Stolen credentials can enable account takeover and lateral movement; phishing-resistant MFA, password managers, and rapid revocation reduce the risk.
Search across headline titles and summaries.
Background for this topic.
Credentials are the data used to verify a user's identity to a system, commonly including usernames, passwords, security tokens, or biometric identifiers. They serve as gatekeepers for access to accounts, applications, and sensitive information. Attackers target credentials to impersonate users, escalate privileges, or gain unauthorized system access.
Compromise of credentials can occur through phishing, credential stuffing, or theft from insecure storage. Effective defenses include enforcing strong, unique passwords, implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), and securely storing credentials using hashing or encryption. Monitoring for unusual login patterns and promptly revoking compromised credentials are also critical to limit attacker impact.
In separate targeted incidents, threat actors tried to upload malware into the Node Package Manager registry to gain access and steal credentials.
A new variant of AsyncRAT malware dubbed HotRat is being distributed via free, pirated versions of popular software and utilities such as video games, image and sound editing software, and Microsoft Office
Threat actors are showing an increased interest in generative artificial intelligence tools, with hundreds of thousands of OpenAI credentials for sale on the dark web and access to a malicious alternative for ChatGPT. [...]
The TeamTNT threat actor appears to be setting the stage for broader cloud worm attacks, researchers say.