A recent study by Google and UC Berkeley suggests that cyber thieves are successfully stealing 250,000 valid usernames and passwords every week.
The study, which was based on 12 months of login and account data that was found on criminal websites and forums, aimed to ascertain how the data had been hacked and the actions that can be employed to avoid criminal activity in the future.
Google claims the research is vital for developing an understanding of how people fall victim to scammers and hackers and will help to secure online accounts.
The research found that, over a 12-month period, keyloggers (programs that monitor every keystroke that someone make on a computer) stole 788,000 account credentials, 12 million were harvested via phishing (emails or phone calls that con people into handing over confidential data), and an incredible 1.9 billion were from breaches of company data. The study found the most productive attacks for cyber-thieves came from phishing and keylogging. In fact, in 12%-15% of cases, the fraudsters even obtained users’ passwords.
Malicious hackers had the most success with phishing and were able to pick up about 234,000 valid usernames and passwords every week, followed by keyloggers who managed to steal 15,000 valid account details per week.
Hackers will also look to gather additional data that could be useful in breaching security measures, such as the user’s Internet address (IP), the device being used (Android versus Apple) and the physical location. Gathering this data, however, proved far harder for those with malign intent.
Of the people whose credentials were secured, only 3.8% also had their IP address identified, and less than 0.001% had their detailed device information compromised.
Google said in a follow-up blog post that the research would be used to improve the way it detects and blocks attempts to misappropriate accounts.
Historical data of the physical location where users logged on and the devices they used will increasingly be used as part of a range of resources that users can use to secure their accounts.
The research, however, did acknowledge that the account hacking problem was ‘multi-pronged’ and would require countermeasures across a number of areas including corporate networks.
Education of users is set to become a ‘major initiative’ as the research also revealed that only 3.1% of people whose account had been hijacked subsequently started using enhanced security measures such as two-step authentication (Google authenticator or a similar service) after control of a stolen account was regained.