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.
The campaign recommends using passwords containing three random words and enabling two-factor authentication
Enhancements include support for OpenID Connect as an integration mechanism.
Step up training with cybersecurity drills, teach how to avoid social engineering traps, share open source monitoring tools, and make multifactor authentication the default.
FBI and CISA warn of attack on multifactor authentication account to exploit "PrintNightmare" exploit.
Patch flaws and enforce authentication policies, CISA and FBI warn State-sponsored threat actors from Russia over the last year breached a non-governmental organization (NGO) by leveraging multifactor authentication (MFA) defaults and exploiting the PrintNightmare vulnerability in Windows Print Spooler.…
Alert explains how misconfigured authentication allowed hackers in
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has just put out a bulletin numbered AA22-074A, with the dramatic title Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Gain Network Access by Exploiting Default Multifactor Authentication Protocols and “PrintNightmare” Vulnerability. To sidestep rumours based on the title alone (which some readers might interpret as an attack that is going […]
The FBI says Russian state-backed hackers gained access to a non-governmental organization (NGO) cloud after enrolling their own device in the organization's Duo MFA following the exploitation of misconfigured default multifactor authentication (MFA) protocols. [...]