StatusCast and 4me’s support team are ready to take the next step in migrating our support services from StatusCast’s legacy ticketing system to using 4me directly for all change requests and incidents. This next step in integrating StatusCast’s operations to 4me will ultimately provide you with much more insight into requests you submit and their status.

What is changing?

On Wednesday, July 24th 2024 StatusCast’s support portal will be shifted to https://4me-statuscast-portal.4me.com/, this self service portal will be your new resource to submit new tickets and view the status of any existing ones that you have submitted.

This new portal will give you a more accurate status of the ticket, and in the event that you request a change or run into an issue that requires development work, you will have visibility into the status of that from a development to a QA, to a production perspective. Also, customers will be able to find answers to their questions by walking through the portal that contains a knowledge base which will be extended as we go along.

We are very excited to bring this extended visibility to our customers as we believe it’s a major step forward in the support that we provide. As a result of this change, emailing support@statuscast.com will no longer open tickets. You will need to access the self-service portal to submit and access support requests.

A link to this self service portal has been added to StatusCast’s admin portal and you can access it by selecting the Settings > Help Center > Support Tickets

Existing StatusCast administrators have been granted access to this new portal. To access the StatusCast Portal, go to https://4me-statuscast-portal.4me.com/ and start with ‘Forgot your 4me password?’(1) so that you can get sent an email to register your support portal password. If you do not get an email while doing this you may not have been granted automated access, in that case you can self register by clicking “Register as New User”(2):

The StatusCast Portal requires you to use an email address and to set up a password with 18 characters.

In keeping with our commitment to security and transparency we wanted to inform you that our provider for SMS, Twilio, has alerted our security team to an incident that occurred. Below is the statement we received from Twilio which gives a detailed account of the incident and what has been done:

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Twilio has been notified by one of our backup carriers, iBasis, that IdentifyMobile inadvertently exposed certain SMS-related data sent by iBasis publicly on the internet that included personal data. We are writing to inform you that some of your personal data and non-personal data (such as data related to marketing campaigns) was accessed by a security research group while it was publicly exposed by IdentifyMobile.

Although this incident was outside Twilio’s control, we take it very seriously and are committed to helping you understand the full impact. 

What do you need to know? 

In order to deliver messages in specific regions, Twilio relies on numerous carriers to maximize deliverability to their final destinations. Twilio was notified that iBasis (a Twilio backup carrier) had used IdentifyMobile (iBasis's further backup carrier) who inadvertently enabled public access on an AWS S3 Bucket during development work. Information contained in this bucket was made public from May 10-15, 2024, and accessed between May 13-14, 2024. Based on a joint investigation between IdentifyMobile and Amazon AWS, we learned that a portion of this data was accessed by the Chaos Computing Club (CCC). CCC is a security research group that identifies security issues; CCC has confirmed that they are not holding any data downloaded from the AWS S3 Bucket. We do not have evidence that allows us to confirm that no other third party accessed the data. 

Twilio does not own this bucket, and none of our systems have been compromised in connection with this data exposure. This incident was the result of actions taken by IdentifyMobile and outside of Twilio’s control.

While we continue collaborating with these carriers to bring you the most accurate information regarding this exposure, the portion of data exposed by IdentifyMobile related to SMS sent between January 1, 2024 and May 15, 2024, and included: 

• Mobile number 

• SMS message content 

• SMS Sender ID 

• SMS Timestamp

What have we done so far?

• Twilio initiated our incident response process to rapidly investigate this matter.

• Twilio escalated this issue to the iBasis executive team; subsequently, we’ve done an analysis on the data logs that were compromised to provide you with as much information as possible.

• Out of an abundance of caution, we have ceased sending traffic to iBasis where possible. iBasis informed Twilio that it has stopped routing with IdentifyMobile.

• We will continue working with our 3rd party carriers to get you any additional details that may arise from this incident.

What do you need to do?

We recommend reviewing the SMS traffic you sent between January 1, 2024 and May 15, 2024, discussing the implications of an exposure with your internal team(s) and deciding if you need to engage with impacted individuals. If you need additional information regarding this incident, we are here to support you throughout this situation.

We deeply regret any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding and cooperation.

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What has StatusCast done?

Once StautsCast’s security team was alerted an audit was performed to try and determine the potential impact this had on our service. Based on Twilio’s report it is possible that some notifications sent through StatusCast’s service would have been sent using the iBasis carrier. Based on the report data would have included the recipient's phone number as well as the SMS message. SMS notifications in StatusCast are designed to be brief and to drive users to the status page. SMS messages do not include recipients name or other personal identifiable information(PII). 

As always in StatusCast you have the right to choose whether SMS notifications are sent or not. SMS options can be controlled in the Settings and Integration sections of the application if you wish to review your configurations. At this time there are no additional action items for StatusCast to take in regards to its application or infrastructure, however we will maintain close communication with Twilio and if any additional information is released we will pass it along through our own status page.

StautsCast has partnered with Twilio for years and they have maintained a strong commitment to security and transparency. We will take that as well as this incident into consideration as we continue to offer SMS notifications in the application. If you have any additional questions please reach out to us at support@statuscast.com

Following the acquisition by 4me, we have been preparing to integrate StatusCast’s support operations into 4me’s infrastructure. By combining our support operations with 4me’s, our customers will have the advantage of 24x7 support and the number of available representatives will almost quadruple.

To take the first step forward in officially merging these teams we will be removing the live chat option available in the admin portal starting on Friday June 7th, 2024. You can continue to be  to communicate with support through email(support@statuscast.com) or by accessing our current support portal.

In the coming months, you will notice several changes in how StatusCast's support is provided. This will involve the introduction of a new and improved support portal for tracking any change requests or issues that you have logged with support. Additionally, more tools and auditing information will be made available in the application, and there will be an increase in the help and knowledge resources accessible directly.

We are very excited to be expanding our support offering with 4me and know that it will ultimately help our community of valued customers and users!

At approximately 8:19PM EDT, StatusCast’s engineers were alerted that some status page and admin applications were inaccessible. The team identified that its hosting partner, Microsoft, was experiencing some issues in its US East region related to app services and SQL databases connections. As of 9:03PM EDT services have been restored and StatusCast’s team is currently working with Microsoft to fully investigate the incident. Once the team has completed it’s investigation we will follow up with an RCA.

At this time StatusCast should be operating fully as expected, if you continue to have any further issues please contact us at support@statuscast.com

As of 9:03PM EDT services have been restored and StatusCast’s team is currently working with Microsoft to fully investigate the incident. Once the team has completed it’s investigation we will follow up with an RCA.

In working with Microsoft, StatusCast’s team confirmed that the disruption was due to an outage with SQL Databases located in Azure’s US East region which is where StatusCast is primarily hosted: 

StatusCast itself was impacted by this outage from approximately 8:19 PM EDT and had fully recovered by 9:03 PM EDT. StatusCast’s team will continue to work closely with Microsoft to further optimize its offering to help ensure that impact of service provider outages is as minimal as possible. 

We are very excited to announce that StatusCast has been acquired by 4Me! Since 2013 we have been working hard to close the gap between service outages and those who are impacted, and this acquisition is one large step further in our journey of providing critical information to those who need it most. 

The inclusion of StatusCast's features will aid 4Me in it's mission to modernize service management for organizations. Click here to read more!