In an environment where IT intrusions are professionalized, the attacks by compromising identifiers remain the privileged access method of cybercriminals. According to the latest IBM report Cost of A Data Breachmore than 80 % of incidents involve, at some point, stolen or poorly protected identifiers. These attacks are rarely based on a complex technical flaw: they exploit human errors, obsolete practices and a persistent ignorance of the methods used.
For an executive committee, understanding the five fundamental approaches makes it possible to assess the real exposure surface of the company, far beyond technical audits or Si dashboards.
1. Guessing: intuition as a point of entry
The weakest password often remains the one that has been chosen too quickly. THE guessing Based on manual or automated attempts to access, by testing common passwords or specific to a person. It can rely on visible elements in the work environment (post-it, scheme on the screen) or on known habits (children’s first names, birth dates, etc.).
The majority of systems limit this risk by a locking policy after several unsuccessful attempts. But this mechanism remains easily bypassing if other attack vectors are not blocked upstream.
2. Harvestiting: Direct recovery of identifiers
Here, the striker is not trying to guess. He Observe and intercept. This can take the form of a keylogger (spy software installed via a trapped email or a compromised site) which records everything that is caught on a keyboard, or a site of phishing Imitating a portal known to deceive the user.
In these cases, the password is transmitted in clear to the attacker. It is valid. And often, it is reused on other services – which opens the way to other silent attacks.
3. Cracking: reconstruct passwords from chopped databases
When an attacker accesses an internal database, passwords are generally chopped -That is to say transformed by a one-way cryptographic function.
THE cracking consists in comparing these fingerprints with those generated by a list of known passwords. This approach is based on the online availability of millions of combinations from past leaks. If the hash systems are not reinforced (salting, stretching), a simple password can be found in a few seconds.
4. Spraying: the same combination tried on all accounts
Unlike targeted attacks, the Password Spraying tent the same password on one multitude of accountsone by one. Interest? Avoid account locking linked to repeated failures on a single target. This technique is based on a simple hypothesis: in a large -scale organization, large, someone probably used a common password (e.g. Welcome2024 “).
The attack often goes unnoticed, because it takes place slowly and distributed.
5. The Credential Staffing: Reuse a stolen password on other systems
Last method: exploit valid identifiers from a other platform (For example Linkedin, a SaaS provider, personal messaging) and try access to a professional system.
It is the Credential stuffing. This type of attack is particularly formidable for organizations that do not sufficiently partition the uses or that do not check the singularity of passwords between internal and external services. It is based on a behavioral reality: Massive reuse of the same passwords.
What it implies for decision -makers
Understanding these five attacks is to understand that weakness does not only come from systems, but from practices. It affects all levels of the organization. Here are three concrete implications for a comex:
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- Security policies must be realistic. Imposing complex passwords without support often leads to bypass (post-it, shared files).
- The adoption of a password manager Or a Passkeys system becomes a protective measure as strategic as the choice of an antivirus.
- Supervision of abnormal connections (Multiple failures, attempts distributed on several accounts) must be reassembled to a level of transverse responsibility, and not only treated as a technical event.
Towards a more mature organizational posture
These attacks are not an exception. They are today structural. The number of compromised databases, the automation of attack tools, and the growing porosity between personal and professional uses make permanent risk. This subject, often perceived as technical, is now a matter of corporate governance. It is suitable for each member of the COMEX to develop their skills and knowledge in this area applied to their business universe. The latest cyber attacks like that of Harvest, the Hauts de Seine department or Mark & Spencer, testify to the imperative nature of the subject.
