The password spraying attack differing slightly from the brute force attack is a lethal weapon in the hands of a hacker. Read on to know more about it…
Many different sorts of attacks such as Zero-day attacks, supply chain attacks are being used by hackers to compromise business-critical data. However, one of the most prevalent ways for attackers to gain access to your environment is through compromising passwords. The password spraying attack is a specific type of password attack that can be used to compromise your system.
About Password Spraying
The term “password spraying” refers to a type of brute force attack. In a brute force attack, the hacker tries to gain unauthorised access to a single account by guessing the password multiple times in a short span of time.
Most businesses have implemented countermeasures, such as a lockout after three to five failed password attempts. But, in a password spraying attack, the hacker avoids standard countermeasures such as account lockout by “spraying” the same password across multiple accounts before trying another.
The password spraying attack, which is most commonly used against Single Sign-On (SSO) and cloud-based applications that use federated authentication protocols, allows the attacker to compromise the authentication methods. Once inside, the hacker exploits internal network flaws to obtain access to vital applications and sensitive data by moving laterally.
Unfortunately, because so many users fail to follow password best practises, password spray attacks are frequently successful. In fact, obvious numerical combinations like “12345,” common female first names, and the word “password” itself were among the 200 most common passwords disclosed in data breaches.
Detection
Although traditional defences may not identify password spraying attacks automatically, there are a few good indicators to check for. The most visible is a high number of authentication tries in a short period of time, notably failed attempts owing to wrong passwords. A increase in account lockouts is, of course, a closely connected indicator.
Password spraying attacks can be detected by monitoring the authentication logs for system and application login failures of valid accounts.
Password spraying results in an increase in attempted logins to SSO portals or cloud applications. Automated tools could be used by malicious hackers to try thousands of logons in a short amount of time. These attempts are frequently made by a single IP address or device.
After having Let’s take a closer look at the password spraying attacks and how businesses can mitigate it.
Mitigation
While it’s crucial to be able to detect successful attacks quickly, even granting hackers access to sensitive data for a short time can be disastrous. A strong cybersecurity plan necessitates a proactive, comprehensive approach that offers layered protection against as many attacks as feasible. The following best security guideline can be followed to minimize the password spraying attacks
* One of most obvious requirement is the use multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication should be enabled on externally facing services whenever possible.
* While framing up the passwords, one can refer to the NIST guidelines for password policies.
* To prevent password guessing, set account lockout policies after a specified number of failed login attempts. A policy that is too tight may result in a denial of service scenario, rendering environments unusable and locking out all accounts used in the brute force.
* For all the shared accounts, create a defensible password strategy.
* Set up clear procedures for resetting passwords after account lockouts.
* Review your incident response strategy and, as a precaution, notify the necessary team members.
* Deploy an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) technology and/or Deception Technology on end points to gain visibility of malicious activity and prevent hacker’s lateral movement.
* If you use a security logging platform, ensure that it’s configuration and setup to detect failed attempted logins across different systems so that you can increase your response and investigation into the unsucessful login activities.