Marcus White

Deployment

Security

Technical

Marcus is a Specops cybersecurity specialist based in the UK, with 8+ years experience in the tech and cyber sectors. He writes about authentication, password security, password management, and compliance.

Articles written by Marcus White

Apr

15

Password spraying: Attack guide and prevention tips

The phrase ‘spray and pray’ likely came from the military, used to describe inaccurately firing automatic weapons in the hope that one shot eventually found its mark. It’s now used to describe any scenario where a strategy relies on the…
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Apr

08

AI vishing: Mastering the art of voice deception

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 account,…
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Apr

01

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 not…
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Mar

27

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 are…
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Mar

26

NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation: Up-to-date compliance guidance

The stakes are high when it comes to cybersecurity in the financial sector. Financial organizations house a lot of sensitive customer data, including login credentials, personally identifiable information (PII), and banking details. The New York State Department of Financial Services…
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Mar

24

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 much…
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Mar

18

[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 wordlists…
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Mar

06

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 Zero…
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Mar

05

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 user…
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Mar

04

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 points,…
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