Trying combinations of usernames and passwords to gain access to users accounts

Password Cracking Defined

Password cracking (also called, password hacking) is an attack vector that involves hackers attempting to crack or determine a password. Password hacking uses a variety of programmatic techniques and automation using specialized tools. These password cracking tools may be referred to as ‘password crackers’. Credentials can also be stolen via other tactics, such as by memory-scraping malware, and tools like Redline password stealer, which has been part of the attack chain in the recent, high-profile Lapsus$ ransomware attacks.

A password can refer to any string of characters or secret to authenticate an authorized user to a resource. Passwords are typically paired with a username or other mechanism to provide proof of identity.

Credentials are involved in most breaches today. Forrester Research has estimated that compromised privileged credentials are involved in about 80% of breaches. When a compromised account has privileges, the threat actor can easily circumvent other security controls, perform lateral movement, and crack other passwords. This is why highly privileged credentials are the most important of all credentials to protect.

This in-depth blog highlights password vulnerabilities and risks that give attackers an edge, and provides an overview of password cracking motives, techniques, tools, and defenses.

Passwords: A Brief History Lesson

Humans have relied on passwords since the early days of civilization. A “Pass Word” was a word that allowed the user to pass a security checkpoint. Unlike today, the password would have been the same for everyone. It wasn’t a proof of identity, but more tantamount to a role-based access control, a ‘claim’ that you were authorized for access to the resource. The problem with this method is that it relies entirely on those who know the password to keep it a secret.

Passwords have long been recognized as the Achilles’ heel of identity security, and the death of the password and the emergence of a passwordless future has been predicted for decades. Yet, the number of human and machine passwords in use is increasing daily. While passwordless approaches are gaining momentum, they remain niche and often possess password characteristics themselves. However, one welcome shift is that, today, a password is less likely to be used as the sole security mechanism.

Understanding Password Hacking Psychology

Valid credentials (username and password) enable a typical user to authenticate against a resource. If a username is known to threat actors, obtaining the account’s password becomes a hacking exercise.

Often, a threat actor will first target a systems administrator since their credentials may have privileges to directly access sensitive data and systems. Such privileged credentials enable the cybercriminal to move laterally while arousing little or no suspicion. Once a threat actor has compromised credentials, everything privileged to that account is now fair game for the attacker.

Credentials compromised for the most sensitive accounts (domain, database administrator, etc.) can be a “game over” event for some companies. Those accounts, and their credentials, are a prime attack vector for privilege escalation attacks.

Attackers Have the Advantage

Attackers typically hold at least two advantages over defenders:

1. Time on their hands, as they often take a scatter-gun approach to gaining access.

2. Automated password cracking toolsets that will autonomously run the attack

Password crackers can try passwords at a slow, measured pace to avoid triggering account lock-outs on individual accounts. If a password cracker only tries one password every 10 minutes per account, 100,000 passwords will take a long time. Sensibly, they will try each password against every account they are aware of—few systems track password attempts across accounts. Even when Security Information and Event Monitoring (SIEM) or User and Entity Behavioral Analysis (UEBA) systems are active, there are limited defensive actions. You can’t lock out every account. Blocking the source IP address will result in a new IP taking up the attack, if it hasn't already distributed across 100s, or even 1000s, of IP addresses.

The optimal defense against this kind of attack is simply to not use a password on the list. Frequent password changes trigger our laziness, so “password” becomes “password1” and “password2”. Every password cracker is aware of these poor password practices. Replacing letters with numbers and symbols is also a predictable practice. For example, 3 for E, 4 for A and @ for a. Password cracking tools prepare for these common variations.

Attackers seek to learn basic information about password complexity, such as minimum and maximum password length, as well as password complexity. For example, does the password have upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers, symbols, or a combination? Attackers are also interested in learning about restrictions on the passwords. These parameters could be:

• Starting with an upper-case letter
• Not starting with a number
• Needing a minimum number of a particular character type

By restricting the repetition of characters, these password generation controls reduce the number of combinations the attacker must consider, and thus, undermine a password’s effectiveness. Password hacking tools have options to define these restrictions to expedite the attack process.

For individual users and personal accounts, it’s unlikely this kind of attack is successful. Attacks on a single account are likely to trigger a lock-out. A brute-force attack at a low velocity could literally take forever to find the right login combination, even for relatively short passwords.

Password hacking tools are ideal for automated password guessing, but equally adept at trawling through data looking for common themes, phrases, and information.

