Thought Leadership
The hacker group “Shiny Hunters” steals customer data from the French fashion house Chanel via a compromised Salesforce platform.
The French luxury label Chanel has informed its US customers about a data breach in which cyber criminals gained access to personal information on July 25. The attack was directed against the Salesforce platform used by the company and is part of a month-long campaign by the notorious hacker group Shiny Hunters.
Customer data tapped from support system
According to Chanel, only data from the US customer service database was affected. As the magazine Global Cosmetics News reported, the attackers obtained the names, email addresses, postal addresses and telephone numbers of people who had contacted Chanel customer service in the USA.
According to the company, the hackers were unable to obtain more sensitive information such as financial and payment data. The luxury house’s internal operations, website and e-commerce platform also remained unaffected by the incident.
Voice phishing as a gateway
The attack is attributed to the cybercriminal group Shiny Hunters, which targets its victims using voice phishing (vishing). Employees of the target companies are contacted by telephone and tricked into downloading malicious software or disclosing access data through social engineering. An employee of Cisco Systems has just been misled by vishing.
Manipulated Salesforce tools as bait
The attackers persuade employees to download a manipulated version of the Salesforce Data Loader Tool. This tool is normally used to bulk import data into Salesforce environments – giving the hackers direct access to the information stored in the CRM platform.
Salesforce had already warned its customers of such attacks in the spring. A company spokesperson emphasized that there was no evidence of security vulnerabilities in the Salesforce platform itself. Rather, the calls were “targeted social engineering scams aimed at exploiting gaps in the cyber security awareness of individual users”.
Chanel activates emergency protocol
The London-based fashion retailer reacted immediately to the incident and activated its incident response protocols. External cyber security experts were brought in to assist with damage limitation.
Chanel advised its customers to be more vigilant against phishing attempts and unsolicited communication. The company did not disclose the number of customers affected.
Luxury brands targeted by cyber criminals
The increase in attacks on luxury brands is no coincidence. There are several reasons why high-end brands in particular are the preferred target of cyber criminals: Firstly, customers have above-average purchasing power, which makes them lucrative targets for fraud and identity theft. On the other hand, luxury companies collect particularly detailed customer profiles – including purchase history, preferences and often also personal consultations. Louis Vuitton had just recently become a repeated target.
