Technology
What Snowflake isn’t saying about its customers’ data breaches

Snowflake’s security problems are, for lack of a greater word, growing after a recent wave of customer data theft.
After Ticketmaster became the primary company to link its recent data breach to cloud computing company Snowflake, loan comparison site LendingTree confirmed that its QuoteWizard subsidiary had data stolen from Snowflake.
“We can confirm that we use Snowflake for our business operations and have been notified by Snowflake that this incident may have impacted data from our QuoteWizard subsidiary,” Megan Greuling, a spokeswoman for LendingTree, told TechCrunch.
“We take these matters seriously and initiated an internal investigation immediately after receiving information from (Snowflake),” the spokesman said. “At this time, there does not appear to be an impact on consumer financial account information or LendingTree’s parent information,” the spokesperson added, declining to comment further, citing the continuing investigation.
As increasingly affected customers come forward, Snowflake has said little other than a brief statement on its website reiterating that there was no data breach on its own systems, but somewhat that customers weren’t using multi-factor authentication, or MFA, a security measure that Snowflake doesn’t implement or require its customers to enable by default. Snowflake itself caught wind of the incident, claiming that a former worker’s “demo” account was compromised since it was only protected by a username and password.
In an announcement Friday, Snowflake firmly stood by its response thus far, saying its position “remains unchanged.” Referring to his earlier statement on Sunday, Snowflake’s chief information security officer, Brad Jones, said it was a “targeted campaign targeting users using single-factor authentication” and using credentials stolen from information-stealing malware or obtained through previous data breaches.
The lack of MFA appears to be causing cybercriminals to download massive amounts of data from Snowflake customer environments that weren’t protected by an extra layer of security.
Earlier this week, TechCrunch found lots of of Snowflake customer credentials stolen online by password-stealing malware that was infecting the computers of employees who had access to their employer’s Snowflake environment. The credential count suggests there’s a risk for Snowflake customers who haven’t yet modified their passwords or enabled MFA.
Over the course of the week, TechCrunch sent Snowflake greater than a dozen questions about the continuing incident affecting its customers as we proceed to report on this story. Snowflake refused to reply our questions a minimum of six times.
These are among the questions we ask ourselves and why.
It shouldn’t be yet known what number of Snowflake customers are affected or whether Snowflake already knows about it.
Snowflake said it has thus far notified “a limited number of Snowflake customers” that the corporate believes could have been affected. On its website, Snowflake says it has greater than 9,800 customers, including technology corporations, telecommunications corporations and health care providers.
Snowflake spokeswoman Danica Stańczak declined to say whether the variety of affected customers was within the tens, tens, lots of or more.
It’s likely that despite several customer breaches reported this week, we’re only just starting to know the dimensions of this incident.
Even for Snowflake, it might not be clear how many shoppers are affected, as the corporate will either should depend on its own data, equivalent to logs, or discover directly from the affected customer.
It is unclear how quickly Snowflake could have learned about the hacking of its customers’ accounts. In an announcement, Snowflake said it became aware of “threat activity” on May 23 – accessing customer accounts and downloading their content – but later found evidence of intrusions dating back to around mid-April, suggesting the corporate had some data on whom he can rely.
But that also leaves open the query of why Snowflake didn’t detect the exfiltration of huge amounts of customer data from its servers until much later in May, and if that’s the case, why Snowflake didn’t publicly notify its customers earlier.
Mandiant, an incident response company that Snowflake called to assist reach customers he told Bleeping Computer in late May that the corporate has been helping affected organizations for “several weeks.”
We still do not know what was in the previous Snowflake worker’s demo account and whether it’s related to customer data breaches.
A key line from Snowflake’s statement reads: “We found evidence that the threat actor obtained personal credentials and accessed demo accounts belonging to a former Snowflake employee. It did not contain sensitive data.”
An evaluation by TechCrunch shows that among the stolen customer credentials related to the information-stealing malware include data belonging to a then-Snowflake worker.
As we have previously noted, TechCrunch shouldn’t be naming the worker since it’s unclear whether he did anything improper. The indisputable fact that Snowflake was caught failing to implement MFA, allowing cybercriminals to download data from a then-employee’s “demo” account using only their username and password, highlights a fundamental problem in Snowflake’s security model.
