Why the Salesforce Data Loader Breach Is Still a Risk for Admins : Tom M
by: Tom M
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### Summary of the Salesforce Data Loader Breach Last week, news broke about a Salesforce Data Loader breach, raising concerns for Salesforce users. Even if you think you weren’t affected, this is not the time to relax. The breach involved a social engineering attack that allowed the installation of a malicious app, which could remain hidden for months before being used to steal data. This indicates that some Salesforce organizations might still have this dangerous app installed, making them vulnerable. ### Key Points for Salesforce Admins: 1. **Audit Connected Apps**: Regularly check all connected apps in your Salesforce setup. Identify any that are unfamiliar or were installed recently, as these could be malicious. 2. **Principle of Least Privilege**: Limit user access to only what is necessary to reduce the risk of data exposure. 3. **Manage Access**: Review permissions for users who can install connected apps, to ensure only trusted individuals have such access. 4. **Implement IP Restrictions**: Use VPNs and IP restrictions to prevent unauthorized access to your Salesforce org. 5. **Consider Paid Security Features**: Salesforce Shield can provide additional security measures for your organization. 6. **Training is Crucial**: Encourage regular security training for all employees, especially those managing critical systems, to help them recognize potential threats. 7. **Salesforce's Role**: Salesforce has advanced security features, but they could also enhance their systems to help identify and manage suspicious connected apps more effectively. ### Final Thoughts: The potential threat from the Salesforce Data Loader breach remains high, and organizations should proactively take steps to secure their systems. Being vigilant and informed can help prevent future incidents. ### Additional Context: - **Security Risks**: The delay between installation and data theft highlights a serious security concern, emphasizing the need for ongoing vigilance. - **Breach Impact**: The report suggests that multiple organizations might still be at risk, so immediate action is essential. ### Hashtags for SEO: #SalesforceSecurity #DataBreach #CyberSecurity #SalesforceAdmins #DataProtection #SocialEngineering #CloudSecurity #ConnectedApps
If you learned of the Salesforce Data Loader breach last week and found you’d not fallen prey to this social engineering attack, you may be tempted to wipe your brow and move on. This is a false sense of security. Whilst the original report from Google Threat Intelligence (GTI) highlights a number of these attacks as having happened recently, one aspect of the attack should have every Salesforce practitioner on edge – that the installation of the fake malicious connected app sometimes took place months before it was used to exfiltrate data.
This implies that there are still Salesforce orgs that have the malicious app installed and are vulnerable to this attack. This being the case, now would be a good time for Salesforce Admins and org owners to take defensive action. Here are some steps you can take to reduce the possibility of being exploited.
Audit Your Connected Apps
Connected apps manage the integrations between your orgs and other systems and apps. Your org may have experienced a large accretion of connected apps during the course of its life. Each mobile app, web application, or other OAuth-based integration to your org will have its own connected app. This is as designed, but over time, the number can grow, which makes it easy for an unwanted app to hide amongst the ones you need.
Generally, it’s good to understand the nature of what’s been integrated into your org. To see this list, you can go to Setup > Apps > App Manager. Click on the App Type header to sort the apps by type. Look for the group of apps listed as Connected.
This is where you need to do some detective work. What is the history of the org? Does each connected app match the name of a partner or integration you’re aware of? Based on the information from GTI, a suspicious connected app would likely have been installed within the past year. This may help narrow down likely malicious apps. Either way, you could take the time to document and account for every connected app in your org to ensure that what’s installed should be there.
It is also possible to remove a connected app, or you could simply revoke the refresh token – but proceed with caution, and be certain of the next steps you take. Removing a connected app will disable that integration, but removing a “good” one could break business-critical integrations. So if you’re not sure, seek out help.
Salesforce have recently moved integration configurations to a new metadata type: External Client Apps. Since this is a new metadata type, there should be fewer of these, but it would be advisable to include these in your audit.
