Passwords continue to be the primary access point to people’s data, but they are also the scourge of cybersecurity efforts for one simple reason: they represent a layer of protection managed by the human element of the cybersecurity system, and people are the biggest security liability.
Aside from addressing the human factor, organizations can significantly lessen the impact of a Credential Theft Attack by increasing vulnerability awareness. The most serious vulnerabilities can be recognized and addressed as a priority by enhancing the organization’s overall attack surface visibility.
Defining Credential Theft Attacks
Credential theft attacks involve obtaining an organization’s or an individual’s authentication credentials illegally with the purpose to abuse them. Typically, legitimate credentials are leveraged to steal sensitive data and information. Credential theft, which is frequently an early approach in a complex cyber-attack, allows attackers to violate systems and networks, undetected, creating new accounts and resetting passwords, and causing chaos within a business. These compromised accounts could be from an inactive user or exposed service.
Another form of credential theft attack is credential stuffing. During online data breaches, large volumes of unhashed user credentials are sometimes exported and offered to other threat actors on the dark web. By acquiring a list of usernames and passwords, threat actors automate a process of authenticating into a specific target’s website. Targets range from web email clients and financial institutions to social media platforms. By utilizing these credentials, the threat actors hope that some of the credentials have been reused for other accounts too.
Most compromised accounts originate from social engineering scams. Social engineering is a form of electronic theft where people are manipulated through convincing schemes to divulge their personal information and credentials. Threat actors are becoming more cunning and convincing, fooling even IT specialists at times. Once your account has been compromised the threat actor will proceed to lock you out of as many of your platforms as possible while utilizing your persona for nefarious purposes.
A common misconception among users is that threat actors only attack enterprises since people have little value when it comes to electronic assets. This could however not be further from the truth. Threat actors who are building a complex attack often need accounts of seemingly insignificant individuals to engage with the bigger fish, to seem legitimate.
Addressing Credential Theft Attacks
Yes, the credential threat can be reduced. The weakest link in your organization can also become the strongest asset against credential theft. Employees, yes, the users. Many global enterprises have seen a significant reduction in credential theft through training campaigns aimed at schooling (and testing) their employees about the dangers of social engineering. Employees also need to be trained on the importance of cyber hygiene and account segregation. Employees should be warned about using their enterprise ID as a username anywhere else, for example.
From an organizational perspective, another way to combat credential theft is by enforcing Multifactor authentication. Threat actors who have more resources and time have found easy ways around simple two-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication with time-sensitive vectors is a strong way of protecting credentials.
Security teams who assume that credentials will never be compromised are naïve. Organizations need to ensure that their security is layered as much as possible. In the case of credentials, the principle of least privilege needs to be applied. Furthermore, accounts that have any administrative access need to be segregated from the day-to-day accounts of administrators. By doing this employees with higher levels of privilege should have both a day-to-day account and an administrative account. Should a breach occur using credentials that have been obtained illegally, the threat actor would not have exposure and access to as many resources. Significantly reducing the fallout after the breach.
In Conclusion
Because circumventing organizational cyber security mechanisms, by using stolen accounts, is much simpler than most other forms of cyber-attacks, it is also very common. These attacks rely, mostly, on human negligence and the lack of cyber hygiene. With this said, organizations can implement tools and policies to directly monitor and enforce security policies. Cyber visibility plays an important role in protecting an organization from credential theft attacks, therefore, improving transparency will improve cyber security efficacy.
Also Read: 5 Biggest Enterprise Cloud Security Risks
