Specops Password Policy | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

When it comes to access security, one recommendation stands out above the rest: multi-factor authentication (MFA). With passwords alone being simple work for hackers, MFA provides an essential layer of protection against breaches. However, it's important to remember that MFA isn't foolproof. It can be bypassed, and it often is.  If a password is compromised, there are several options available to hackers looking to circumvent the added protection of MFA. We'll explore four social engineering tactics hackers successfully use to breach MFA and emphasize the importance of having a strong password as part of a layered defense.  1. Adversary-in-the-middle (AITM) attacks AITM attacks involve deceiving users into believing they're logging into a genuine network, application, or website. But really, they're giving up their information to a fraudulent lookalike. This lets hackers intercept passwords and manipulate security measures, including MFA prompts. For instance, a spear-phish

IBM's 2023 installment of their annual " Cost of a Breach " report has thrown up some interesting trends. Of course, breaches being costly is no longer news at this stage! What's interesting is the difference in how organizations respond to threats and which technologies are helping reduce the costs associated with every IT team's nightmare scenario.  The average cost of a breach rose once again to $4.45 million, increasing 15% over the last three years. Costs associated with escalation and detection have rocketed up 42% during the same period. With that in mind, I was surprised to learn that only 51% of the breached entities surveyed by IBM decided to bolster their security investments, despite the rising financial consequences of dealing with a breach. Headline stats around breach costs are interesting – but can digging into these trends actually help you save money? Organizations want to know where to invest their security budget and which technologies offer the bes

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

Regardless of the country, local government is essential in most citizens' lives. It provides many day-to-day services and handles various issues. Therefore, their effects can be far-reaching and deeply felt when security failures occur. In early 2023, Oakland, California,  fell victim to a ransomware attack . Although city officials have not disclosed how the attack occurred, experts suspect a phishing email is the most likely cause. As a result, city officials brought down their servers to contain the attack. Governments have been the target to many ransomware attacks  and breaches. As most local governments maintain a small IT staff, there is potential for shared passwords, reused credentials, and a lack of multi-factor authentication security, exposing vulnerabilities for a breach.  Oakland is Breached It was first noticed on a Wednesday evening in early February; when Oakland, California city officials quickly took most services' backend servers offline and posted a m

Threat actors continue to adapt to the latest technologies, practices, and even data privacy laws—and it's up to organizations to stay one step ahead by implementing strong cybersecurity measures and programs.  Here's a look at how cybercrime will evolve in 2023 and what you can do to secure and protect your organization in the year ahead.  Increase in digital supply chain attacks  With the rapid modernization and digitization of supply chains come new security risks. Gartner predicts that  by 2025, 45% of organizations worldwide will have experienced attacks  on their software supply chains—this is a three-fold increase from 2021. Previously, these types of attacks weren't even likely to happen because supply chains weren't connected to the internet. But now that they are, supply chains need to be secured properly.  The introduction of new technology around software supply chains means there are likely security holes that have yet to be identified, but are essenti

The new  Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (CIRCIA)  requires CISA to create rules regarding cyber incident reporting by critical infrastructure organizations. The RFI and hearings precede a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that CISA must publish sooner than  24 months  from the enactment of CIRCIA, which the President signed into law  in March . The sessions and NPRM are steps toward creating the new rule.  CISA is  soliciting expert opinion on what to include  in a report but is taking steps to implement the change soon. Here's what that change means for businesses in the US and what you can do about it now.  Overview of the CISA reporting rule  Owners and operators of critical infrastructure must file cyber incident reports with CISA  within 72 hours . They must report ransom payments for ransomware attacks  within 24 hours . Other businesses can take part voluntarily.  The CISA Director can  subpoena  organizations in noncompliance to compel

A recent report revealed that ecommerce provider,  Shopify uses particularly weak password policies  on the customer-facing portion of its Website. According to the report, Shopify's requires its customers to use a password that is at least five characters in length and that does not begin or end with a space.  According to the report, Specops researchers analyzed a list of a billion passwords that were known to have been breached and found that 99.7% of those passwords adhere to Shopify's requirements. While this is not meant to suggest that Shopify customers' passwords have been breached, the fact that so many known breached passwords adhere to Shopify's minimum password requirements does underscore the dangers associated with using weak passwords. The danger of weak passwords in your Active Directory  A recent study by Hive Systems  echoes the dangers of using weak passwords. The study examines the amount of time that would be required to brute force crack passwo

Password security is only as strong as the password itself. Unfortunately, we are often reminded of the danger of weak, reused, and compromised passwords with major cybersecurity breaches that start with stolen credentials. For example, in May 2022, the popular wedding planning site, Zola, was the victim of a significant cybersecurity breach where hackers used an attack known as  credential stuffing . It resulted in fraudulent activity tied to customer accounts. Let's look at the Zola breach and why it emphasizes the need for organizations to bolster their password security and protect against various types of password attacks. What happened with the Zola attack? Instead of going after Zola's core business-critical infrastructure, hackers went after customer accounts with the May attack. Attackers used an age-old technique called  credential stuffing  to compromise several Zola customer accounts. With access to the compromised accounts, they attempted to purchase gift vouche

Attackers are using many types of attacks to compromise business-critical data. These can include zero-day attacks, supply chain attacks, and others. However, one of the most common ways that hackers get into your environment is by compromising passwords. The password spraying attack is a special kind of password attack that can prove effective in compromising your environment. Let's look closer at the password spraying attack and how organizations can prevent it. Beware of compromised credentials Are compromised credentials dangerous to your environment? Yes! Compromised credentials allow an attacker to "walk in the front door" of your environment with legitimate credentials. They assume all the rights and permissions to systems, data, and resources the compromised account can access. The compromise of a privileged account is even worse. Privileged accounts are accounts that have high levels of access, such as an administrator user account. These types of accounts r

Password security has long been an issue for businesses and their cybersecurity standards. Account passwords are often the weakest link in the overall security posture for many organizations. Many companies have used Microsoft's default password policies for decades. While these can be customized, businesses often accept the default values for their organization. The Windows default password policy is a good start, but are there security vulnerabilities associated with it? Let's look at the current recommendations from leading cybersecurity authorities and see how they measure up against the Windows default password policy. Windows default password policy settings Many, if not most, business environments today use Microsoft Active Directory as their identity and access management solution in the enterprise. Active Directory has served organizations in this capacity for decades.  One of the built-in capabilities provided by Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS)