Account Takeover

Alternative Forms

• Account Hijacking

• Identity Hijacking

• Identity Takeover

• Identity Usurpation

...

One type of identity theft that consists for a perpetrator to take control of an existing identity of another entity without authorization. A common motivation for account takeover is to earn money by perpetrating fraud.

Examples

Eve found that Alice’s dog was named Bob. To takeover her social network account, Eve tried to login as Alice using “BOB” as a password. But because Alice was using MFA, Eve’s nefarious plan failed miserably, even though “BOB” was the right password.

Related Terms

• Account

• Credential Theft

• Identity Theft

• SIM Jacking

• True Name Identity Theft

Quotes

...