Anyone who uses any cloud service needs to be aware of the potential for hackers to steal the tokens these services use when you log in.
If you use Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive, a token permits you to access your data from any of your devices.
When someone steals that token they can take over your account, stealing data or distributing infected files through it.
While most of us are not security experts and do not need to know the technical details, I did want to make you aware of this issue.
As individual users, there may not be much we can do other than notify others who can resolve the issues if we run into them.
If you notice activities in your accounts that you are sure you did not originate, don’t shrug it off – make sure the solution or your IT or security staff knows about it.
How to Protect Your Company
Information about prevention and recovery can be found in Skyfence’s post A New Cloud Threat for 2015: The Man in the Cloud (MITC) Attack.
They reveal that Imperva’s Application Defense Center (ADC) research arm unveiled this new type of threat in their August Hacker Intelligence Initiative Report just a few days ago at Black Hat USA 2015.
More details can be found in Beware This New Cloud Security Threat on LinkedIn and PCMag’s post Man-in-the-Cloud Attacks Want Your Dropbox, Google Drive Files which elaborates on how the scheme works.
One question I still have is whether all cloud solutions use tokens and are at risk. If I discover the answer I will update this post.
I did find some useful information about how security is provided in various ways to businesses moving into the cloud in this post.
