Nikkei breached via employee Slack account

Cybernews reports that major Japanese media company Nikkei Inc. which owns leading financial newspapers The Nikkei and the Financial Times has confirmed having its network breached through a hacked employee's Slack account, resulting in the compromise of its business partners' sensitive data, as well as the chat histories of 17,368 people using the messaging platform.

Multiple countermeasures, including password resets, have been implemented in the wake of the incident, which was detected in September, according to Nikkei, which did not provide additional details on its subsidiaries and departments that use Slack. Such an attack signifies the "modern attack lifecycle," said DeepTempo Founding AI Engineer Mayank Kumar.

On the other hand, BlackFog founder and CEO Darren Williams noted that intrusion shows the growing abuse of collaboration tools to facilitate network compromise and data exfiltration activities.

"Platforms like Slack now essential to business operations are increasingly prime targets for credential theft and lateral movement once inside," Williams added.