Common Password Attack Methods

In this section, we will look at common password cracking techniques. Some of these techniques may overlap in tools and methodologies. Attackers often blend multiple, complimentary tactics to improve their chances of success.

Password Guessing Attacks

One of the most popular password attack techniques is simply guessing the password.

Most of today’s systems take mercy on humans as we have countless passwords to remember. The systems permit us to make some mistakes, without locking us out of our account. When lock-outs do occur, they generally last less than 30 minutes.

1. Random Guesses

Usernames are the portion of credentials that do not change, and are also highly predictable, regularly taking the form of first initial plus surname. Usernames are commonly an email address, something widely communicated. An attacker now has half the details needed to log into many of your systems. All that’s missing is the password.

A random password guess rarely succeeds unless it’s a common password, or based on a dictionary word. Knowing information about the target identity enhances the likelihood of a successful guess by a threat actor. This information is gathered from social media, direct interaction, deceptive conversation, or even data aggregated from prior breaches.

The most common variants for passwords susceptible to guessing include these common schemas:

• The word “password” or basic derivations like “passw0rd”
• Derivations of the account owner’s username, including initials. This may include subtle variations, such as numbers and special characters.
• Reformatted or explicit birthdays for the user or their relatives, most commonly, offspring
• Memorable places or events
• Relatives’ names and derivations with numbers or special characters, when presented together
• Pets, colors, foods, or other important items to the individual

While automated password cracking tools are not necessary for password guessing attacks, they will improve the success rate.

Password guessing attacks tend to leave evidence in event logs and result in auto-locking of an account after “n” attempts. When account holders reuse passwords across multiple resources with poor password hygiene practices, then the risks of password guessing and lateral movement dramatically increase.

2. Dictionary Attacks

Dictionary attacks are an automated technique utilizing a list of passwords against a valid account to reveal the password. The list itself is a dictionary of words. Basic password crackers use lists of common single words like “baseball” to crack a password, hack an account, and reveal the complete credential.

If the threat actor knows the password length and complexity requirements of the target account, the dictionary is customized to the target. Advanced password crackers often use a dictionary and mix in numbers and symbols to mimic a real-world password with complexity requirements.

An effective dictionary attack tool lets a threat actor:

• Set complexity requirements for length, character requirements, and character set
• Manually add words and combinations of words/names
• Target common misspellings of frequently used words
• Operate in multiple languages

A weakness of dictionary attacks is that they rely on real words and derivations supplied by the user of the default dictionary. If the real password is fictitious, uses multiple languages, or uses more than one word or phrase, it should thwart a dictionary attack.

The most common method to mitigate the threat of a dictionary attack is account lockout attempts. After “n” times of wrong attempts, a user’s account is automatically locked for a period of time. It must be manually unlocked by an authority, like the help desk or via an automated password reset solution. However, the lockout setting is sometimes disabled. Thus, if logon failures aren't monitored in event logs, a dictionary attack is an effective attack vector for a threat actor.

3. Brute Force

Brute force password attacks utilize a programmatic method to try all possible combinations for a password. This method is efficient for passwords that are short in string (character) length and complexity. This can become infeasible, even for the fastest modern systems, with a password of eight characters or more.

If a password only has alphabetical characters, including capital letters or lowercase, odds are it would take 8,031,810,176 guesses to crack. This assumes the threat attacker knows the password length and complexity requirements. Other factors include numbers, case sensitivity, and special characters in the localized language.

With the proper parameters dialed in, a brute force attack will always find the password, eventually. The computing power required and length of time it takes often renders brute force tests a moot by the time it has completed. The time it takes to perform attacks is determined by the time it takes to generate all possible password permutations. Then, the response time of the target system is factored in.

Brute force password attacks tend to be the least efficient method for hacking a password. Thus, threat actors use them as a last resort.

4. Credential Stuffing

Credential stuffing is an automated hacking technique that utilizes stolen credentials. These credentials are comprised of lists of usernames, email addresses, and passwords. The technique generally leverages automation to submit login requests directed against an application and to capture successful login attempts for future exploitation.

Credential stuffing attacks do not attempt to brute force or guess any passwords. The threat actor automates authentication based on previously discovered credentials using customized tools. This approach can entail launching millions of attempts to determine where a user potentially reused their credentials on another website or application.

Credential stuffing attacks prey on password reuse and are only effective because so many users reuse the same credential combinations across multiple sites.

