Stay secure online with the latest on authentication techniques, best practices, and industry updates at the forefront of information security.
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Background for this topic.
Authentication confirms the identity of users or systems before granting access to resources, typically using factors like passwords (knowledge), hardware tokens (possession), or biometrics (inherence). It establishes trust boundaries that prevent unauthorized entities from impersonating legitimate users or devices within networks and applications.
Weak authentication enables attackers to perform account takeover, privilege escalation, or lateral movement by exploiting stolen credentials, phishing, or replay attacks. Deploying multi-factor authentication (MFA) with independent factors significantly reduces these risks. Secure credential storage, regular rotation, and monitoring authentication logs for anomalies are critical defenses to detect and block unauthorized access attempts early in the attack chain.
ASUS has released new firmware to patch a critical authentication bypass security flaw impacting several DSL series router models. [...]
A Fortinet FortiWeb path traversal vulnerability is being actively exploited to create new administrative users on exposed devices without requiring authentication [...]
Microsoft announced that passwordless authentication is now easier on Windows 11 through native support for third-party passkey managers, the first ones supported being 1Password and Bitwarden. [...]