The dangers of using the same password across different online services
Have you ever wondered why cyber thieves love passwords? After all, you might think what use are hacked passwords? Well, about five years ago some hackers put two and two together and realized because that the average person tends to re-use the same passwords across multiple web sites this could be easily exploited by using a tactic called credential stuffing.
- Credential stuffing is the use of special brute-forcing software, often called account checkers, designed to use a massive number of emails and passwords in an attempt to find a working combination to gain access to a specific website.
- This often happens on a huge scale; an attack against a single online service can on average use upwards of one million login combinations within a single day.
- To carry out these attacks cyber criminals use proxies. Online companies must allow users to access their accounts from various devices and locations so the use of anonymous proxies helps criminals to mask the origin of their login attempts by disguising their activity as that of legitimate users.
To read more about this, click on the following link from Bullguard
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