Credential Stuffing Prevention

Credential stuffing prevention keeps attackers from using stolen or leaked user IDs and passwords to gain unauthorized access to an organization’s systems, networks, and data. Typical ways to mitigate credential stuffing attack risk include requiring strong passwords, enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA), and investing in dark web and Telegram monitoring. 

How Flare Helps with Credential Stuffing Prevention

What do you gain from Flare that helps with credential stuffing prevention?

Flare continuously monitors dark web forums and prominent threat actor communities to identify leaked credentials outside the organization’s perimeter, like sales of combolists and stealer logs. The platform automates cyber reconnaissance so organizations can identify leaked credentials, including mentions of their names, being sold in the cybercriminal ecosystem.

How does Flare answer credential stuffing prevention needs?

Flare’s AI-powered assistant translates cybercriminal activities written in foreign languages, like Russian, Arabic, Spanish, and French. By translating posts and messages, Flare reduces the impact of the cybersecurity skills gap by making it easier for security analysts of all experience levels to review and understand the listings. 

What are the key benefits of Flare that help with credential stuffing prevention?

• Gain continuous cyber reconnaissance coverage across the entirety of the organization’s external attack surface
• Identify previously unknown digital risks, like undetected credential theft and leakages
• Reduce costs arising from multiple monitoring channels that consume financial and staff resources 

Credential Stuffing Prevention: An Overview

What is credential stuffing?

Credential stuffing attacks occur when threat actors send high volumes of stolen login credentials to an application hoping to gain unauthorized access to legitimate accounts. Attackers buy stolen credentials on the dark web or from prominent threat actor communities, relying on other cybercriminals who sell the information after obtaining it from a data breach. 

How do credential stuffing attacks work?

When attackers deploy a credential stuffing attack against a website, like a social media application or corporate asset, they typically follow these steps:

• Purchase leaked or stolen credentials on the dark web or through prominent threat actor communities
• Import the combolist or stealer logs into their chosen automation tool
• Launch the attack against a company’s IP address, device hostname, or API login
• Track successes and failures 

Once attackers have access to an account, they can:

• Steal money from bank accounts or make fraudulent purchases
• Access sensitive information, like personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, or financial data
• Sell the valid credentials to other cybercriminals

What is the difference between credential stuffing, brute force, and password spraying attacks?

Although all three attacks target user logins to cloud resources and applications, each takes a different approach:

• Credential stuffing: using breached or leaked legitimate credentials to gain access to the same resource or hoping people reuse the credentials for other resources, like using the same password for personal and professional purposes
• Password spray: using common passwords, like 123456 or Summer2023, with various user login IDs to see if they work
• Brute force: targeting a single user login ID and attempting to gain access by trying various passwords

Credential stuffing risk mitigation is often more challenging for organizations because these attacks associate known users with passwords that they have really used. Since many people reuse passwords, organizations often have no visibility into data breaches that exist outside their perimeters, meaning no insight into whether someone is using a breached or leaked password. 

Why Do You Need Credential Stuffing Prevention in Today’s Cybersecurity Landscape?

Why are credential stuffing attacks on the rise?

As organizations adopt cloud-based technologies, credential stuffing attacks have become more common and more successful. Modern businesses use Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to reduce costs and manage remote and hybrid workforce activities. Even when workforce members are on-site in an office, they access these technologies through the public internet. This connectivity means that any attacker with access to the public that uses stolen, breached, or leaked credentials to gain unauthorized access can masquerade as legitimate users, making them more difficult to detect. The longer it takes the organization to detect the security incident, the more time the attackers have to achieve their objectives. 

Why are traditional credential stuffing prevention techniques not enough?

Traditional credential stuffing prevention techniques include:

• Implementing MFA, a combination of something people know, something they have, and something they are 
• Requiring users to enter their password and provide additional security information which does not constitute MFA because it’s still something a person “knows”
• Asking people to solve a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart)
• Blocking known malicious IP addresses
• Device and connection fingerprinting

Problematically, these are all activities that occur at the organization’s perimeter. They help authenticate users, but they fail to address issues about information available outside the company’s control. 

Why is credential stuffing prevention important?

Preventing credential stuffing attacks is critical to protecting an organization from the impact of a successful attack. This impact can include:

• Corporate espionage and theft: gaining access to development environments or GitHub repositories containing source code
• Financial loss: money spent on incident response and recovery, defense costs, or customer notification
• Loss of customer trust: customer churn related to people whose data was stolen 
• Damaged reputation: media reports related to a data breach undermining digital brand value

Why are dark web and messaging app monitoring critical to credential stuffing prevention?

Dark web and messaging app monitoring are critical to credential stuffing prevention because they give organizations insight into leaked, stolen, and breached credentials that attackers use to compromise systems and steal data. Additionally, these activities can detect devices known to be infected with infostealer malware, like the RedLine malware variant, that collects information from users browsers, including:

• Logins and passwords
• Cookies
• Auto-fill form fields

By identifying these threats that exist outside the organization’s perimeter, security teams can take proactive steps to reduce risk, like:

• Requiring users to change passwords
• Removing malware from devices
• Focusing monitoring on potentially at-risk user accounts for anomalous activity

Credential Stuffing Prevention and Flare

Flare provides the leading Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution for organizations. Our technology constantly scans the online world, including the clear & dark web, to discover unknown events, automatically prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. Flare’s dark web and data leak monitoring enable you to identify information outside your perimeter, like stolen or leaked credentials, that attackers can use to compromise your systems and sensitive data. 

Our solution integrates into your security program in 30 minutes to provide your team with actionable intelligence and automated remediation for high-risk exposure. See it yourself with our free trial.