Cisco Confirms Data Breach, Hacked Files Leaked

Cisco has confirmed a breach of its network, where the attacker used voice phishing to convince an employee to accept a malicious multifactor authentication (MFA) push. The breach resulted in cyberattackers gaining access to the company's virtual private network (VPN) and the theft of an unspecified number of files from its network, the company stated on Aug. 10.

The attacker compromised a Cisco employee's personal Google account, which gave them access to the worker's business credentials through the synchronized password store in Google Chrome. To bypass the MFA protecting access to Cisco's corporate VPN, the attacker attempted voice phishing, or vishing, and repeatedly pushed MFA authentication requests to the employee's phone. Eventually, the worker either inadvertently, or through alert fatigue, accepted the push request, giving the attacker access to Cisco's network.