This is what happens when hackers steal your personal data
We all know that hackers are looking for ways to steal credentials and get sensitive data, but how exactly does this process work?
Researchers at data protection company Bitglass (opens in a new tab) do a second ‘Where is your data’ test, generate a accuracy (opens in a new tab) for employees of a fictional retail bank, a functional web portal for the bank and Google Drive accounts, complete with real credit card data.
Progress
The team then revealed ‘rogue’ Google Apps logins to the Dark Web and tracked activity on fictitious employees’ online accounts. Within the first 24 hours, there were 5 bank logins and 3 Google Drive logins. The files were downloaded within 48 hours of the first leak. Bitglass’ Cloud (opens in a new tab) Tracking by the Access Security Broker (CASB) showed that over the course of a month, the account was viewed hundreds of times, and many hackers successfully accessed other victims’ online accounts.
More than 1,400 visits were logged to the Dark Web logins and fictitious bank web portals, and 1 in 10 hackers attempted to log into Google using leaked credentials. 94% of hackers who had access to Google Drive discovered other online accounts of their victims and attempted to log into the bank’s portal.
Additionally, 12% of hackers who successfully accessed Google Drive attempted to download files with sensitive content. Hackers come from more than 30 countries, although 68% of all logins come from Tor anonymous IP addresses, of non-Tor visits to the site, 34.85% come from Russia , 15.67% from the US and 3.5% from China.
“Our second data tracking test shows the dangers of reuse password (opens in a new tab) Nat Kausik, CEO of Bitglass, said: “Organizations need a comprehensive solution that provides a more secure means of user authentication and enables IT to quickly identify breaches and control access. access to sensitive data”.
More details about the test and its findings are available in the full report which can be downloaded from Bitglass Website (opens in a new tab).