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.
Researchers discovered that measures designed to make AI more transparent to users and regulators can also make it easier for bad actors to abuse.
Threat actors are abusing HTTP client tools like Axios in conjunction with Microsoft's Direct Send feature to form a "highly efficient attack pipeline" in recent phishing campaigns, according to new findings from ReliaQuest
Cisco Talos found that abuse of remote services and remote access software are the most prevalent ‘pre-ransomware’ tactics deployed by threat actors