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.
Palo Alto Networks is warning that hackers are now exploiting a PAN-OS GlobalProtect authentication bypass flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-0257, in attacks attempting to breach corporate networks. [...]
A newly discovered local privilege escalation vulnerability dubbed 'CIFSwitch' in the Linux kernel could allow attackers to forge CIFS authentication key descriptions, abuse the kernel's key request mechanism, and gain root privileges. [...]
Palo Alto Networks has warned that a recently disclosed medium-severity security flaw impacting PAN-OS and Prisma Access has come under active exploitation in the wild
Hackers are exploiting an authentication bypass vulnerability (CVE-2026-35616) in FortiClient Enterprise Management Server (EMS) to deliver an undocumented credential stealer called EKZ. [...]
Threat actors are exploiting a critical FortiClient EMS flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-35616, to deploy malware on unpatched systems. Threat actors are exploiting a critical FortiClient EMS vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-35616 (CVSS score of 9.1), that allows remote code execution without authentication. Fortinet released fixes in April after confirming zero-day attacks in the wild and urged […]
Fraudsters Tokenize Stolen Cards Into Attacker WalletsGoogle Threat Intelligence Group warned that Chinese-language phishing-as-a-service platforms are using AI, encrypted messaging and real-time OTP interception to bypass multifactor authentication and provision stolen payment cards into attacker-controlled digital wallets worldwide.
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a security flaw in Gitea, an open-source, self-hosted platform for version control, that allows unauthenticated remote attackers to pull private container images from Gitea deployments without requiring an account, password, or other credentials
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) was supposed to close a critical gap in identity security. It meant that, even if an attacker possessed the account credentials, they couldn't log in without the second factor. While that logic was sound, attackers have now figured out that they don't need to steal the second factor: they just need the user to hand it over
The FBI is warning about the Kali365 phishing-as-a-service platform (PhaaS) that is used to hijack Microsoft 365 accounts by abusing OAuth device code authentication to steal session tokens and bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA). [...]
The Kali365 phishing-as-a-service platform lowers the barrier of entry for cybercriminals, said the FBI