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.
Fortinet has confirmed details of a critical security flaw impacting FortiManager that has come under active exploitation in the wild
Proof-of-concept exploit code is now public for a vulnerability in Microsoft's Remote Registry client that could be used to take control of a Windows domain by downgrading the security of the authentication process. [...]
Details have emerged about a now-patched security flaw in Styra's Open Policy Agent (OPA) that, if successfully exploited, could have led to leakage of New Technology LAN Manager (NTLM) hashes
The Internet Archive was breached again, this time on their Zendesk email support platform after repeated warnings that threat actors stole exposed GitLab authentication tokens. [...]