Okta Customer Support Breach Exposed Data on 134 Companies

Okta has confirmed that threat actors were able to breach its customer support system and steal files related to 134 of its customers, which is less than 1% of the identity and access management (IAM) company's total roster. Out of those, Okta says cyberattackers went on to target five specific customers with the stolen data, including BeyondTrust, 1Password, and Cloudflare.

The stolen customer support files were HAR files containing session tokens, Okta's chief security officer David Bradbury explained in a detailed blog post about the incident this week.

An investigation into the hack revealed an Okta employee's credentials were compromised on a personal device, which likely led to the initial breach.

"During our investigation into suspicious use of this account, Okta Security identified that an employee had signed-in to their personal Google profile on the Chrome browser of their Okta-managed laptop," Bradbury explained. "The username and password of the service account had been saved into the employee’s personal Google account."

According to a timeline of events provided by Okta, 1Password was the first customer to reach out to Okta with a report of suspicious activity on Sept. 29. By Oct. 2, BeyondTrust had reported a similar issue. By using those indicators of compromise and associated IP addresses, Bradbury said his team was able to identify other targeted customers, including Cloudflare.

All affected session tokens embedded in the compromised HAR files have since been revoked.

Okta has also taken the step of blocking any future Google Chrome sign-ins on Okta-managed laptops using a personal Google account. Furthermore, the company added a feature tying Okta admin tokens to network location data, Bradbury added.

"Okta has released session token binding based on network location as a product enhancement to combat the threat of session token theft against Okta administrators," Bradbury reassured Okta customers. "Okta administrators are now forced to re-authenticate if we detect a network change."

The detailed explanation from Okta comes after a series of brutal cybersecurity incident plagued the company, including being used to breach MGM Resorts. Most recently, Okta's employee data was compromised through a third-party healthcare vendor.