However, it’s unclear what role, if any, this demo account plays within the theft of customer data, because it shouldn’t be yet known what data was stored on it or whether it contained data from other Snowflake customers.
Snowflake wouldn’t say what role, if any, the then-Snowflake worker’s demo account played within the recent customer security breaches. Snowflake reiterated that the demo account “did not contain sensitive data,” but repeatedly declined to say how the corporate defines what it considers “sensitive data.”
We asked whether Snowflake considers individuals’ personal information to be sensitive data. Snowflake declined to comment.
It is unclear why Snowflake didn’t proactively reset passwords or require and implement the usage of MFA on its customer accounts.
It’s commonplace for corporations to force password resets on their customers after a data breach. But if you happen to ask Snowflake, there isn’t a violation. And while this will be true within the sense that there was no apparent breach of central infrastructure, Snowflake customers are fairly often exposed to security breaches.
Snowflake advises his clients involves resetting and rotating Snowflake credentials and forcing MFA on all accounts. Snowflake previously told TechCrunch that its customers care about their very own security: “In Snowflake’s shared responsibility model, customers are responsible for enforcing MFA against their users.”
However, since Snowflake’s customer data thefts involve the usage of stolen usernames and passwords for accounts that will not be protected by MFA, it’s remarkable that Snowflake didn’t intervene on behalf of its customers to guard their accounts with a reset passwords or forced MFA.
This shouldn’t be unheard of. Last 12 months, cybercriminals deleted 6.9 million user records and genetic data from 23andMe accounts that weren’t protected with MFA. 23andMe fastidiously reset user passwords to forestall further scraping attacks after which required MFA for all of its user accounts.
We asked Snowflake if the corporate plans to reset passwords for its customer accounts to forestall possible further breaches. Snowflake declined to comment.
According to them, Snowflake appears to be moving towards implementing MFA by default Runtime technical news site, quoting Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy in an interview this week. This was later confirmed by Snowflake’s CISO Jones in a Friday update.
“We are also developing a plan to require our customers to implement advanced security controls such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) or network policies, especially for privileged Snowflake customer accounts,” Jones said.
No timetable for the implementation of the plan was provided.
Technology
One of the last AI Google models is worse in terms of safety

The recently released Google AI model is worse in some security tests than its predecessor, in line with the company’s internal comparative test.
IN Technical report Google, published this week, reveals that his Flash Gemini 2.5 model is more likely that he generates a text that violates its security guidelines than Gemini 2.0 Flash. In two indicators “text security for text” and “image security to the text”, Flash Gemini 2.5 will withdraw 4.1% and 9.6% respectively.
Text safety for the text measures how often the model violates Google guidelines, making an allowance for the prompt, while image security to the text assesses how close the model adheres to those boundaries after displaying the monitors using the image. Both tests are automated, not supervised by man.
In an e-mail, Google spokesman confirmed that Gemini 2.5 Flash “performs worse in terms of text safety for text and image.”
These surprising comparative results appear when AI is passing in order that their models are more acceptable – in other words, less often refuse to answer controversial or sensitive. In the case of the latest Llam Meta models, he said that he fought models in order to not support “some views on others” and answers to more “debated” political hints. Opeli said at the starting of this yr that he would improve future models, in order to not adopt an editorial attitude and offers many prospects on controversial topics.
Sometimes these efforts were refundable. TechCrunch announced on Monday that the default CHATGPT OPENAI power supply model allowed juvenile to generate erotic conversations. Opeli blamed his behavior for a “mistake”.
According to Google Technical Report, Gemini 2.5 Flash, which is still in view, follows instructions more faithfully than Gemini 2.0 Flash, including instructions exceeding problematic lines. The company claims that regression might be partially attributed to false positives, but in addition admits that Gemini 2.5 Flash sometimes generates “content of violation” when it is clearly asked.
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“Of course, there is a tension between (after instructions) on sensitive topics and violations of security policy, which is reflected in our assessment,” we read in the report.
The results from Meepmap, reference, which can examine how models react to sensitive and controversial hints, also suggest that Flash Gemini 2.5 is much less willing to refuse to reply controversial questions than Flash Gemini 2.0. Testing the TechCrunch model through the AI OpenRoutter platform has shown that he unsuccessfully writes essays to support human artificial intelligence judges, weakening the protection of due protection in the US and the implementation of universal government supervisory programs.
