Posts exploring how attackers steal usernames, passwords, and authentication tokens through phishing, keylogging, brute force attacks, and credential stuffing. Includes actionable guidance on multi-factor authentication, password managers, and monitoring for compromised credentials.
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23 Billion Stolen Credentials Are Already For Sale In January 2023, cybersecurity researchers at Digital Shadows reported over 24.6 billion stolen username-and-password pairs circulating on dark web marketplaces. That's roughly three credentials for every person on Earth. And every single one of them is a loaded weapon
In March 2023, the FBI and CISA issued a joint advisory warning that threat actors were actively using brute force techniques to compromise healthcare and public health sector organizations. These weren't sophisticated zero-day exploits. They were automated scripts guessing passwords — millions of combinations per minute — until one worked.
The Breach That Started With a Single W-2 In early 2023, the IRS warned — again — about a surge in W-2 phishing scams targeting businesses. A threat actor sends one convincing email to someone in payroll. That person exports employee tax records. Within hours, fraudulent tax returns are filed under dozens
In September 2022, Uber disclosed a breach that started with a single employee accepting a multi-factor authentication push notification they shouldn't have. The threat actor behind it — linked to the Lapsus$ group — had already compromised the employee's credentials. But the initial foothold? Social engineering and malware
In March 2022, the FBI issued a Private Industry Notification warning that cybercriminals were using keyloggers embedded in fake business invoices to compromise corporate networks. The attackers harvested credentials for weeks before anyone noticed. By then, the damage was done — financial accounts drained, email systems hijacked, and sensitive client data
In January 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) continued to flag business email compromise — often powered by man in the middle attack techniques — as the costliest cybercrime category, responsible for over $2.7 billion in reported losses in 2022 alone. That number isn't inflated
In April 2018, attackers hijacked the DNS servers used by MyEtherWallet and redirected users to a phishing site hosted in Russia. The entire attack lasted roughly two hours. In that window, victims lost around $17 million in cryptocurrency — simply because their browsers resolved a legitimate domain name to a malicious
In March 2022, the Lapsus$ threat actor group breached Okta — a company literally in the business of identity security — by compromising a single employee through a social engineering campaign that started with phishing. If it can happen to an identity provider securing thousands of enterprises, it can happen to your
A Single Email Cost This Company $121 Million In 2017, a Lithuanian man orchestrated a phishing scheme that tricked both Google and Facebook into wiring him over $121 million combined. He sent fake invoices from a spoofed email address impersonating a legitimate hardware vendor. Employees at two of the most
A Ransomware Gang That Starts With Your Inbox In 2022, the Medusa ransomware gang emerged as one of the most aggressive threat actors targeting organizations through phishing campaigns. They don't kick down the front door — they walk through it with stolen credentials, harvested from carefully crafted phishing emails
