Dell hacker says they were able to to directly attack company servers to scrape data

News
By published

Data of almost 50 million people was recently stolen

Skull and Crossbones
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

A threat actor claiming to be behind the recent Dell data breach has said he managed to steal the data of 49 million customers by brute-forcing a company portal and milking it for almost three weeks.

Dell released a statement saying that there was no “significant risk to our customers”, however the data stolen includes names and postal addresses, alongside other data relating to purchases of Dell products.

Latest Videos From

Lurker

Menelik set up a number of partner accounts within the Dell company portal which, when approved, allowed the hacker to brute force the customer service tags and gain access to the data. The hacker “sent more than 5,000 requests per minute to this page that contains sensitive information.”

“Believe me or not, I kept doing this for nearly 3 weeks and Dell did not notice anything. Nearly 50 Million requests…After I thought I got enough data, I sent multiple emails to Dell and notified the vulnerability. It took them nearly a week to patch it all up,” Menelik said.

Dell confirmed to TechCrunch that they received the hackers email notification of the vulnerability, and a spokesperson for the company stated that “this threat actor is a criminal and we have notified law enforcement. We are not disclosing any information that could compromise the integrity of our ongoing investigation or any investigations by law enforcement.”

There is a possibility that customers who were not affected by the breach may have been incorrectly notified that their data was stolen, as TechCrunch provided Menelik with names and service tags of a number of customers to verify against the database (with their permission), and while some were easily found, others were not on the list at all.

More from TechRadar Pro

TOPICS
Benedict Collins
Benedict Collins
Senior Writer, Security

Benedict is a Senior Security Writer at TechRadar Pro, where he has specialized in covering the intersection of geopolitics, cyber-warfare, and business security.

Benedict provides detailed analysis on state-sponsored threat actors, APT groups, and the protection of critical national infrastructure, with his reporting bridging the gap between technical threat intelligence and B2B security strategy.

Benedict holds an MA (Distinction) in Security, Intelligence, and Diplomacy from the University of Buckingham Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS), with his specialization providing him with a robust academic framework for deconstructing complex international conflicts and intelligence operations, and the ability to translate intricate security data into actionable insights.