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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In January 2024, a threat actor used credential stuffing to compromise a test environment at Microsoft — and then pivoted to access senior leadership email accounts for weeks before detection. Microsoft. One of the most well-resourced security organizations on the planet. If it can happen there, it can happen to your
The Breach That Started With a Single Stolen Identity In 2023, a midsize accounting firm in the Midwest lost access to its entire client database — not because of a sophisticated zero-day exploit, but because a threat actor used a partner's stolen credentials purchased on the dark web. The
The Fake Invoice That Cost a Hospital $28 Million In 2024, Ascension Healthcare disclosed a ransomware attack that disrupted operations at 140 hospitals across 19 states. The initial entry point? An employee opened what appeared to be a routine file. It was trojan horse malware — a malicious payload disguised as
In 2023, a single keylogger embedded in a phishing email gave threat actors access to credentials at over 2,000 organizations worldwide as part of the Snake Keylogger campaign. The malware silently recorded every keystroke — passwords, credit card numbers, internal messages — and exfiltrated the data before anyone noticed. A keylogger
In 2015, a Belgian company called Crelan Bank lost over €70 million to a sophisticated fraud scheme that began with attackers intercepting email communications between executives. The threat actors positioned themselves between two parties, manipulated invoices, and redirected payments — all without either side realizing the conversation had been compromised. That&
In April 2022, researchers at Avast discovered that the GhostDNS botnet had compromised over 100,000 home routers across Brazil — silently redirecting banking customers to pixel-perfect phishing pages. Victims typed their real bank URLs into their browsers. The addresses looked correct. But every keystroke landed on a threat actor'
In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 298,000 phishing complaints — making it the most reported cybercrime for the fifth consecutive year. And those are just the ones people reported. I've spent years helping organizations respond to breaches, and the vast majority start
In March 2025, CISA and the FBI issued a joint advisory warning that the Medusa ransomware gang had compromised over 300 organizations across critical infrastructure sectors — healthcare, education, legal, insurance, and manufacturing. The attack vector in the vast majority of cases? Phishing. Not some exotic zero-day exploit. Not a nation-state
That Gmail Account Access Warning Might Be Real — Or It Might Be the Attack Itself In early 2024, a sophisticated phishing campaign targeted Gmail users with emails that looked exactly like legitimate Google security alerts. The messages warned of suspicious sign-in activity and directed users to a pixel-perfect fake login
In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — a sophisticated category of fake email — caused adjusted losses exceeding $2.9 billion in a single year. That wasn't from exotic zero-day exploits. It was from emails that looked real but weren'
