Acronis Data Breach: What You Need to Know

Acronis, a leading data protection company, has recently suffered a significant data breach. The company has downplayed the severity of the breach, stating that only some customer credentials were affected and that its systems remained unaffected. However, the breach has raised concerns about the company’s security measures.

According to reports, a threat actor known as “kernelware” claimed to have breached Acronis and leaked over 12GB of data as proof. The leaked data includes various certificate files, command logs, system configurations, system information logs, archives of their filesystem, python scripts for their maria.db database, backup configuration stuff, and screenshots of their backup operations.

Attacking out of boredom

The threat actor claimed that the only motive for the breach was boredom and that the company’s endpoints had “dogsh*t security.” Acronis has denied that any of its products were affected by the breach and stated that only specific credentials used by a single customer to upload diagnostic data to an Acronis server were compromised. The company’s customer service team is currently working with this customer.

Despite Acronis’ claims, the fact remains that the client did not use multi-factor authentication (MFA) to secure their account. MFA is widely considered an industry standard for cybersecurity and one of the most advised methods. With MFA, users need to receive a one-time passcode to log in, which can be received via SMS, through a mobile app such as Google Authenticator, or via a hardware token.

Last year, Passkeys emerged as a viable alternative to passwords. If you’re interested in learning more about cybersecurity, check out our list of the best firewalls.