New York Times warns freelancers of GitHub repo data breach

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 213 points – New York Times warns freelancers of GitHub repo data breach
bleepingcomputer.com
  • The New York Times suffered a breach of its GitHub repositories in January 2024, leading to the theft and leak of sensitive personal information of freelancers.
  • Attackers accessed the repos using exposed credentials, but the breach did not impact the newspaper's internal systems or operations.
  • The stolen data, amounting to 273GB, was leaked on 4chan and included various personal details of contributors as well as information related to assignments and source code, including the viral Wordle game.
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LOL same thing happened to Google. When will these people learn MS does not care about your data?

I don't see what Microsoft has to do with this. The article says the repos were accessed with stolen creds.

As The Times told BleepingComputer last week, the attackers used exposed credentials to hack into the newspaper's GitHub repos.

I don't know what "exposed credentials" are but if they were accessed with "stolen" creds there would be no "hacking", just logging in.

So... Unless Microsoft directly leaked those credentials, I don't see how it would be their responsibility.

...because they didn't adequately protect them?

It is not Microsoft's job to protect your password, it is yours.

Or did you assume it was GitHub itself that was compromised? The article doesn't say where the creds were obtained. My guess is plain old phishing. Though it could also be cred-stealing malware, that seems to be making a comeback, in the form of browser extensions and mobile apps. Either way, those aren't Microsoft's fault.

Or did you assume it was GitHub itself that was compromised?

That's the way it reads to me.

My guess is plain old phishing.

Going back to my previous comment, if it was obtained through fishing, there would be no need for "hacking".

“Hacking” is a catch all term for security breaches, including phishing to the general public.

No it is not

Yes it is. You can be a pedantic a-hole all you want, but “hacking” includes phishing, social engineering and pretty much any other form of access control circumvention to the general public.

Edit:

Also from the article itself

A 'readme' file in the archive states that the threat actor used an exposed GitHub token to access the company's repositories and steal the data.

Exposed GitHub token is very likely someone messed up and either exposed a token or was victim to an attack that could pull the token. Those are not uncommon and have happened to a lot of companies.

[Citation needed]

My guy, the citation is this entire article.

Please point out where it states that Microsoft leaked it, rather than the more likely case of NYT leaking their credentials.

It doesn't say they leaked anything, it says they were hacked.

As The Times told BleepingComputer last week, the attackers used exposed credentials to hack into the newspaper's GitHub repos.

It explicitly says the credentials were leaked. If you're really going to insist the word "hack" implies something else, I'm afraid you're too far on the spectrum for me to continue this conversation. Cya!

I've already explained this several times and I won't do it again. If you're still confused, scroll up and read again.

This is "hack" like the kid that guessed your grandma's Facebook password is "ilovecats1953", "hacked" Facebook.

I realize that's possible but I don't have any information outside of what's in this article, so that's all I can speculate on.

Exposed credentials means that somebody got sloppy the password. So yeah, "stolen creds". Give the fact that a) NYT seems knows which credentials were exposed, and b) We haven't seen hundreds of other high(er) profile companies have their private repos breached, it is far more likely that NYT fucked up, and not Microsoft (which is what you implied, with nothing to back it up - other than a very narrow-minded definition of the word hack).