An attacker successfully conducted an OSINT reconnaissance against a new employee named Alex, the Database Administrator Intern at InsureCo, a small insurance firm with approximately 50 employees. The attacker used a phishing email impersonating the outsourced software development vendor, AtlasConsult Co., to deceive Alex into submitting administrative credentials.
Subject: URGENT: Immediate Action Required on Client Database Issue
To: alex@insureco.com
From: Atlas Support support@atlasconsult.co.com
Email Body:
Dear Alex,
Our internal monitoring flagged a critical error in the client account retrieval API. Multiple users have reported missing account data tied to our database backend.
We need your assistance reviewing the issue as your credentials are required to access the admin report. Please access the secure portal below to review and authenticate the log traces for debugging:
Failure to respond within 1 hour may result in temporary service interruptions.
Regards,
IT Support Team
AtlasConsult Co.
- Alex submitted valid credentials on the malicious portal.
- Attacker gained unauthorized access to Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL).
- Wazuh SIEM triggered alarms for unusual data exfiltration.
- Investigation traced the attacker's IP address to St. Petersburg, Florida.
- SIEM: Wazuh
- Database: Google Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL)
- Infrastructure: Google Compute Engine (E2 instance)
- Enforce DKIM, SPF, and DMARC policies to detect spoofed senders.
- Enable anti-phishing policies in the email gateway (e.g., Gmail Advanced Protection).
- Train users with phishing simulations (e.g., GoPhish).
- Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all privileged accounts.
- Rotate and revoke credentials immediately after compromise.
- Use IAM roles with least privilege access.
- Set up Wazuh rules to detect:
- Abnormal login patterns
- Outbound data anomalies
- Unexpected geolocations
- Integrate Google Cloud Logging with Wazuh for deeper visibility.
- Define and test an incident response playbook for phishing and credential theft.
- Include steps like:
- Isolating affected services
- Forensic investigation
- Communicating with stakeholders
- Conducting a post-mortem
- Segregate access to production databases using VPC Service Controls.
- Enforce SSL-only database connections.
- Use IAM database authentication instead of static credentials.
This incident highlights the critical need for strong identity protection, vigilant SIEM monitoring, and user security awareness. Had proper MFA and phishing training been in place, the attack could have been prevented or detected much earlier.