Krebs on Security

MARCH 21, 2019

Hundreds of millions of Facebook users had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by thousands of Facebook employees — in some cases going back to 2012, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Renfro said the company planned to alert Facebook users today, but that no password resets would be required.

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The Last Watchdog

JULY 24, 2023

Accessing vital information to complete day-to-day tasks at our jobs still requires using a password-based system at most companies. Today, bad actors are ruthlessly skilled at cracking passwords – whether through phishing attacks, social engineering, brute force, or buying them on the dark web. Some solutions do this today.

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Authentication Passwords Phishing Social Engineering 245

Zero Day

JUNE 17, 2025

Those codes are supposed to serve as two-factor authentication to confirm our identity and prevent scammers from accessing our accounts through a password alone. Here's how it happened and why it's a problem. Written by Lance Whitney, Contributor June 17, 2025 at 11:25 a.m.

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Security Affairs

MAY 24, 2025

law firms for 2 years using callback phishing and social engineering extortion tactics. law firms using phishing and social engineering. “Implement basic cyber hygiene to include being suspicious, robust passwords, multifactor authentication, and installation of antivirus tools.” ” concludes the report.

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Krebs on Security

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

The targeted SMS scams asked employees to click a link and log in at a website that mimicked their employer’s Okta authentication page. The bot allowed the attackers to use the phished username, password and one-time code to log in as that employee at the real employer website.

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Identity Theft Phishing Cryptocurrency Accountability 268

The Last Watchdog

JANUARY 31, 2022

We all rely on passwords. For better or worse, we will continue to use passwords to access our computing devices and digital services for years to come. Related : The coming of password-less access. Passwords were static to begin with. They have since been modified in two directions: biometrics and dynamic passwords.

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Krebs on Security

JANUARY 14, 2025

.” Bob Hopkins at Immersive Labs called attention to the CVE-2025-21311 , a 9.8 “critical” bug in Windows NTLMv1 (NT LAN Manager version 1), an older Microsoft authentication protocol that is still used by many organizations. Unpatched.ai “It may be the first of many in 2025.”

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The Last Watchdog

NOVEMBER 19, 2023

As the companies face nine federal lawsuits for failing to protect customer data, it’s abundantly clear hackers have checkmated multi-factor authentication (MFA). But the coup de gras was how easily they brushed aside the multi-factor authentication protections. How they steamrolled multi-factor authentication is a reason for pause.

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Krebs on Security

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

USDoD claimed they grabbed the data by using passwords stolen from a Turkish airline employee who had third-party access to Airbus’ systems. By stealing these tokens, attackers can often reuse them in their own web browser, and bypass any authentication normally required for that account. Microsoft Corp. government inboxes.

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Krebs on Security

FEBRUARY 26, 2023

million customers, including website administrator passwords, sFTP credentials, and private SSL keys; -December 2022: Hackers gained access to and installed malware on GoDaddy’s cPanel hosting servers that “intermittently redirected random customer websites to malicious sites.”

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Krebs on Security

JUNE 15, 2024

.” In a SIM-swapping attack, crooks transfer the target’s phone number to a device they control and intercept any text messages or phone calls sent to the victim — including one-time passcodes for authentication, or password reset links sent via SMS.

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Jane Frankland

MAY 16, 2025

Fraudsters use AI, social engineering, and emotional manipulation to steal not just money, but also trust, time, and peace of mind. Auto-fill Exploits: A small but critical sign when your password manager doesnt autofill it might be a scam site. Avoid reusing passwords across different services. Always stop and check the URL.

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The Last Watchdog

MARCH 1, 2023

The IT world relies on digital authentication credentials, such as API keys, certificates, and tokens, to securely connect applications, services, and infrastructures. Related: The coming of agile cryptography These secrets work similarly to passwords, allowing systems to interact with one another.

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Krebs on Security

MARCH 26, 2024

Several Apple customers recently reported being targeted in elaborate phishing attacks that involve what appears to be a bug in Apple’s password reset feature. “It was like this system notification from Apple to approve [a reset of the account password], but I couldn’t do anything else with my phone. .”

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Hacker's King

DECEMBER 25, 2024

Tools designed for password cracking often exploit weak security practices, but understanding these methods is vital for safeguarding your account. This guide explores Snapchat password-cracking tools while focusing on ethical ways to enhance security. Weak or simple passwords are particularly vulnerable.

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Security Affairs

NOVEMBER 15, 2024

The malware could harvest a huge trove of data from infected systems, including cookies, autofill, cryptocurrency wallets, 2FA authenticators, password managers, and email client information. Researchers from Gen Digital who discovered the threat, believe it is in its early development phase.

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Malwarebytes

OCTOBER 19, 2023

The administrator password is "admin". Research has revealed that IT administrators are just as likely to do the tech equivalent of putting the key under the mat as end users, with both groups using similarly predictable passwords. For that reason, using default passwords is considered a serious security risk.

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Krebs on Security

AUGUST 21, 2020

” The perpetrators focus on social engineering new hires at the targeted company, and impersonate staff at the target company’s IT helpdesk. Consider using a formalized authentication process for employee-to-employee communications made over the public telephone network where a second factor is used to.

