Just because there isn’t a “novel exploit” doesn’t mean this isn’t a big deal.
Snowflake is susceptible to their SE’s having credentials stolen. These credentials can bypass MFA. And per the article, they have no expiry. That’s strikes one, two, and three.
Snowflake’s security practices lead to a situation where their customers are either required, or at minimum encouraged, to share access to broad datasets with Snowflake employees. That’s strike four.
Yes, there is also issue here that the customers are responsible themselves for not granting too broad access, and that’s on them. But it’s also on Snowflake for not having a better system that doesn’t require this access, or at minimum not having better oversight and control over this transitive access.
Once these accounts are granted access to a customer’s data, they aren’t “demo accounts” anymore. They’re real accounts, with real, very valuable data, and they should be treated as such.
Edit to add: it is worth noting that Snowflake claims the demo account did not have access to customer data and wasn’t the source of the leak, which is in contradiction with what the attackers claim.