The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is on alert for the theft of thousands of credentials from American educational networks that circulate through darknet forums in countries such as Russia and can lead to security breaches.

The credentials of the networks of universities and higher institutes in the country, which have the ending “.edu”, appeared in dark web markets and in forums, for sale or publicly, as the agency notified the affected academic entities.

As he explains in a briefing document, the credential listings come from various cybersecurity incidents, the first of which was identified by the FBI in late 2020 on the dark web, and was made up of approximately 2,000 unique usernames and their respective passwords.

In May 2021, the agency re-identified more than 36,000 email and password combinations on an instant messaging platform, and in January of this year, in forums of Russian origin, access credentials to the networks of “crowd” of centers of higher education in the country, some with screenshots as proof.

From the FBI, they warn that the exposure of usernames and their passwords can encourage brute force attacks, which consist of trying to recover a key by trying all possible combinations on other platforms on which the victim is registered. If cybercriminals are successful, in addition to compromising the user’s account, they can steal personal and sensitive data.

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Source: dpa

La entrada FBI on alert for sale of educational credentials on the “darknet” apareció primero en Bitfinance.