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Pearson, one of the world’s largest education companies, recently experienced a breach triggered by a single exposed developer token. Best known for its textbooks, digital learning platforms, and high-stakes assessments, Pearson serves millions of learners, educators, and institutions across more than 70 countries.
When you picture a data breach at a global education giant like Pearson, you might imagine hackers brute-forcing their way past next-generation firewalls. The reality, as we’ve seen again and again, is far simpler and much more preventable. This time, it was a single exposed developer token. But the ripple effect is a lesson for every company relying on SaaS, APIs, and cloud platforms.
How did the breach really happen?
The breach began with a mistake that’s all too common in modern development: a GitLab Personal Access Token (PAT) was accidentally left inside a public .git/config file. In plain English, this is like leaving a master key taped to the front door of your office, visible to anyone walking by.
Attackers, always on the lookout for such exposed keys, quickly found the token. With it, they gained access to Pearson’s developer environment and internal source code repositories. But the story doesn’t stop there. As they combed through the code, they discovered more hard-coded credentials (essentially, more keys) giving them entry to Pearson’s cloud infrastructure across Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Salesforce CRM, and potentially other systems like Snowflake.
Armed with these credentials, the attackers moved laterally across Pearson’s IT ecosystem, jumping from one platform to another, and quietly exfiltrated terabytes of sensitive data. This included customer information, financial documents, support tickets, and even proprietary source code. The breach reportedly went undetected for months, illustrating just how easy it is for attackers to blend in when privileged access is handed to them on a silver platter.
Figure 1: The attack chain behind the Pearson breach
This wasn’t a “Hollywood hack.” No zero-day vulnerabilities. No high-tech malware. Instead, it was a chain reaction set off by a single exposed secret.
In our SaaS-connected world, development tokens and API keys are often the most valuable assets a cybercriminal can steal. Once compromised, these tokens give attackers all the permissions of the original owner, bypassing traditional security controls like firewalls or endpoint protection.
Worse, many organizations don’t have the tools to detect when these tokens are being abused. Attackers can quietly query APIs, download data, and move between connected apps, all while staying under the radar of conventional monitoring systems.
The trend isn’t limited to Pearson. API and SaaS-related breaches are rising sharply, with 30% of breaches now involving a third party, which is double last year’s rate. As more business operations become automated and interconnected, the risks multiply.
What should organizations do?
First, accept that manual audits and point-in-time assessments aren’t enough. Secrets get exposed, tokens get forgotten, and permissions drift over time.
Best practices now demand:
- Never hard-coding credentials in code or config files
- Rotating keys and tokens regularly
- Constantly monitoring all API activity and configuration changes
- Keeping a real-time inventory of where secrets live and what they can access
- Auditing access and usage for signs of abuse—before it turns into a breach
But here’s the challenge: most security tools only see what’s happening “inside the app.” They rely on the application’s own logs, which attackers can often evade or erase. And they rarely provide a unified view across dozens (or hundreds) of integrated SaaS and cloud services.
How Vorlon changes the game
That’s where Vorlon comes in. Unlike traditional, “in-band” security tools that depend on what each SaaS app chooses to report, Vorlon operates “out of band.” This means it connects directly to the APIs of your SaaS applications and cloud platforms—GitLab, AWS, GCP, Salesforce, and more—to ingest audit logs, access records, and configuration data independently.
Here’s why that matters:
- Comprehensive Visibility: Vorlon creates a live map of all the secrets, tokens, and integrations in your SaaS ecosystem. If a credential is used somewhere it shouldn’t be, or if a forgotten token suddenly springs to life, Vorlon knows.
- Rapid Response: When a breach occurs, Vorlon helps you pinpoint exactly which apps, users, and secrets were compromised. Security teams can then revoke or rotate those credentials—often in just a couple of clicks—without waiting for manual log reviews or vendor reports.
- Continuous Monitoring and Detection: Vorlon doesn’t wait for quarterly reviews or annual audits. It constantly analyzes API usage and configuration changes for signs of risk or abuse, alerting your team if anything looks out of the ordinary.
- Credential Hygiene and Lifecycle Management: Vorlon flags long-lived tokens, unused secrets, and excessive permissions—so you can remediate before attackers ever get in.
This out-of-band, API-centric approach is essential for today’s SaaS-driven enterprises. It means you don’t have to trust every vendor’s logging or wait for them to disclose a breach. You get your own, real-time, independent view of what’s happening across your entire cloud ecosystem.
Lessons from Pearson: Don’t let a single token become a catastrophe
The Pearson breach is not an isolated case. APIs and SaaS apps power everything from development to customer service. Security gaps anywhere can have consequences everywhere.
Don’t wait for the next exposed token to put your business in the headlines. Start mapping your SaaS ecosystem, monitor your secrets and data flows, and be ready to respond before attackers can achieve their goals.
Vorlon is here to help you see and secure what others miss.
Want to see how out-of-band SaaS ecosystem security works?
About the author
Anil Agrawal
Security Researcher at Vorlon
Anil Agrawal is a security researcher at Vorlon specializing in SOC optimization and has over eight years of experience in cybersecurity. Before joining Vorlon, he served as a Solutions Architect at Palo Alto Networks, where he designed advanced automation solutions and cybersecurity strategies for Fortune 500 clients. His career includes technical roles at Syracuse University, where he streamlined incident response processes and conducted malware analysis. Anil holds a Master’s degree in Management Information Systems from Syracuse University with a specialization in Information Security Management. Passionate about mitigating third-party application risks, he focuses on pioneering R&D to address evolving cybersecurity challenges. Connect with Anil on LinkedIn to explore collaborations in security innovation and stay updated on his latest contributions.