When cybercriminals get access to your users’ login credentials, they can use them for a variety of malicious goals including fraud and account takeover (ATO). For example, attackers can hijack financial accounts to steal funds, retail accounts to illegally buy items, and social media accounts to sway opinions or spread malware. These attacks can be costly for businesses which suffer revenue loss, brand damage and other operational costs, and regulatory fines if they fail to report data breaches or protect customer information.
What is a credential stuffing bot?
Cybercriminals rely on stolen login data from leaked breaches to conduct credential stuffing attacks. Password stuffing attack also use bots to conduct widespread login attempts using the stolen credentials. These attacks can be difficult to prevent since they leverage leaked username/password pairs and dictionaries of common passwords. The most effective way to combat them is to educate users on password policies (such as using a password manager and having unique passwords for each service) and to implement security measures like multifactor authentication, regular password changes and bot detection.
Credential stuffing is one of the most damaging cyberattacks and affects almost all applications with login functionality. A recent Ponemon Institute study found that companies lose an average of $6 million per attack and suffer a host of other consequences including lost customers, business disruption, reduced productivity and brand damage. This article will explain what a credential stuffing attack is, why it’s so damaging and how to protect your organization against this threat.