Credential Harvesting

Dictionary Term

Alternative Forms

• Harvesting

Definitions

Definition 1

Credential harvesting is a class of cyberattacks characterized by the collection of collecting information on available authentication options mechanisms (e.g.: , identity attributes, certificates, credentials, and sessions) with the objective of leveraging to leverage this information to compromise an information security domaindomains and/or abuse identities.

Credential harvesting targets indiscriminate authentication options within a target scope in the hope of finding vulnerable ones and eventually exploiting them. In this respect, credential harvesting opportunistically seeks to find exploitable authentication solutions. It is distinct from attacks targetting specific authentication options, especially targetted that target specific identities.

Credential harvesting may be used during various attack stages, including reconnaissance, initial exploitation, privilege escalation, and lateral movement.

Information that is collected by the credential harvesting process may pertain to any pertains to authentication-related information types related to authentication options that may be leveraged for exploitation, such as identity attributes, credentials, or session information. This comprises:

• Email address

• Login ID

• Password

• Password hash

• Private key

• Session ID

• SSH key

The collected data sources from where credential information may be insufficient for exploitation and may need to be complemented with other techniques (e.g. executing a dictionary attack on collected password hashes). Example data sources used to harvest credentials includeharvested vary. Typical ones are:

• Computer memory (e.g., login ids, plaintext passwords, session tokens)

• Configuration files

• Databases

• Documents (e.g., email addresses, login ids, passwords)

• Email or application services that allow guessing attributes/dictionary attacks

• Identity repositories (e.g., LDAP, Windows Active Directory)

• People (through social engineering)

• Phishing websites (e.g., login ids, passwords, second authentication factor)

• Reusable identity attributes or credentials obtained from previous data breaches

• Web cookies,

• Web query parameters

• Web sites, social networks, and forums (e.g., email addresses via web scraping)

• Windows registry

Among these, some information may be publicly or easily available (e.g., email addresses that may be collected by web scraping on public websites or forums while others may be confidential protected and difficult harder to obtainreach, e.g. plaintext passwords in , cached credentials stored in computer memory.

The collected information may be insufficient for exploitation and may need to be complemented with other techniques (e.g., executing a dictionary attack on harvested password hashes).

Credential harvesting may be designated by the identity attribute or credential that is being harvested, e.g.: email address harvesting or password harvesting. Password harvesting specifically focuses on passwords. Email harvesting is a specialized and limited form of credential harvesting frequently used for phishing purposes.

Information collection may be performed by accessing the Information may be collected or guessed, e.g. guessing login ids from naming conventions.Information collection may be executed by accessing the information :

• by accessing it directly (e.g.

• , when it is publicly or easily available (e.g., email addresses collected by web scraping or scanning configuration files),

• by hacking it (e.g., accessing live memory to read

• cached credentials)

• ,

• by guessing it (e.g., email addresses or login ids

• ).

Threat actors engaging in credential harvesting may vary. They include:

• Bots

• Humans

• Worms (ex: Nimba)

Example countermeasures that may be effective against credential harvesting include:

• Access controls / need-to-know

• Deception (canary identities, honeypots)

• Disabling credential caching

• Digital Rights Management (DRM)

• Encryption

• Hardware Security Module (HSM)

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

• Password Managers

• Privileged Access Management (PAM)

• Security awareness programs

• System hardening

Sample Sentences

Eve, the hacker, tricked Bob, the user, by cleverly forging a spearphishing email. When Bob clicked on that link, he didn’t did not notice anything unusual when but his laptop got compromised. Once in, Eve started to harvest credentials with the intention to make a lateral movement within Bob’s corporate network. Luckily for her, she quickly found the cached credential credentials of Alice, an engineer from the IT support team who previously logged in on Bob’s laptop to help him with a technical issue.

Conceptual Diagram

Related Terms

Quotes

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See Also