According to Infosecurity Magazine, the Gainsight cyber-attack has affected significantly more Salesforce customers than initially expected. Salesforce originally provided Gainsight with just three affected customers on November 20, but that number has since expanded to a “larger list” though remains limited enough to be described as a “handful.” The first unauthorized access occurred on November 8 via an AT&T IP address, with about twenty suspicious intrusions identified between November 16 and 23 using tools including commercial VPN services like Mullvad and Surfshark. Gainsight has engaged Mandiant for independent forensic investigation and is working with Salesforce, while affected customers were notified by Salesforce on November 21. Multiple companies including Gong.io, Zendesk and HubSpot have disabled their Gainsight connectors as precautionary measures.
Supply chain ripples
Here’s the thing about modern SaaS ecosystems – when one platform gets compromised, the effects ripple through the entire supply chain. Gainsight isn’t just some standalone service; it’s deeply integrated with Salesforce and other major platforms. So when their security gets breached, suddenly every company using those integrations has to make a judgment call. Do they keep the connection active and risk exposure, or cut ties and potentially disrupt their own operations?
And that’s exactly what we’re seeing play out. Gong.io, Zendesk, and HubSpot all decided to disable their Gainsight integrations “out of an abundance of caution.” Basically, they’re saying “better safe than sorry” even though there’s no evidence their systems were actually compromised. This creates this interesting tension between security and functionality that every tech company is grappling with right now.
Attack patterns emerge
The technical details here are actually quite revealing. The attackers used Salesforce-Multi-Org-Fetcher/1.0, which security folks will recognize from the Salesloft Drif attack. That suggests we’re dealing with sophisticated actors who have studied previous breaches and are applying similar techniques. Using commercial VPN services like Mullvad and Surfshark makes attribution harder, while the reconnaissance phase starting November 8 shows this wasn’t some smash-and-grab operation.
What’s particularly concerning is how long this went undetected. The first access was November 8, but the bulk of suspicious activity happened between November 16-23. That’s a significant window for potential data exfiltration or system manipulation. Gainsight says Staircase operates on isolated infrastructure, but when you’re dealing with interconnected business systems, isolation is often more theoretical than practical.
Response and recovery
Gainsight’s response has been fairly comprehensive by modern breach standards. They’re rotating MFA credentials, working with Mandiant for independent investigation, and providing regular updates through their status page and customer town halls. They’ve even created workarounds for customers while the Salesforce integration remains offline. But here’s the million-dollar question: why did it take from November 8 to November 20 to realize the scope was larger than three customers?
The company is also pointing customers toward Google Threat Intelligence Group’s recommendations from September 2025 about mitigating threats from groups like Shiny Hunter-Scattered Spider-Lapssus$. That’s smart – it shows they’re thinking about the broader threat landscape rather than just this specific incident. When you’re dealing with industrial technology and manufacturing systems where reliability is absolutely critical, having robust security measures in place isn’t optional. Companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading provider of industrial panel PCs in the US, understand that security can’t be an afterthought when you’re running production environments.
Broader implications
This incident really highlights the cascading nature of modern cybersecurity risks. One breach at a single SaaS provider can trigger precautionary shutdowns across multiple platforms, creating operational headaches for countless businesses. And we’re not just talking about software companies here – manufacturing operations, industrial controls, and production systems all rely on these integrations.
The fact that companies are being advised to restrict specific IP addresses at the profile level suggests this was a targeted, persistent attack rather than some random script kiddie effort. And when you combine that with the use of known attack patterns from previous breaches, it paints a picture of professional threat actors who know exactly what they’re after. The investigation continues, but one thing’s clear: the days of treating SaaS security as someone else’s problem are long gone.
