Hackers access files of US-based cyber security firm

San Francisco, July 28 (IANS) Using an email address and password mistakenly exposed on the Internet, a hacker gained access to the internal files of US-based cyber security company Comodo, bringing the credibility of the company under question.

The credentials were found in a public GitHub repository owned by a Comodo software developer, TechCrunch reported on Saturday.

The account was not protected with two-factor authentication and with the email address and password in hand, the hacker could enter the company's Microsoft-hosted Cloud services.

The leaked credentials were discovered by a Netherlands-based security researcher Jelle Ursem who reached out to Comodo Vice-President Rajaswi Das.

According to Ursem, the account allowed him to access internal Comodo files, including sales documents and spreadsheets in the company's OneDrive and the company's organisation graph on SharePoint, allowing him to see the team's biographies, contact information, like phone numbers and email addresses, photos, customer documents and calendar.

Screenshots of folders containing agreements and contracts with several customers -- with names of customers in each filename, such as hospitals and US state governments.

"Seeing as they're a security company and give out Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, you'd think the security of their own environment would come above all else," the report quoted the Userm as saying.

Earlier this year Ursem found a similarly exposed set of internal Asus passwords on an employee's GitHub public account.