Displaying items by tag: credential compromise

Phishing, regular and spear, is a very common method of compromising accounts and gaining access to a network. In many incidents, the initial compromise can be traced back to a compromised account via some sort of phishing message. This happens despite the many hours and dollars spent towards educating users about the dangers of trusting messages sent to them.

Most attacks, be they real or from a penetration test, begin with an attempt to compromise a single system, or user. The compromise of a device or user account gives the attacker a small foothold in an environment that they can use to pivot to other areas and begin their complete takeover of the targeted organization. Defenders use many techniques to try to prevent this including complex passwords, complex usernames and, of course multi-factor authentication (MFA). MFA, when done properly, reduces the risk of credential compromise from phishing and spearphshing significantly.