5. Password Spraying

Password spraying is a credential-based attack that attempts to access many accounts by using a few common passwords. Conceptually, this is the opposite of a brute force password attack. Brute force attempts to gain authorized access to a single account by repeatedly pumping large quantities of password combinations.

During a password spray attack, the threat actor attempts a single, commonly used password (such as “12345678” or “Passw0rd”) against many accounts before proceeding to attempt a second password.

The threat actor tries every user account in their list with the same password before resetting the list and trying the next password. This technique minimizes the risk of the threat actor's detection and lockouts on a single account due to the time between attempts.

With poor password hygiene by any one user or on any single account, the threat actor will likely succeed in infiltrating the resource.

Social Engineering & Human-Based Attacks

Social engineering attacks, which includes variations of phishing emails, vishing (voice calls), password reset attacks, and more are for targeted attacks. These attacks entail learning as much as possible about the target so that the cybercriminal can make educated guesses about the target’s passwords.

Names of pets, children, spouse, addresses, birthdays, hobbies, friends are the most valuable information available to the threat actors. Factor in favorite movies, TV shows, authors, bands, actors, and more, and most social media accounts become an information gold-mine.

1. Phishing & Vishing

Phishing and vishing (voice calls) are often leveraged for information gathering for other attacks, as well as to plant malicious software on an endpoint. This malware could be used to siphon off passwords. Phishing emails, or vishing can also be a part of a spoofed password reset attack. One common tactic is for a phishing email to provide a link to click on for the purposes of resetting an account password. The attackers may claim this is due to potential compromise of an old password. The email may bare the logo and likeness of a merchant, such as a bank, retailer, or service provider. However, the link in the email routes the victim to a fraudulent password reset interface. The attacker then collects the legitimate password to crack into the victim’s legitimate account. For an employee, a fraudulent password reset email could even appear to come from the corporate help desk.

These attacks are a constant reminder on why end-user training is so important. Users should always be vigilant to ensure soliciting email addresses or phone numbers are indeed legitimate.

2. Forced or Password Changes and Resets

Unfortunately, there is a common risk in resetting passwords that makes password resets targets for threat actors. Resetting a password is the act of a forced password change by someone else, such as from the service desk or an application owner. This change is not initiated by an end user.

Password Reset Risks Include:

• Passwords reset via email or text message and kept by the end user
• Passwords reset by the help desk are reused every time a password is reset requested
• Automated password resets blindly given due to account lockouts
• Passwords verbally communicated can be heard aloud
• Complex password resets written down by the end user
• Pattern-based passwords a user predictably uses when reset

Anytime a password is reset, there is an implicit acknowledgment that the old password is at risk and needs to change. Perhaps it was forgotten, expired, or triggered a lockout due to numerous failed attempts. The reset, transmission, and storage of the new password poses a risk until the password is changed by the end user. Of course, sometimes the end user neglects to change the password at all.

Once an identity is compromised, threat actors can request a password reset and create their own credentials for the account.

Password Reset Best Practices:

• The password should be random and meet the complexity requirements per business policy
• The password should be changed by the end user after the first logon and require two-factor or multi-factor authentication to validate
• Password reset requests should always come from a secure location
• Public websites for businesses (not personal) should never have ‘Forgot Password’ links
• Password resets via email assume the end user still has access to email to access the new password. If the email password itself requires resetting, another transmission method must be established.
• Do not use SMS text messages—they are not sufficiently secure for sending password reset information.
• If possible, password resets should be ephemeral—the password reset should only be active for a predefined duration. If the end user has not accessed the account again within the predefined amount of time, an account lockout will occur.

Changing passwords frequently is a security best practice for privileged accounts (as opposed to personal or consumer accounts). However, resetting passwords and transmitting them through unsecure mediums is not. For the individual, a simple password reset can be the difference between a threat actor owning your account and a legitimate password request.

3. Eavesdropping

Password eavesdropping refers to a password exposure occurring because of being overheard. Password eavesdropping may be either inadvertent or intentional and can encompass both voice-based and digital eavesdropping.

Hopefully, no one in your business is shouting passwords across office, but some organizations still use voice calls to help desks to reset passwords. During these help desk calls the updated password may be spoken to the user. It’s important that this kind of reset triggers the user to reset the password on first log in. This step upon login mitigates password risk, as an eavesdropper cannot use the new password without revealing their activity. The legitimate user will fail to login and again call the help desk.

Of course, voice is not the only way we "announce" our passwords. How many of us use Bluetooth keyboards that are transmitting our key presses over the air?

