Hackers stole 13m data records from insurance giant Kemper Corporation

Leading American insurance company Kemper Corporation suffered a major data breach that enabled hackers to steal and publish over 13 million data records that included employee data.

 

The massive data breach came to light on April 15 when hackers claiming to be members of the ShunyHunters cyber extortion group published about 29 gigabytes of data stolen from the insurance company. The data dump contained 13 million data records, including company records and employee data.

 

The hackers revealed that they gained access to the large dataset by breaching Kemper Corporation’s Salesforce instance. Research by CyberNews discovered that the hackers gained access to four folders - SharePoint, Azure, Salesforce and Salesforce objects.

 

The SharePoint folder contained internal employee training data and internal workflows, but the Azure and Salesforce folders contained employees’ personal details such as their names, email addresses and company designations. The Salesforce folder also contained logs from payment processing software Stripe that stored customers’ names, transaction amounts, and status of transactions.

 

“We recently became aware of a cybersecurity incident and immediately began a thorough investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity experts, and notified law enforcement. There has been no disruption to our operations or our ability to serve our customers. Our investigation remains ongoing,” Kemper Corporation told the news portal.

 

The hackers said they published the entire stolen dataset after negotiations with the insurance company over a ransom demand broke down. The company is yet to disclose the amount of ransom demanded or whether the hackers encrypted its systems to carry out a double extortion operation.

 

Based in Chicago, Illinois, Kemper Corporation owns about $13 billion in assets, earns more than $5 billion in annual revenue and employs about 10,000 people. The company offers a range of life, fire, property, casualty and auto insurance products to consumers and businesses in the United States.

 

The latest data breach follows another major data breach suffered by the company in 2020 that compromised customers’ names, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, medical information and details of workers’ compensation claims. The company later settled a subsequent class action lawsuit by paying a reported $17.6 million without admitting any wrongdoing on its part.