. The misinterpretation led to speculation about the involvement of a new threat group and the use of sophisticated malware, including a PowerShell loader dubbed DOWNSHELL and a DLL-based implant. The threat actor used a compromised email address belonging to a KazMunayGas finance department employee to send phishing emails. The phishing emails impersonated mundane company business, including reviewing work schedules, incentive systems, and wages. The phishing emails contained a ZIP file with a decoy document and a shortcut (LNK) file named "Salary Schedule.lnk." The LNK file downloaded a batch script, which retrieved the attackers' PowerShell loader named DownShell. DownShell consists of two scripts: one for anti-analysis by undermining the Windows Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI), and another for CreateRemoteThread Injection to establish a reverse shell. Noisy Bear used a sanctioned Russian bulletproof hosting provider, Aeza Group, to maintain its infrastructure. The threat activity carries geopolitical implications, targeting Kazakhstan's largest oil and gas company, which is state-owned and a significant economic entity. Seqrite Labs found infrastructure and tooling overlaps across other Central Asian attacks, indicating a broader campaign. The incident highlights the importance of clear communication and coordination between cybersecurity researchers and organizations to avoid misinterpretations and ensure accurate reporting of cyber threats.

A threat actor, UNC6395, exploited OAuth tokens associated with the Drift AI chat agent to breach Salesloft and access customer data across multiple integrations, including Salesforce, Google Workspace, and others. The breach occurred between August 8 and 18, 2025, affecting over 700 organizations, including Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare, Google Workspace, PagerDuty, Proofpoint, SpyCloud, and Tanium. The attackers targeted Salesforce instances and accessed email from a small number of Google Workspace accounts, exporting large volumes of data, including credentials and access tokens. Salesloft and Salesforce have taken steps to mitigate the breach and are advising affected customers to revoke API keys and rotate credentials. Salesloft will temporarily take Drift offline to enhance security. UNC6395 demonstrated operational security awareness by deleting query jobs, indicating a sophisticated approach. The breach highlights the risks of third-party integrations and the potential for supply chain attacks. The breach is unrelated to previous vishing attacks attributed to ShinyHunters. UNC6395 systematically exported large volumes of data from numerous corporate Salesforce instances, searching for secrets that could be used to compromise victim environments. The campaign is not limited to Salesforce customers who integrate their own solutions with the Salesforce service; it impacts all integrations using Salesloft Drift. There is no evidence that the breaches directly impacted Google Cloud customers. Organizations are urged to review all third-party integrations connected to their Drift instance, revoke and rotate credentials for those applications, and investigate all connected systems for signs of unauthorized access. The blast radius of the Salesloft Drift attacks remains uncertain, with the ultimate scope and severity still unclear. Numerous companies have disclosed downstream breaches resulting from this campaign, including Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Proofpoint, Cloudflare, and Tenable. Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks warned of potential social engineering attacks resulting from the campaign. Cloudflare confirmed that some customer support interactions may reveal information about a customer's configuration and could contain sensitive information like access tokens. Okta successfully prevented a breach of its Salesforce instance by enforcing inbound IP restrictions, securing tokens with DPoP, and using the IPSIE framework. Okta recommends that organizations demand IPSIE integration from application vendors and implement an identity security fabric unified across applications. Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 recommends conducting an immediate log review for signs of compromise and rotating exposed credentials. The breach started with the compromise of Salesloft's GitHub account between March and June 2025. UNC6395 accessed the Salesloft GitHub account and downloaded content from multiple repositories, added a guest user, and established workflows. Reconnaissance activities occurred between March 2025 and June 2025 in the Salesloft and Drift application environments. Salesloft isolated the Drift infrastructure, application, and code, and took the application offline on September 5, 2025. Salesloft rotated credentials in the Salesloft environment and hardened the environment with improved segmentation controls between Salesloft and Drift applications. Salesforce restored the integration with the Salesloft platform on September 7, 2025, but Drift remains disabled. 22 companies have confirmed they were impacted by the supply chain breach. ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider were also involved in the Salesloft Drift attacks.

Allianz Life, a U.S. insurance subsidiary of Allianz SE, experienced a data breach in July 2025. Hackers accessed a third-party cloud CRM system, stealing personal information of 1.1 million customers. The breach involved a malicious OAuth app linked to Salesforce instances, leading to the exfiltration of sensitive data. The extortion group ShinyHunters, tracked as UNC6040, claimed responsibility and leaked the stolen data. The breach is part of a broader campaign targeting multiple high-profile companies, including Google, Adidas, Workday, Qantas, Pandora, and Workiva. Allianz Life confirmed the breach but declined to provide additional details due to an ongoing investigation. Qantas Group executives reduced their short-term compensation by 15% due to the impact of the cyberattack on customers, which affected approximately 5.7 million passengers.

Cybersecurity researchers have identified malicious packages in the Python Package Index (PyPI) and npm repositories that exploit dependencies to execute supply chain attacks. The PyPI package termncolor, with 355 downloads, and its dependency colorinal, with 529 downloads, were found to perform DLL side-loading to achieve persistence and remote code execution. The malware can infect both Windows and Linux systems. Additionally, npm packages were discovered to harvest sensitive data, including iCloud Keychain, web browser, and cryptocurrency wallet information. The attacks highlight the risks associated with automated dependency upgrades and the importance of monitoring open-source ecosystems for potential threats. In a recent supply chain attack, attackers injected malware into npm packages with over 2.6 billion weekly downloads after compromising a maintainer's account in a phishing attack. The attack impacted roughly 10% of all cloud environments. The malware operates by injecting itself into the web browser, monitoring cryptocurrency transactions, and redirecting them to attacker-controlled wallet addresses. The compromised packages include debug, chalk, and ansi-styles, among others. The impact of the attack is limited to fresh installs between ~9 AM and ~11.30 AM ET on September 8, 2025, when the packages were compromised. This attack follows a series of similar incidents targeting JavaScript libraries, highlighting the ongoing threat to the open-source ecosystem.