In the early days of computing, you needed to physically connect to the machine you were accessing. The systems you were authenticating to were also running locally. Now, we regularly authenticate into systems on the other side of the world, and increasingly, that are not even our systems. Our passwords are transmitted electronically through many systems to reach their destination, and absent proper encryption and other protections, may be vulnerable to eavesdropping.

4. Shoulder Surfing

Shoulder surfing enables a threat actor to gain knowledge of credentials through observation. This includes observing passwords, pins, and swipe patterns as they are being entered, or even a pen scribbling a password on a sticky note.

The concept is simple. A threat actor physically observes or uses an electronic device like a camera to collect passwords and use them for an attack. This is why, when using an ATM, it's recommended to shield the entry of your PIN on a keypad. This prevents a nearby threat actor from shoulder surfing your PIN.

5. Passwords for Purchase

While password lists, hash tables, and rainbow tables are available on the dark web, users sometimes sell their own credentials. Users with access to multiple individual and/or shared credentials may sell them in bulk.

In fact, a rogue insider could sell credentials and claim they were breached, giving them plausible deniability. This insider threat is of particularly concern with privileged users, whose credentials could give access to the enterprise’s most sensitive assets. The most effective way to address the risk of privileged credential compromise is to remove direct access. All sessions relating to highly privileged accounts should be routed through a system that facilitates access, but without revealing actual credentials.

Hash-Based Attacks

When an attacker manages to gain access to a system or website, they often aspire to steal the database containing the usernames and passwords for everyone who accesses it. Stealing a database provides at least three big benefits regarding password stealing:

1. Discovery of highly privileged user credentials that can be used to interact with the system
2. A rich trove of credentials, probably used across multiple systems
3. The database can be attacked offline, without concern for any controls around the number or frequency of login attempts

Today, it’s unusual to find systems that do not encode user passwords. Attackers will encounter a list of values instead of the text passwords. When data has been encoded rather than encrypted, there is no way to turn the encoded form into the original value. This is a trapdoor cipher; it goes one-way only. An attacker’s only chance is to uncover the cipher and attempt to create encoded versions of passwords. This can then be compared against the stolen list. The encoding process is called "hashing," and the resulting encoded passwords are called "hashes."

Let’s take a closer look at two common types of hash-based attacks:

1. Pass-the-Hash Attack

Pass-the-Hash (PtH) is a technique that allows an attacker to authenticate to a resource by using the underlying NT LAN Manager (NTLM) hash of a user’s password, in lieu of using the account’s actual human-readable password. Once obtained, a valid username and hash can be used to authenticate to a remote server or service using LM or NTLM authentication.

A PtH attack exploits an implementation weakness in the authentication protocol. The password hash remains static for every session until the password itself changes. PtH can be performed against almost any server or service accepting LM or NTLM authentication, including Windows, Unix, Linux, or another operating system.

Malware may scrape memory for password hashes, making any active running user, application, service, or process a potential target. Once obtained, it uses command and control or other automation for additional lateral movement or data exfiltration.

While PtH attacks are more common on Windows systems, they can also exploit Unix and Linux endpoints. Modern systems can defend against PtH attacks in a variety of ways. However, changing the password frequently or using one-time passwords (OTPs) is a good defense to keep the hash different between the sessions. Password management solutions that can rotate passwords frequently or customize the security token are an effective defense against this technique.

2. Rainbow Table Attack

Hashing ciphers are complex and usually well-known, which means there are a limited quantity to try. The limited availability of reliable ciphers leads to another tool in the attacker’s arsenal, the hash table. A hash table is a precomputed list of hashed passwords in a simple comparison against the stolen data.

Whereas a hash table will store the passwords and hashes for a particular cipher, Rainbow Tables hold the passwords and hashes for multiple ciphers. They then shrink the data to more manageable levels—though the files are still relatively large.

A common approach to defeating hash tables and Rainbow Table Attacks is to "salt" the hash. This applies an extra, unique encoding to each password. Even though the cipher is the same, without the salt, it won’t result in the same hash. Salting the hash renders the hash table redundant. Using long, complex, unique passwords and multi-factor authentication also provides protection against Rainbow Table Attacks and hash tables.

Examples of Common Password Cracking Software

A few examples of today's most notable and popular password cracking tools include:

• Cain and Abel
• John the Ripper
• Hydra
• Hashcast
• Aircrack

Some specialized tools, such as Wifi password crackers, Windows password crackers, etc., are designed to crack very specific kinds of password types.

