Account takeover attacks are a form of fraud that takes control of a person’s online account. This can involve stealing their personal information, money, or both, and it can be devastating for both the victim and the organization that doesn’t prevent it.

Account Takeover Prevention

A common way prevent account takeover attacks that cybercriminals take over accounts is by leveraging a list of user login and password combinations stolen from data breaches. They use this as a basis to try and gain access to the target website with bots or other automated techniques, which are known as credential stuffing.

Fraudsters may also re-use credentials from one breach to attempt to gain access to other websites, using a technique known as password spraying. This involves trying a common password combination against many usernames until it is found to work.

How Prove Fights Synthetic Identity Fraud

The most effective defense against account takeover attacks is a robust fraud detection process that monitors all of the actions on an account, including resetting the password. This way, you can detect if someone is making high-risk changes to their identity information and stop the attacker in their tracks.

Create baselines of typical account behavior and then identify any API consumption that deviates from these. This will help you detect anomalies such as excessive login errors or manipulation of tokens, user IDs or API parameters.

In addition, you should screen new user accounts against a database of compromised credentials, so you can be aware of any existing users who have been breached and alert them immediately to change their passwords. This can protect your business from credential-stuffing attacks, as well as e-commerce fraud, where thieves can extract value from a victim’s accounts through fraudulent purchases or credit transfers.