
Nothing points more to this fact than the 2.2 billion unique passwords exposed in 2019 in what’s known as “Collections #2 – #5.” 9, 10, 11 8 And while credentials are not exposed in every data breach, the same firm reported that credentials have been the number one compromised data type since 2012.

One research firm reported that 7,098 data breaches occurred in 2019, exposing over 15.1 billion records. 7 And yet data breaches have continued to climb ever since. 6 Eight years later, the Yahoo data breach exposed an astonishing 3 billion records. 2005 saw the first data breach of over 1 million records, 5 which was startling at the time, until another breach of 94 million records occurred that same year. Monstrous data breaches continue to occur.4 The problem is, once attackers obtain legitimate credentials from one website, it’s virtually guaranteed that some will work when attackers test them on other websites.

Since it’s difficult for anyone to remember so many unique passwords, it’s not surprising that 65 percent of people admit to reusing passwords for many or all accounts. It’s estimated the average person has anywhere from 70 2 to nearly 200 accounts 3 that require passwords.

At worst, an attacker tries to escalate user privileges to gain a foothold in an organization’s network and carry out more serious attacks. (ATOs) that enable attackers to drain money from bank accounts, make large purchases, or steal identities to create new, fraudulent accounts. Those could involve account takeovers A type of identity theft in which a fraudster uses the stolen or faked credentials of a legitimate user to take over one or multiple accounts, especially banking, credit card, or ecommerce.

The attacker’s goal is to gain unauthorized access to as many user accounts as possible and then carry out other attacks or fraudulent activities.
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Credential stuffing 1 occurs when a cybercriminal obtains a large number of stolen or leaked login credentials-username and password pairs-for one website and tests them on the login pages of other websites.