Today, companies frequently engage white hat hackers and penetration testers to increase the resiliency of their security networks, including password cracking. Subsequently, the availability and development of cracking software has increased. Modern computer forensics and litigation support software also includes password cracking functionality. The most sophisticated cracking software will incorporate a mixture of cracking strategies to maximize productivity.

Risky Password Practices

Some password cracking techniques rely on system vulnerabilities or gaining access to a privileged account to achieve lateral movement and amass other passwords. However, most cracking relies on inadequate password hygiene and absence of appropriate credential management tools.

Let’s look at a few practices that make cracking passwords an easy hacking exercise.

1. Common and Reused Passwords

Humans are creatures of habit. This means there are certain words used more commonly as passwords than others.

When Game of Thrones was first screening, "dragon" rose quickly to become one of the more commonly used passwords. People frequently use the names of pets, children, spouse, and streets, as well as their birthdates.

Social media sites regularly encourage people to share the name of their favorite pet or share details from their childhood. Brilliant mechanisms to help build the lists of predictive passwords used in attacks!

Each year, lists reveal the most commonly used passwords, and certain passwords annually re-appear. Here’s the top ten list (courtesy of the CyberNews Investigation team) as of January 2022:

1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. qwerty
4. password
5. 12345
6. qwerty123
7. 1q2w3e
8. 12345678
9. 111111
10. 1234567890

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre publishes a list of the 100k most commonly used passwords. These are gathered from data on Troy Hunt’s ‘Have I Been Pwned’ website. Troy aggregates the credentials revealed in successful attacks into a searchable database. This now contains information on over 11 billion accounts. That's more than one account per person on the planet! Both resources are eye-popping, and it's well worth checking your credentials from time-to-time.

There’s little imagination amongst the most common passwords, and those are going to be the first passwords attackers try against your accounts.

2. Embedded Credentials

Embedded credentials (also called ‘hard-coded credentials’) refer to unencrypted, text-based credentials inserted within code. Embedded credentials may:

• Come as a factory default, such as for a device
• Be embedded into the code by a human, such as with a DevOps tool or data repository
• Be embedded in applications and used for app-to-app transmissions

The existence of embedded credentials presents several risks. Sometimes, credentials are embedded during development for easy access, then forgotten and published into production. Pieces of code may be shared on GitHub or another platform for collaboration, but with sensitive passwords embedded within. If an attacker gains access to an endpoint or system, they may be able to scan for plain test passwords. This grants them access to sensitive assets.

Default, hard-coded passwords are used across many of the same devices, applications, and systems. This helps simplify setup-at-scale, but at the risk of providing the potential for breach-at-scale.

Many types of embedded credentials (such as those within IoT) are difficult or impossible to manually remove or replace.

3. Default Credentials

Default credentials are simply the factory presets. They are frequently embedded into devices and applications. Often, these defaults are shared across similar devices. The defaults may be well-known by threat actors. Devices, systems, and accounts with defaults are susceptible to dictionary, brute force, and many other types of attacks. If an organization has many endpoints that all share the same, unchanged, defaults, all such endpoints could easily be compromised en masse.

4. Reused Security Questions

Security questions are a technique primarily used by financial institutions and merchants to verify a user against their account. The concept is to ask the user questions, challenging the user to respond to private and personal information that only they know.

Security questions are often required when you set up a new account. This is a form of two-factor authentication, in case of a forgotten password. The end user may receive a prompt to respond to security questions when logging on from a new location. They also may be prompted when they select “forgot password” or when they change their password.

Some common security questions include:

• What hospital were you born in?
• What is the name of your favorite pet?
• What was the make of your first car?
• What is your favorite food?
• What was your childhood nickname?
• What is your favorite team?

However, these security questions themselves present potentially far-reaching risks. The answers to some of these questions may be easily found via public records, or social media. The more places and people that know a user’s security question answers, the more likely they can be answered by someone else. When security questions and their answers are stolen in a breach, they may be used to crack into other accounts.

When a resource requests that you use security questions, our recommendation is to use the most obscure questions and answers possible. Never share similar information with another site that uses the same security questions.

5. Lack of Automated Password Managers

Any password practice that relies primarily or completely on humans to manage credentials and maintain best practices poses a risk. The sheer number of personal passwords, let alone enterprise account passwords, is far too high for any mere mortal to adequately manage.

Relying on humans is a guarantee that passwords will be re-used. Dictionary words will be used. Passwords will be embedded in code for easy access. Other risky shortcuts will be taken—this is simply human nature.

