Snowflake Hacker Pleads Guilty Over Breaches Affecting at Least 100 Million People
Summary: Connor Riley Moucka, 26, of Kitchener, Ontario, pleaded guilty in Seattle federal court to computer fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and a related conspiracy over 2024 breaches of Snowflake customer accounts that reached at least 165 organizations and exposed records of at least 100 million people. Attackers entered through old passwords harvested years earlier by infostealer malware and never rotated, on accounts with multi-factor authentication switched off - no platform exploit or flaw - and Moucka personally took at least $495,000 from ransoms and data sales.
Key Takeaway: Mandiant found at least 79.7% of the accounts the group used had prior credential exposure, some harvested as far back as November 2020 and still valid years later, and victim companies reported more than $9.5 million in actual losses before counting losses to their own customers. Snowflake only began enforcing MFA by default for human users on accounts created since October 2024, and its documentation puts the final phase of blocking password-only sign-ins between August and October 2026.
Read the original at The Hacker News ↗
- Topics
- Identity & Access Management
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