The Specops research team has analyzed passwords being used to attack FTP ports over the past 30 days, in live attacks happening against real networks. Our team have found the most common passwords being used in brute force attacks,... Read More
News and Research
Categories
[New research] Cracking bcrypt: Is new-gen hardware and AI making password hacking faster?
Almost two years ago, the Specops research team analyzed how long it took to crack passwords hashed with the bcrypt algorithm. Two years is a long time in cybersecurity, so we’re revisiting the research with newer, more powerful hardware,... Read More
How to optimize Entra MFA with Specops uReset and Secure Service Desk
At Specops Software, we work closely with many customers and assist with the challenges they face in transitioning to more secure authentication methods. This has become increasingly critical as both the complexity and frequency of cyberattacks have increased. Our... Read More
Specops expands cloud offering to self-service password resets
Good news for cloud-first organizations: we’re pleased to announce Specops uReset is now joining Specops Secure Service Desk as being supported for customers who have fully migrated to the Entra ID cloud. Specops uReset is now available for cloud-only... Read More
Stale admin account with ‘123456’ password gives McDonald’s a security scare
Interacting with a chatbot as part of a hiring process feels somewhat dystopian from a candidate’s perspective. In this case, there was almost an added twist when candidate data was nearly exposed thanks to weak cybersecurity controls from the... Read More
Third-party risk: Behind the Google, Chanel, & Air France-KLM breaches
2025 has been a summer of high-profile breaches. This post will focus on four notable and high-profile victims: Chanel, Google, Air France, and KLM. Although the companies and exact data sets differ, these breaches share a clear pattern: attackers... Read More
MFA failure costs Hamilton $18m in cyber insurance payout
On February 25th, 2024, a sophisticated ransomware attack struck the City of Hamilton, crippling roughly 80 percent of its network. This included business licensing, property-tax processing, and transit-planning systems. Cybercriminals proceeded to demand an $18.5 million ransom that the... Read More
How one weak password destroyed KNP: A sad lesson in the cost of password neglect
Businesses fail all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Especially startups and fledgling ventures. So when a business like Knights of Old (trading as KNP Logistics Group) survives a century and a half, through enough recessions, wars, government... Read More
“Can you reset my password?” How a simple service desk attack cost Clorox $400 million
Last week, cleaning products giant Clorox took the unusual step of suing its IT services partner Cognizant for gross negligence. Clorox are alleging that the August 2023 ransomware attack they suffered came about thanks to an incredibly simple piece... Read More
[New research] Heatmap of 10 million breached passwords: 98.5% are weak
The Specops research team has analyzed 10 million random passwords from the 1 billion+ breached password list used by Specops Password Auditor. These are all real compromised passwords that have been captured by Specops, which you can scan your... Read More