1.6M RingCentral accounts' data dumped after ShinyHunters extortion attack

Some 1.6 million unique email addresses tied to RingCentral have been leaked online, alongside names, physical addresses, and phone numbers, according to Have I Been Pwned.

RingCentral disclosed the breach on July 28 and said “it was the target of a sophisticated social engineering campaign” affecting a “limited portion of RingCentral customers.” The comms platform said that it promptly responded to the intrusion upon detecting it, “took steps to stop the unauthorized activity,” and immediately launched an investigation into the security incident with help from a “leading third-party forensic firm.” “We have not seen any new unauthorized activity since taking these remediation efforts,” the company added.

RingCentral did not immediately respond to The Register’s request for comment on this story.

We will update it as needed.

While the company hasn’t named its attacker, notorious data theft and extortion gang ShinyHunters previously claimed it compromised the collaboration platform, according to a post on its data leak site, viewed by The Register.

Screenshots of the post also circulated on social media.

The crooks claimed they stole more than 623 GB of data, and set a July 30 deadline for RingCentral to pay up - or else the crew would dump the stolen information online.

RingCentral apparently didn’t pay the extortion demand, and ShinyHunters followed through on its threat, posting customers’ details on the internet.

“The company failed to reach an agreement with us despite our incredible patience, all the chances and offers we made.

They don’t care,” the crims wrote on August 3.

A ShinyHunters spokesperson told us that the group broke into RingCentral by voice-phishing an employee and tricking them into giving the crooks their password.

This same group, which security sleuth Dominic Alvieri says is his “top threat group and probably is for most analysts,” has hacked hundreds of organizations since the start of the year, including education tech firms that provide services for schools and universities along with healthcare-sector organizations.

Recently, ShinyHunters dumped data stolen from Abbott’s cancer diagnostics business with the leak containing 10.9 million unique email addresses alongside personal and health information.

The crooks claim that they made off with more than 30 million rows of customer information, including more than one million Social Security numbers and 7.5 million dates of birth.