Account takeover, or ATO, is a type of online identity theft or fraud in which a nefarious third party accesses the account information of an online user. In a successful ATO attack, the perpetrator can alter account information, gain access to and steal financial data, including credit card numbers that have been stored, install ransomware or other malware, and carry out other criminal deeds. According to the FBI, ATO fraud costs firms $12.5 billion worldwide, with 41,058 victims in the US losing close to $3 billion.
What Kinds Of Businesses Are The Targets Of ATO Attacks?
Attacks by the ATO now cover far more ground than only the initial target of banking institutions. Any firm with a customer-facing login is vulnerable to ATO assaults. The most frequent objective of ATO assaults includes the introduction of malware to demand a ransom, cryptocurrency theft, and selling private, personal information for illicit and illegal financial gain, according to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report. Personal information can be exploited to make phishing and spam mailings more convincing, especially targeting the public sector, academic institutions, and the healthcare business. It can also be used to apply for credit lines fraudulently, perpetrate insurance fraud, and more. Additionally, malicious actors deploy ATO attacks targeting eCommerce websites to commandeer a valid account and make purchases. To prevent such risks to your business, you need the help of an account takeover prevention company that will provide an expert software solution platform through which account takeover can be prevented.
What Causes an Account Takeover?
Reusing account names and passwords is commonplace because the average person utilizes many online services. Users frequently develop the undesirable habit of using the same usernames and passwords across numerous benefits known to attackers. Bad actors can readily access login information through previous data breaches or data leaks for billions of compromised accounts. After gathering the data set of stolen credentials, the attacker will choose a service to target and start an attack against the relevant login APIs. These attacks can be carried out manually or automatically using security tools, bots, botnets, scripts, and custom code.
The Top Five Ways to Prevent Account Takeover
1. Assume That You Can Call Your APIs Directly And That They Are A Known Entity.
Attackers get API endpoint URLs and instructions on using them by monitoring application traffic and deconstructing front-end code. Even while the hurdle for attackers to find APIs in mobile or IoT channels may be a little greater than in online channels, it’s, at most, a small increase. Attackers switch between channels and aim for the weakest link. Anticipate it will become a primary attack vector if your channel’s security protections are less than average.
2. Always approve and authenticate the API users.
Research lists broken permission and authentication as the top two most serious weaknesses in the Top 10 API Security vulnerabilities because they are common and harmful. You ought to consistently authenticate API calls when using sensitive or private data or functionality. To confirm that authenticated users have the right to access certain data or functionality, you must constantly evaluate their permission level.
3. Just Include The Information Required For A Front End To Work.
Attackers can easily acquire and scrape this data to support ATO attack campaigns and other activities. By detecting proxies on the endpoints they control, attackers can readily reveal the API communications of front ends. This truth still applies even when data in transit is protected by encrypted transport, like TLS.
4. Fundamentally Normal Account Behavior.
Analyze the API traffic for your company and provide a detailed baseline of acceptable behavior. Both sensitive functionality or data access APIs, as well as login APIs (for risk concerns about authentication attacks), should be included in this study. You can quickly establish baselines for usual API behavior using the platform and spot any API use that deviates from those baselines. The account takeover prevention software solution can spot irregularities like frequent login failures and attempts to tamper with tokens, user IDs, or API parameters. Anyone who only uses authentication measures to prevent account takeovers will continue to be exposed and vulnerable.
5. Identify The Attackers.
You can use the account takeover prevention platform to obtain a complete context of API traffic. It correlates every activity of any given identity and distinguishes between “different” and “malicious” behavior. It can identify an attacker account takeover prevention solution attempting to hijack accounts, immediately stop that attacker, or warn the security team or use some other procedure. To detect the associated activity of an attacker, you need a substantial amount of data baselines.
Avoid Account Takeover by Using Account Takeover Prevention Software
You can set up an account takeover prevention software solution to automatically stop fraudulent account takeover activities. The account takeover prevention solution employs patented AI/ML to detect malicious activities and block illegal access to accounts, resources, and data. It does this by utilizing cloud-scale big data. The framework for preventing account takeover is aware of the regular usage patterns for each user and API endpoint. It instantly and continuously looks for alterations where an attacker might attempt to access accounts without authorization. You can also inform incident response teams with a detailed attack timeline for additional investigation.
