Picture an Italian entrepreneur receiving a phone call from their country’s Defense Minister, Guido Crosetto. The politician has an important but challenging ask – he needs the wealthy individual to wire around €1 million to a Hong Kong-based bank... Read More
News and Research
Categories
Post-quantum cryptography: Password security in the quantum era
Quantum mechanics is the study of physics at the level of incredibly small things – smaller than atoms. Anyone who’s looked into theories like wave-particle duality and entanglement, knows things can get confusing (and weird) very quickly. But it’s... Read More
ALIEN TXTBASE data-dump analysis: Dangerous or junk?
Specops researchers have been digging into the ALIEN TXTBASE data-dump, which was recently merged into the HaveIBeenPwned (HIBP) dataset by Troy Hunt. After some analysis of the over 200 million passwords in this dataset, we estimate about 20 million... Read More
MFA alone isn’t enough: Protect both passwords and the logon
Any system secured behind just a username and password is asking for trouble. Research from Microsoft estimates that over 99% of account takeover attacks can be stopped if the end user has multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled. MFA is pretty... Read More
[New research] Which passwords are attackers using against RDP ports right now?
The Specops research team has been analyzing 15 million passwords being used to attack RDP ports, in live attacks happening against networks right now. Our team have found the ten most common passwords attackers are using and analyzed their... Read More
How cyber-realistic is Netflix’s Zero Day thriller?
The idea of an entire country being shut down by cyberattack is a scary thought. In Netflix’s recent thriller ‘Zero Day’, this is the reality faced by former president (played by Robert de Niro). To find out how realistic... Read More
HIBP adds 284M malware-stolen accounts: Takeaways on Telegram & infostealers
Leaked credentials are in high demand on underground marketplaces. A database of stolen credentials is a like a giant box of keys to a hacker. With the use of the right software, they can rapidly try these keys against... Read More
Introducing MFA for Windows Logon, RDP or VPN with Specops Secure Access
We’re excited to introduce Specops Secure Access: Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for Windows logon, RDP, and VPN — a powerful new way to add an extra layer of protection to your organization’s authentication process. By implementing MFA at key access... Read More
Botnet targets Microsoft accounts with password spraying attack
A huge botnet (network of private computers infected with malware) of 130,000 devices has been targeting Microsoft 365 service accounts across the world. First discovered by SecurityScorecard on February 24th, the botnet appears to be engaged in a mass... Read More
The power of love and breached passwords
When analyzing breached passwords from the Specops database, we often turn up some surprising trends and insights. For example, the unexpected prevalence of the word “love” in passwords and its significance across different languages and cultures. We’ll take a... Read More