Data Breach Fallout: Disney Severs Ties after Slack Hack?

The Walt Disney Company is reportedly severing ties with workplace communications platform Slack. The global entertainment firm apparently took this decision after a significant Slack hack earlier this year exposed over a terabyte of sensitive company information, raising concerns about Disney’s cybersecurity posture.

In June, hacktivist group “NullBulge” took responsibility for orchestrating the Disney data breach.

Cybersecurity Concerns Behind Decision to Ditch Slack?

According to Status News, which first reported the move, Disney’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Hugh Johnston, has confirmed that most of the entertainment giant’s divisions will stop using Slack later this year.

The report states that Hugh Johnston had shared an email to staffers on Wednesday which read, “I would like to share that senior leadership has made the decision to transition away from Slack across the company.”

“Our technology teams are now managing the transition off Slack by the end of Q1 FY25 for most businesses.”

Johnston said that some “more complex use cases” will require extra time to transition off Slack, but that the entire migration from the messaging application should be completed during the second quarter of 2025.

The report also mentioned that many teams at Disney have already begun transitioning to other streamlined enterprise-wide collaboration tools, though the specifics of the new system remain unclear.

Some of the competitors to slack include Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, Webex Suite, Workplace, Mattermost, RingEX, Filestage and Symphony.

Slack Hack Which Led to Data Breach at Disney  

On July 12, 2024, threat actor “NullBulge” wrote a post on data leak marketplace Breachforums that claimed that the group breached details of Disney’s unannounced projects, raw images and code, some login credentials, link to internal API and webpages, and other miscellaneous data. The data spanned more than 44 million messages from Disney’s Slack workplace communications tool.

Source: X

The leak purportedly contained contents from Slack chats, such as various files of the employees, screenshots, pictures of the employees’ pets, and phone numbers, among other details posted on Slack.

In their blog post, the attackers stated that they had a mole in Disney, an employee who assisted them in the malicious data leak. However, they claimed that this collaborator consequently refused to supply them with more data.

“We tried to hold off until we got deeper in, but our inside man got cold feet and kicked us out!” read the blog post.

According to a report back then, stolen information from the data breach had revealed that the company could release a sequel to the 2021 game Aliens: Fireteam Elite. The sequel was codenamed Project Macondo and is scheduled for Q3 2025.

Disney had said in August that it was investigating an unauthorized release of over a terabyte of data from one of its communication systems.

Slack Vulnerable to Hacks?

Disney is not the first company to fall victim to Slack hacks. Last year, a threat actor, after gaining access to slack channels, initiated a chat to carry out a malware attack on renowned global casino and resort powerhouse MGM Resorts. The bad actors spied on employees and obtained more data.

In December 2022, video game publishing company Activision also was hacked, in which the attackers got into the corporate Slack and the game release schedule.

A culprit in 2022 managed to penetrate Uber’s cybersecurity and proceeded to leave a message on the company’s Slack forums, apparently in a protest of the company’s payout policy to drivers.

The Disney data breach serves as a stark reminder of the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape. Vetting and continuously monitoring third-party vendors is crucial. This includes understanding their cybersecurity practices and ensuring they meet the organization’s security standards.

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