Credential stuffing has emerged as a major cybersecurity problem across the globe. Credential stuffing attacks are constant because of the frequency of data breaches, the success of phishing, and fast monetization of credentials using automation. This in turn creates a vicious cycle through which organizations suffer intrusions in pursuit of credentials and credential stuffing in pursuit of profits.

Credential stuffing attacks use lists of leaked usernames, and passwords to continually test credential combinations through automation, until they breach a system. Usernames and passwords are easily accessible in mass data dumps consisting of millions of credentials amassed from years of data breaches. Although some of the data is likely to be stale and unusable, there will be plenty of users that have not updated their passwords in a while and whose accounts are open to attack. Once an attacker has successfully accessed one account, each of the consumer’s accounts using same password are vulnerable to exploitation of the PII it contains. In many cases the PII will be sold on or the account itself will be sold.

When a credential stuffing attack is successful, hackers gain access to a user’s account, and enables them to commit fraud. Once an attacker is inside they can monetize compromised accounts because they have access to linked bank accounts, personal data and credit cards that they can use for identity theft.

Netacea provides a smarter bot management solution that solves the complex problem of credential stuffing in a scalable, agile, and intelligent way, across websites, mobile apps, and APIs. Our technology monitors all site visits to login paths and analyses them in context relative to each of the visitors to the enterprise estate. The technology automatically learns from the business’s web estate according to the specified priorities and threats it faces.

Our Intent Analytics™ Engine, powered by machine learning, focuses on what the bots are doing and not just how they are doing it, so malicious bots are hunted out and genuine users are always prioritized. We are then able to dynamically assess what constitutes ‘normal’ behavior over time, by path or location within the website. This allows us to build an accurate model in the context of actual behavior, while providing you with the actionable intelligence you need, when you need it, so you’re empowered to make smarter decisions about your traffic.

Credential stuffing is similar to a brute force attack, but there are several clear differences:

• Brute force attacks will try to guess credentials without context, using commonly used password patterns, random strings, and dictionaries of common phrases
• Brute force attacks succeed if users choose simple, guessable passwords
• Brute force attacks lack context and data from previous breaches, making their login success rate much lower

In modern web applications with more basic security measures in place, brute force attacks might fail – but credential stuffing attacks often succeed.