What is credential stuffing and what are the best strategies to prevent credential stuffing attacks?
Credential stuffing is a cyberattack technique in which attackers use lists of compromised user accounts or credentials to gain unauthorized access to systems of an organization. And the cybercriminals take advantage of insecure, weak and reused passwords and other credentials. Moreover, it uses large lists of username/password combinations that have been exposed in some manner. Besides, cybercriminals may use password guessing tools, social engineering, malware, phishing and other similar cyberattacks to stage credential stuffing attacks. And the cybercriminals will feed these username/password pairs to automated tools and botnets to gain unauthorized access to target systems.
Credential stuffing attack poses a serious security threats and risks to both individuals and corporations security posture. And the attack may give cybercriminals access to the accounts of users that may contain sensitive login information to critical systems and applications. Furthermore, it will give raise the attackers to conduct financial transactions and other privileged actions against organizational assets on behalf of the users. And it can further put the enterprise at security risks if credentials are reused across multiple personal and business accounts.
Countermeasures against credential stuffing attacks include the following:
- Apply passwordless authentication
- Employ CAPTCHA
- Establish multifactor authentication (MFA)
- Use anti-bot security solutions
- Website traffic monitoring
- Checking breached or compromised credentials using tools such as ‘;–have i been pwned?
- Perform continuous authentication
- Use password hashing
- Implement security hygiene’s
- Integrate proactive threat intelligence and threat hunting feeds
- Train and aware personnel on the security risks of weak credentials