Review the Readiness, Mitigations, and Hardening Advice
Salesforce has built excellent security features into orgs, but once it has been touched, there are always security security risks that can arise. In the report and a March 2025 blog post from Salesforce Security, there were a number of important steps identified that every Salesforce org can take to mitigate, harden, and improve readiness for these attacks and other potential security issues.
Follow the Principle of Least Privilege
Always ensure that users only access the objects, fields, and records they’re supposed to. Letting everyone access everything is easy, but it creates a greater risk of exposing sensitive data. Following this principle reduces the surface area of exposure should your org or a user account become compromised.
Manage Access to Connected Applications Rigorously
The description of the exploit sounds as if the social engineering targeted Salesforce Admins and users with the Customize Applications and Managed Connected App permissions, so now is the time to review access to these elevated privileges.
Also, having a process in place to require approval of newly installed connected applications can further reduce the likelihood of a future breach.
Enforce IP-Based Access Restrictions
Setting up a company-wide VPN and enforcing restrictions on IP addresses is a great way to restrict unauthorized access. You can also set this up for connected apps, too.
Audit and Mitigate with Paid Features and Partner Solutions
While Salesforce Shield is an additional cost, the additional security may be worth the investment. Setting transaction policies can allow you to automatically alert or block questionable transactions, and event monitoring can allow you to create a more detailed accounting of how your Salesforce org is used.
There are also a number of useful partner solutions that can help you audit your org’s permissions and metadata to improve your security posture.
Identify Security Contacts
While only available to Signature and Premier, if you are in this tier, you can nominate security contact persons. In this case, in the event of a known threat, Salesforce will proactively communicate with such contacts.
Seek Training and Assistance
In a discussion with a former colleague at Salesforce, the question came up whether the admins of these systems were to blame. While this may be a tempting sentiment, over and over again, making the victim accountable only serves to reduce transparency and make it less likely that an employee may report when they’ve been the immediate victim of an attack.
In fact, Salesforce has one of the most comprehensive ongoing security training programs for their employees. This can account for the very low rate of breaches suffered by their employees.
Salesforce customers should take note of this example. Security training should include training in security technology and best practices, but also how to be aware of and avoid social engineering attacks. Every employee has the potential to be the strongest or the weakest point in your security posture.
In fact, every level has the opportunity to help. Leadership should be an example and create programs that encourage and reward the security training of their employees, especially those in charge of critical systems like Salesforce Admins, who themselves should be proactive in seeking out security training.
Finally, admins also have the opportunity to teach and foster good security practices among their user base.
Can Salesforce Help?
The exact details of how the compromise took place are not entirely clear. Apart from the earlier blog, Salesforce has not commented on this specific threat report. Salesforce has created a rich set of features to implement an environment with a strong security posture. This specific exploit begs the question of whether there is not some additional security work for Salesforce to consider.
If a connected app has gone through AppExchange security review, it should be treated with a high degree of trust – but any developer can create a connected app. Outside of approved AppExchange partners, it would be wise to treat all other connected apps with caution.
But could Salesforce also create a mechanism or system to report suspicious connected apps? If one is found to be the source of a compromise, could they identify all the orgs where that app is installed and disable it, or notify those orgs? Once identified, could they prevent its future installation in other orgs?
Security is an ever-shifting landscape. While the report makes clear that this exploit was not a result of any shortcoming in Salesforce’s technology, you would hope that they were evaluating opportunities to reduce future threat vectors.
Tighter controls risk friction and the potential to dampen innovation.
Final Thoughts: We’re Not Out of the Woods
The GTI report makes it clear there is a non-zero probability of there still being compromised orgs.
“Given the extended time frame between initial compromise and extortion, it is possible that multiple victim organizations and potentially downstream victims could face extortion demands in the coming weeks or months.”
GTI Report, The Cost of a Call: From Voice Phishing to Data Extortion
If you are responsible for your Salesforce org, and especially if your company fits the profile of the known targeted victims, you’d be well advised to take steps now and reassure yourself of your orgs security.
The post Why the Salesforce Data Loader Breach Is Still a Risk for Admins appeared first on Salesforce Ben.
June 16, 2025 at 03:10PM
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