Detect Account Takeover Attacks
Cybercriminals target accounts and personal information to steal funds or monetize stolen accounts by using them for fraud, money laundering, or other crimes. Account takeover attacks are a growing threat to users and organizations, especially online retailers that rely on credit cards and loyalty points for business transactions.
Detect account takeover attacks threats affect organizations of all sizes, but smaller companies are more susceptible than larger ones to these attacks. Smaller organizations often lack the resources or expertise to proactively monitor unusual login, account creation or password reset activity that could be an early warning sign of a possible account takeover attack.
Increasingly, fraudsters use the dark web to purchase account details from legitimate websites or Telegram groups and then sell them for cash on clearnet crypto auction sites. The process of taking over accounts is called account hijacking and can cause major damage to a company’s reputation, customers, and chargeback rates.
Account Takeover Prevention: Essential Tips for Keeping Your Personal and Business Accounts Safe
The most common ways that fraudsters take over an account are through credential cracking, phishing and spear phishing, and fake account creation. The first approach is known as a credential cracking attack, where hackers try multiple values for usernames and passwords.
Phishing and Spear phishing are highly deceptive attacks that can be used to entice users to reveal sensitive data, like account numbers or passwords. These methods can be more difficult to spot than credential cracking, but they are still a serious concern.
Fake Account Creation
In this technique, a bot is programmed to automatically create a large number of fake accounts with bogus or stolen identities. It then uses the credentials of these fake accounts to attempt logins on e-commerce, travel, and banking websites in an effort to gain access to the customer’s account and their personal information.