EMC’s security division RSA has revealed that an "extremely sophisticated" hack has breached into its security systems, compromising a widely used technology for preventing computer breaches.
RSA chairman Art Coviello said in an open letter to customers that the cyber attack resulted in stealing of some information, including data related to RSA’s SecurID authentication products.
However, RSA declined to comment on details of the type or amount of information stolen.
The maker of data storage computers is also a security vendor, and the attack is a potential threat to sensitive computer systems. RSA’s customers include the military, governments, banks and healthcare firms. EMC is itself an RSA customer.
EMC said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that RSA was the victim of an APT or an "advanced persistent threat," a term often associated with corporate espionage, nation-state attacks, or high-level cybercriminal gangs.
Last year’s Google hack was believed to be an APT attack as well, and was linked to China.
Assuaging fears of vulnerability in customers, RSA said in its SEC filing that it is "confident that the information extracted does not enable a successful direct attack on any of our RSA SecurID customers."
But it added that "this information could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of a current two-factor authentication implementation as part of a broader attack."
The company said it is providing "immediate remediation steps" for customers. Among its recommendations are: enforcing strong password and pin policies; following the rule of least privilege when assigning roles and responsibilities to security administrators; and non compliance with email or phone-based requests for credentials.
The company’s RSA encryption algorithm is used to secure e-Commerce and other online transactions. The company also hosts the RSA security conference every year.
