Abuse covers the misuse of accounts, services, and systems for fraud, intrusion, harassment, or other harmful cyber activity.
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Background for this topic.
Abuse in cybersecurity means using systems, networks, or services in unauthorized or harmful ways, such as sending spam, hijacking accounts, or launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. It often exploits weak authentication, misconfigurations, or gaps in policies to gain access or disrupt services. Common abuse techniques include credential stuffing, phishing, and using compromised infrastructure to amplify attacks.
Managing abuse is critical because it can degrade service availability, expose sensitive data, and damage organizational reputation. Security teams focus on detecting unusual activity patterns, enforcing multi-factor authentication, and applying rate limits to reduce automated abuse. Timely abuse reporting and automated detection tools help identify and block malicious behavior, making abuse mitigation a key part of maintaining secure and reliable systems.
We found malicious samples attempting to steal Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Workloads' access keys and tokens via typosquatting and the abuse of legitimate tools.
Industry 4.0 has given rise to smart factories that have markedly improved machining processes, but it has also opened the doors for cybercriminals looking to abuse networked industrial equipment such as CNC machines. Our research investigates potential cyberthreats to CNC machines and how manufacturers can mitigate the associated risks.