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

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an illustrated laptop on a red darkened background, with blue flakes of data spilling out of the laptop

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.


This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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MIT Develops Recyclable 3D-Printed Glass Blocks for Construction Applications

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MIT develops recyclable 3D-printed glass blocks for construction

The use of 3D printing has been praised as an alternative choice to traditional construction, promising faster construction times, creative design and fewer construction errors, all while reducing the carbon footprint. New research from MIT points to an interesting latest approach to the concept, involving the usage of 3D-printed glass blocks in the form of a figure eight, which may be connected together like Lego bricks.

The team points to glass’s optical properties and “infinite recyclability” as reasons to pursue the fabric. “As long as it’s not contaminated, you can recycle glass almost infinitely,” says assistant professor of mechanical engineering Kaitlyn Becker.

The team relied on 3D printers designed by Straight line — is itself a spin-off of MIT.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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Introducing the Next Wave of Startup Battlefield Judges at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

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Announcing our next wave of Startup Battlefield judges at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

Startup Battlefield 200 is the highlight of every Disrupt, and we will’t wait to search out out which of the 1000’s of startups which have invited us to collaborate can have the probability to pitch to top enterprise capitalists at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Join us at Moscone West in San Francisco October 28–30 for an epic showdown where everyone can have the probability to make a major impact.

Get insight into what the judges are in search of in a profitable company as they supply detailed feedback on the evaluation criteria. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn from their expert insights and discover the key characteristics that result in startup success, only at Disrupt 2024.

We’re excited to introduce our next group of investors who will evaluate startups and dive into each pitch in an in-depth and insightful Q&A session. Stay tuned for more big names coming soon!

Alice Brooks, Partner, Khosla Ventures

Alicja is a partner in Khosla’s ventures interests in sustainability, food, agriculture, and manufacturing/supply chain. She has worked with multiple startups in robotics, IoT, retail, consumer goods, and STEM education, and led mechanical, electrical, and application development teams in the US and Asia. She also founded and managed manufacturing operations in factories in China and Taiwan. Prior to KV, Alice was the founder and CEO of Roominate, a STEM education company that helps girls learn engineering concepts through play.

Mark Crane, Partner, General Catalyst

Mark Crane is a partner at General Catalysta enterprise capital firm that works with founders from seed to endurance to assist them construct corporations that may stand the test of time. Focused on acquiring and investing in later-stage investment opportunities equivalent to AuthZed, Bugcrowd, Resilience, and TravelPerk. Prior to joining General Catalyst, Mark was a vice chairman at Cove Hill Partners in Massachusetts. Prior to that, he was a senior associate at JMI Equity and an associate at North Bridge Growth Equity.

Sofia Dolfe, Partner, Index Ventures

Sofia partners with founders who use their unique perspective and private understanding of the problem to construct corporations that drive behavioral change, powerful network effects, and transform entire industries, from grocery and e-commerce to financial services and healthcare. Sofia can also be one of Index projects‘ gaming leads, working with some of the best gaming corporations in Europe, making a recent generation of iconic gaming titles. He spends most of his time in the Nordics, but works with entrepreneurs across the continent.

Christine Esserman, Partner, Accel

Christine Esserman joined Acceleration in 2017 and focuses on software, web, and mobile technology corporations. Since joining Accel, Christine has helped lead Accel’s investments in Blackpoint Cyber, Linear, Merge, ThreeFlow, Bumble, Remote, Dovetail, Ethos, Guru, and Headway. Prior to joining Accel, Christine worked in product and operations roles at multiple startups. A native of the Bay Area, Christine graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a level in Finance and Operations.

Haomiao Huang, Founding Partner, Matter Venture Partners

Haomiao from Venture Matter Partners is a robotics researcher turned founder turned investor. He is especially obsessed with corporations that bring digital innovation to physical economy enterprises, with a give attention to sectors equivalent to logistics, manufacturing and transportation, and advanced technologies equivalent to robotics and AI. Haomiao spent 4 years investing in hard tech with Wen Hsieh at Kleiner Perkins. He previously founded smart home security startup Kuna, built autonomous cars at Caltech and, as part of his PhD research at Stanford, pioneered the aerodynamics and control of multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles. Kuna was part of the Y Combinator Winter 14 cohort.

Don’t miss it!

The Startup Battlefield winner, who will walk away with a $100,000 money prize, can be announced at Disrupt 2024—the epicenter of startups. Join 10,000 attendees to witness this breakthrough moment and see the next wave of tech innovation.

Register here and secure your spot to witness this epic battle of startups.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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India Considers Easing Market Share Caps for UPI Payments Operators

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phonepe UPI being used to accept payments at a road-side sunglasses stall.

The regulator that oversees India’s popular UPI rail payments is considering relaxing a proposed market share cap for operators like Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm because it grapples with enforcing the restrictions, two people accustomed to the matter told TechCrunch.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which is regulated by the Indian central bank, is considering increasing the market share that UPI operators can hold to greater than 40%, said two of the people, requesting anonymity because the knowledge is confidential. The regulator had earlier proposed a 30% market share limit to encourage competition within the space.

UPI has change into the most well-liked option to send and receive money in India, with the mechanism processing over 12 billion transactions monthly. Walmart-backed PhonePe has about 48% market share by volume and 50% by value, while Google Pay has 37.3% share by volume.

Once an industry heavyweight, Paytm’s market share has fallen to 7.2% from 11% late last yr amid regulatory challenges.

According to several industry executives, the NPCI’s increase in market share limits is more likely to be a controversial move as many UPI providers were counting on regulatory motion to curb the dominance of PhonePe and Google Pay.

NPCI, which has previously declined to comment on market share, didn’t reply to a request for comment on Thursday.

The regulator originally planned to implement the market share caps in January 2021 but prolonged the deadline to January 1, 2025. The regulator has struggled to seek out a workable option to implement its proposed market share caps.

The stakes are high, especially for PhonePe, India’s Most worthy fintech startup, valued at $12 billion.

Sameer Nigam, co-founder and CEO of PhonePe, said last month that the startup cannot go public “if there is uncertainty on regulatory issues.”

“If you buy a share at Rs 100 and value it assuming we have 48-49% market share, there is uncertainty whether it will come down to 30% and when,” Nigam told a fintech conference last month. “We are reaching out to them (the regulator) whether they can find another way to at least address any concerns they have or tell us what the list of concerns is,” he added.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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