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Schneier on Security

MAY 1, 2019

This is why I keep using words like "transformative," "revolutionary," and "lit" (not so much anymore): SKs basically shrink your threat model from "anyone anywhere in the world who knows your password" to "people in the room with you right now." They're still much better than traditional password-only authentication systems.

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Malwarebytes

MARCH 14, 2025

Unless youre able to reverse engineer an app, there is not a lot you can do after the fact. Change your password. You can make a stolen password useless to thieves by changing it. Choose a strong password that you dont use for anything else. Better yet, let a password manager choose one for you.

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Security Affairs

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

Identity services provider Okta warned customers of social engineering attacks carried out by threat actors to obtain elevated administrator permissions. Okta is warning customers of social engineering attacks carried out in recent weeks by threat actors to obtain elevated administrator permissions.

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Zero Day

JUNE 6, 2025

Also: Massive data breach exposes 184 million passwords for Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and more Individually, any one of those pieces of data can be exploited by the wrong people. The hackers say that the dates of birth and social security numbers were originally encrypted but have since been decrypted and are now visible in plain text.

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SecureWorld News

JULY 8, 2024

Case in point: a colossal password compilation dubbed "RockYou2024" has emerged, containing nearly 10 billion unique passwords. The name "RockYou2024" pays homage to the infamous RockYou data breach of 2009, which exposed 32 million passwords due to insecure storage practices.

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Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing

MAY 7, 2025

Traditional Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), while a step up from password-only security, is no longer enough to fight modern phishing schemes. Todays threat actors use AI to craft compelling phishing campaigns and advanced social engineering tactics to slip past MFA, resulting in credential theft and account takeovers.

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SecureWorld News

MAY 28, 2025

In early May 2025, two of the United Kingdom's best-known grocers, Marks & Spencer (M&S) and the Co-op, as well as luxury retailer Harrods, were struck by sophisticated social-engineering attacks that tricked IT teams into resetting critical passwords and deploying ransomware across their networks.

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IT Security Guru

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

A prime example is multi-factor authentication (MFA), a security process that requires users to verify their identity in two or more ways, such as a password, a code sent to their phone, or a fingerprint. Other Ways Threat Actors Exploit Human Behaviour In addition to fatigue attacks, malefactors weaponise social engineering.

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Duo's Security Blog

MAY 28, 2025

The Duo difference: End-to-end phishing resistance For too long, defenders have focused solely on login protection with multi-factor authentication (MFA). Complete Passwordless: Eliminating passwords from enrollment and fallback, so users never have to rely on outdated, insecure credentials. This creates a real identity crisis.

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Duo's Security Blog

JUNE 8, 2023

Some of it is positive, but the general consensus is that people don’t love multi-factor authentication (MFA); they see it as a necessary evil at best. That’s why I’m so excited to announce our vision to streamline Duo’s authentication workflows, a feature that will deliver seamless, secure login experiences.

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SecureWorld News

FEBRUARY 13, 2025

Evolution of social engineering Social engineering exploits human psychology to manipulate individuals into revealing sensitive information or taking harmful actions. Attacks on identity verification systems Bypassing biometric security: Many organizations use facial and voice recognition for authentication.

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Krebs on Security

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

In November 2022, the password manager service LastPass disclosed a breach in which hackers stole password vaults containing both encrypted and plaintext data for more than 25 million users. 15, 2022, LastPass said an investigation into the August breach determined the attacker did not access any customer data or password vaults.

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Krebs on Security

JANUARY 30, 2024

2022 that an intrusion had exposed a “limited number” of Twilio customer accounts through a sophisticated social engineering attack designed to steal employee credentials. The missives asked users to click a link and log in at a phishing page that mimicked their employer’s Okta authentication page. Twilio disclosed in Aug.

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IT Security Guru

NOVEMBER 18, 2024

It’s interesting to note that many people will happily unlock their phone by just looking at it and have no problem tapping their bank card against a store’s point of sale terminal, but if the term password security is presented to them, they have a blank expression, or worse, shrink away. People are just starting to adopt it passively.

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Passwords Password Management Technology Authentication 101

Security Affairs

MAY 2, 2025

Microsoft now makes all new accounts “passwordless by default,” enhancing protection against social engineering attacks, phishing, brute-force, and credential stuffing attacks. ” “New users will have several passwordless options for signing into their account and theyll never need to enroll a password. .”

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Duo's Security Blog

DECEMBER 14, 2023

The email informs John that the company suffered a security breach, and it is essential for all employees to update their passwords immediately. A few days later, John finds himself locked out of his account, and quickly learns that the password reset link he clicked earlier did not come from his company. What is social engineering?

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Malwarebytes

MAY 8, 2025

Beside stealing usernames, passwords and circumventing two factor authentication, we identified malicious code capable of performing additional nefarious actions unbeknownst to the victim. After entering their credentials, victims are social engineered by the crooks to type a security code that was sent to their email address.

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Krebs on Security

JULY 10, 2022

In both cases the readers used password managers to select strong, unique passwords for their Experian accounts. John Turner is a software engineer based in Salt Lake City. Experian’s password reset process was useless at that point because any password reset links would be sent to the new (impostor’s) email address.

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Duo's Security Blog

APRIL 3, 2025

Users dont like passwords and logging in, period. MSPs should like passwords even less since, according to Gartner , 40% of all help desk calls are related to password resets. While this may avoid authentication fatigue, it certainly risks and may even violate some security standards.

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