The hackers have since demanded a ransom payment from Grafana Labs to prevent the release of its codebase.

US software company Grafana Labs has confirmed a breach in which hackers gained access to the organisation’s GitHub system after stealing a private token and downloaded the company’s codebase.  

A provider of an open-source and visualisation web app with 25m users and more than 7,000 customers, including Anthropic, Bloomberg, Nvidia, Microsoft and Salesforce, Grafana Labs has a presence in more than 40 countries. 

In a statement posted on LinkedIn, Grafana Labs said, “Our investigation has determined that no customer data or personal information was accessed during this incident, and we have found no evidence of impact to customer systems or operations.

“We immediately initiated forensic analysis and we believe we’ve identified the source of the credential leak. We have since invalidated the compromised credentials and implemented additional security measures to further secure our environment against unauthorised access.”

The intruder or group – whose identity has yet to be confirmed – sent Grafana Labs a payment demand, threatening to release the stolen code. However, the organisation has refused to comply with the request.

Grafana Labs said, “Based on our operational experience and the published stance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which notes that ‘paying a ransom doesn’t guarantee you or your organisation will get any data back’ and only ‘offers an incentive for others to get involved in this type of illegal activity’, we have determined the appropriate path forward is to not pay the ransom.”

The company also stated that as part of its standard security practices, it will share information as part of a post-incident review once the investigation is complete.

Earlier this month, Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn confirmed a cyberattack affecting its North American operations, after a hacking group claimed to have stolen 8TB of data from it. Nitrogen claimed that the extracted files included confidential instructions, internal project documentation and technical drawings related to projects involving Intel, Apple, Google, Dell, Nvidia and other companies.

And prior to that, Instructure, the parent company behind Canvas, the education management platform reportedly hacked by ShinyHunters, reached an agreement with the cyber gang in which the group has returned stolen data, deleted copies and agreed not to extort client institutions affected in the hack – for unknown compensation.   

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