Password Security Best Practices

1. Use Password Managers & Vaults – Not Humans; Wherever possible rely on automated password managers, rather than manual human password management. Do not store passwords in spreadsheets, word documents, embedded in code, or on paper. Password managers can ensure password management and security best practices are consistently enforced. These tools can auto-inject vaulted credentials to initiate a session. Credentials are obscured from the user, such as a vendor, to provide added security. Personal Password Managers can be leveraged for standard passwords and account access. Privileged Password Management solutions (also referred to as Enterprise Password Management solutions) should be used for privileged credentials. Such credentials include passwords, SSH keys, and secrets for employees, vendors, humans, applications, and machines. These enterprise solutions are part of privileged access management (PAM) platforms, and also essential for enabling a zero trust security posture.

Enterprise password management solutions can also automate workflows to reduce exposure. This includes automatically rotating a password if it's determined the credential was or is at risk of compromise.

2. Discover and Onboard All Passwords: When granting access to a human, machine, application, employee, or vendor, all passwords must first be known--only then can they be onboarded and centrally vaulted.

3. Create Long, Random, Unique Passphrases: Strong passwords resist password cracking attempts. Passwords should be over eight characters in length and made up of both upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Avoid using dictionary words, names, and other human-readable passphrases. Length and strength should reflect the sensitivity of the account the password is meant to protect. According to NIST Special Publication 800-63, Digital Identity Guidelines, a best practice is to generate passwords of up to 64 characters, including spaces.

4. Encrypt passwords: Encryption adds a protection layer for passwords, even if they are stolen by cybercriminals. Apply end-to-end encryption that is non-reversible. In this way, you can protect passwords in transit over the network.

5. Use Unique Passwords Without Repeating: This simple best practice protects against a broad array of password re-use strategies and password cracking tools. Otherwise, if one account is breached, other accounts with the same credentials can easily be compromised.

6. Implement Password Expiration and Rotation Best Practices: Here the best practices have diverged, depending on whether the passwords are for personal use and/or standard accounts or whether they are for privileged access. NIST advises to avoid changing personal, unless their compromise is in question. On the other hand, privileged passwords, should be routinely changed (rotated). The most sensitive privileged accounts should use one-time-passwords (OTPs), or dynamic secrets, which are expired after each use.

7. Implement Multi-Factor Authentication: For sensitive accounts and vendor/remote access, single-factor authentication (password/username pair) is insufficient. Adding additional authentication factors greatly increases protection and increases assurance that the identity trying to initiate access is who they say they are. Multi-factor authentication (MFA), by incorporating factors such as endpoint or biometrics, protects accounts against password cracking tools and guessing attacks.

8. Retire Passwords When an Employee or Vendor has Departed: It is not uncommon for former employees to try to continue to access the organization's systems. Always deprovision access and change passwords when an employee departs. This not only protects from attacks by the employee, but from other threat actors who might come across the orphaned accounts and credentials.

Discover Your Most Dangerous Password Risks - Start Now

Enterprise identity security is predicated on the consistent enforcement of password security best practices. However, taking a risk management approach, organizations must prioritize the highest-impact identities first. This entails illuminating the landscape of privileged identities and credentials. You can start by leveraging the most powerful free tool for identifying privileged accounts and access across your environment - the BeyondTrust Privileged Account Discovery Application - no download necessary.

Benefit from unlimited scans to identify your privileged account risk landscape so you can take steps to close gaps, eliminated privileged vulnerabilities, and improve your identity security. Use the information provided by the tool to help protect your environment against account hijacking attacks, privileged escalation attempts, unwanted lateral movement, and other threats.

BeyondTrust Privileged Password Management

The BeyondTrust platform provides intelligent identity and access security. Our Privileged Password Management solution secures human and machine credentials, and monitors and manages every privileged session. The solution enables a just-in-time access model and supports zero trust security controls for peerless protection over privileged accounts and credentials. Contact us to learn more.

Matt Miller, Director, Content Marketing & SEO

Matt Miller is Director, Content Marketing at BeyondTrust. Prior to BeyondTrust, he developed and executed marketing strategies on cybersecurity, cloud technologies, and data governance in roles at Accelerite (a business unit of Persistent Systems), WatchGuard Technologies, and Microsoft. Earlier in his career Matt held various roles in IR, marketing, and corporate communications in the biotech / biopharmaceutical industry. His experience and interests traverse cybersecurity, cloud / virtualization, IoT, economics, information governance, and risk management. He is also an avid homebrewer (working toward his Black Belt in beer) and writer.

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