Thomas Woodside, co -founder of the Secure AI Project, said that the limited details given by Google in their technical report show the need for greater transparency in testing models.
“There is a compromise between the instruction support and the observation of politics, because some users may ask for content that would violate the rules,” said Woodside Techcrunch. “In this case, the latest Flash model Google warns the instructions more, while breaking more. Google does not present many details about specific cases in which the rules have been violated, although they claim that they are not serious. Not knowing more, independent analysts are difficult to know if there is a problem.”
Google was already under fire for his models of security reporting practices.
The company took weeks to publish a technical report for the most talented model, Gemini 2.5 Pro. When the report was finally published, it initially omitted the key details of the security tests.
On Monday, Google published a more detailed report with additional security information.
(Tagstotransate) Gemini
Technology
Aurora launches a commercial self -propelled truck service in Texas

The autonomous startup of the Aurora Innovation vehicle technology claims that it has successfully launched a self -propelled truck service in Texas, which makes it the primary company that she implemented without drivers, heavy trucks for commercial use on public roads in the USA
The premiere appears when Aurora gets the term: In October, the corporate delayed the planned debut 2024 to April 2025. The debut also appears five months after the rival Kodiak Robotics provided its first autonomous trucks to clients commercial for operations without a driver in field environments.
Aurora claims that this week she began to freight between Dallas and Houston with Hirschbach Motor Lines and Uber Freight starters, and that she has finished 1200 miles without a driver to this point. The company plans to expand to El Paso and Phoenix until the top of 2025.
TechCrunch contacted for more detailed information concerning the premiere, for instance, the variety of vehicles implemented Aurora and whether the system needed to implement the Pullover maneuver or the required distant human assistance.
The commercial premiere of Aurora takes place in a difficult time. Self -propelled trucks have long been related to the necessity for his or her technology attributable to labor deficiencies in the chairman’s transport and the expected increase in freigh shipping. Trump’s tariffs modified this attitude, not less than in a short period. According to the April analytical company report from the commercial vehicle industry ACT researchThe freight is predicted to fall this yr in the USA with a decrease in volume and consumer expenditure.
Aurora will report its results in the primary quarter next week, i.e. when he shares how he expects the present trade war will affect his future activity. TechCrunch contacted to learn more about how tariffs affect Auror’s activities.
For now, Aurora will probably concentrate on further proving his safety case without a driver and cooperation with state and federal legislators to just accept favorable politicians to assist her develop.
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At the start of 2025, Aurora filed a lawsuit against federal regulatory bodies after the court refused to release the appliance for release from the protection requirement, which consists in placing warning triangles on the road, when the truck must stop on the highway – something that’s difficult to do when there isn’t a driver in the vehicle. To maintain compliance with this principle and proceed to totally implement without service drivers, Aurora probably has a man -driven automotive trail after they are working.
(Tagstranslate) Aurora Innovation
Technology
Sarah Tavel, the first woman of the Benchmark GP, goes to the Venture partner

Eight years after joining Benchmark as the company’s first partner, Sarah Tavel announced that she was going to a more limited role at Hapeure Venture.
In his latest position as a partner Venture Tavel will proceed to invest and serve existing company boards, but may have more time to examine “AI tools on the edge” and fascinated with the direction of artificial intelligence, she wrote.
Tavel joined Benchmark in 2017 after spending a half years as a partner in Greylock and three years as a product manager at Pinterest. Before Pinterest, Tavel was an investor in Bessemer Venture Partners, where she helped Source Pinterest and Github.
Since its foundation in 1995, the benchmark intentionally maintained a small team of six or fewer general partners. Unlike most VC corporations, wherein older partners normally receive most of the management and profits fees, the benchmark acts as an equal partnership, and all partners share fees and returns equally.
During his term as a general partner of Benchmark, Tavel invested in Hipcamp on the campsite, chains of cryptocurrency intelligence startups and the Supergreaty cosmetic platform, which was purchased by Whatnot in 2023. Tavel also supported the application for sharing photos of Paparazhi, which closed two years ago, and the AI 11x sales platform, about which TechCrunch wrote.
(Tagstotransate) benchmark
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