Project Cumulus Tracks Stolen Credentials
April 26, 2016
Ever wonder how far stolen information can go on the Dark Web? If so, check out “Project Cumulus—Tracking Fake Phished Credentials Leaked to Dark Web” at Security Affairs. Researchers at Bitglass baited the hook and tracked the mock data. Writer Pierluigi Paganini explains:
“The researchers created a fake identity for employees of a ghostly retail bank, along with a functional web portal for the financial institution, and a Google Drive account. The experts also associated the identities with real credit-card data, then leaked ‘phished’ Google Apps credentials to the Dark Web and tracked the activity on these accounts. The results were intriguing, the leaked data were accessed in 30 countries across six continents in just two weeks. Leaked data were viewed more than 1,000 times and downloaded 47 times, in just 24 hours the experts observed three Google Drive login attempts and five bank login attempts. Within 48 hours of the initial leak, files were downloaded, and the account was viewed hundreds of times over the course of a month, with many hackers successfully accessing the victim’s other online accounts.”
Yikes. A few other interesting Project Cumulus findings: More than 1400 hackers viewed the credentials; one tenth of those tried to log into the faux-bank’s web portal; and 68% of the hackers accessed Google Drive through the Tor network. See the article for more details. Paganini concludes with a reminder to avoid reusing login credentials, especially now that we see just how far stolen credentials can quickly travel.
Cynthia Murrell, April 26, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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