Just like how you keep trying every key out of the bunch for a new door, a password spraying attack works the same. The hacker guesses one commonly used password, such as 12345678, and keeps trying it on different accounts until a match is found.
In 2022, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an alert highlighting password spraying as a frequently used technique by state-backed cyber attackers. However, a password spray attack can often be hard to detect.
This guide will walk you through password spraying attack meaning, the common signs of it and the prevention steps.
Note: We recommend only using a strong password to avoid falling victim to a password spraying attack. However, creating and remembering strong passwords can often be a hassle. Use FastestPass, a reliable password management tool that creates, saves, and fills passwords for you.
What Is a Password Spraying Attack?
Password spraying is a type of brute force attack that targets multiple accounts by guessing commonly used passwords. At the same time, it differs from traditional brute force attacks. They often focus on a single account and repeatedly attempt different passwords until the correct one is found.
To make it simpler, here’s how password spraying works. You’ve many toy locks, and instead of guessing many codes on one lock, you try the same easy code on all of them. If one opens, you’re in! That’s how password spraying works. The black hats keep trying common passwords on many accounts to find one that works without getting caught.
On the other hand, a password spray often targets privileged accounts, such as the head of a company or someone with important data saved on his device. However, there are a few targeted management services and ports that this type of attack targets, such as:
- Oracle Database – Port 1521/TCP
- Secure Shell (SSH) – Port 22/TCP
- Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) – Port 389/TCP
- File Transfer Protocol (FTP) – Port 21/TCP
- Telnet – Port 23/TCP
- MySQL Database – Port 3306/TCP
- HTTP and HTTPS Management Services – Ports 80/TCP and 443/TCP
How Do You Detect a Password Spraying Attack?
Ever wondered why everyone keeps emphasizing strong passwords? Blame the brute force attacks. And since they’re often hard to detect, you might not even know when your data has leaked. However, there are still 3 common warning signs of a password spraying attack:
1. A Sudden Surge in Login Attempts
Here’s the first warning sign: too many login attempts. You’ll notice various account logins to your account which aren’t normal on a regular basis.
2. Attempts to Access Inactive Accounts
Password spraying will also include a significant spike in log ins to the inactive accounts. For example, there can be an account of someone who’s either not in the office or that account is inactive, and seeing a surge in inactive account access is a sign of a spraying attack.
3. Spike in Failed Logins From Active Users
Hackers using password spraying usually don’t have a fully accurate list of usernames. They either guess or use an outdated list bought online. If you notice login attempts from former employees or invalid usernames, it could be a sign of password spraying.
Password Spraying Attack Example
There are various examples of password spraying attacks and Midnight Blizzard’s is among the most common ones. Back in November 2023, the nation-state hacking group Midnight Blizzard (Nobelium) launched a spraying attack against Microsoft. They used a large pool of legitimate residential IP addresses to avoid detection.
Their attack successfully compromised a legacy test tenant account with administrative privileges that lacked multi-factor authentication (MFA). Following that, they entered Microsoft’s systems and exploited an old OAuth application with elevated access. Over the next two months, way before Microsoft detected the breach, the attackers exfiltrated all sensitive data from key executives and employees.
Password Spraying Prevention Tips
You can protect your passwords using a list of methods. However, the best is to use a reliable password management tool, such as FastestPass, and forget the hassle of generating strong passwords and saving them manually. However, there are other 5 other password spraying prevention tips we recommend:
1. Use a Password Management Tool
Password management solutions, such as FastestPass, do all the heavy lifting for you, while you sit back and relax. While there’s a list of password managers, we recommend FastestPass for its affordability and reliability for its premium features. Keeping it short, here’s what to expect.
Expect more than just saving passwords. FastestPass offers an encrypted password vault for your passwords, passkeys and financial information or other sensitive data. You can organize all your credentials via its personalized security dashboard and leverage seamless password management. Meanwhile, password spraying and other password attacks become a tale of the past, thanks to FastestPass’ air-tight security.
2. Use Mulit-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Using MFA significantly drops the risk of a password spraying attack. Implementing different user authentications barricades the way of black hats. The hackers also leave your account than proceed with a loathsome process.
3. Use a Zero-trust Approach
Zero Trust follows the principle of “never trust, always verify.” Meaning that all users and devices, even within the organization’s network, are potential risks and must be verified before gaining access. It prioritizes strong Identity and Access Management (IAM) to ensure proper authentication and authorization, allowing access only to necessary resources.
However, with FastestPass, things only get easier. Your password vault is protected by a master key. And, you can share the key with the people you trust via a code. Similar to MFA, you authorize that user to gain access. And without the code, no one can access your password vault.
4. Implement Strong Lookout Policies
Implement policies to lock accounts temporarily after multiple failed login attempts. Apply rate limiting to restrict login attempts from a single IP address, making it more difficult for attackers to carry out large-scale attacks.
5. Monitor Your Account
Regularly monitor and analyze login attempts and account activity to detect suspicious behavior that may indicate password spraying attacks. Conduct routine checks of user access and permissions to ensure that only authorized individual have the appropriate privileges.
You can prevent password spray attacks by: A password spraying attack uses a few passwords to attempt logging in to multiple accounts. Whereas a dictionary attack tries different words from a dictionary to log in to a single account. The best defense is to use the preventive measures for password-cracking attempts, such as: A password spraying attack includes using a few common passwords and trying to log in to multiple accounts. Whereas a credential stuffing attack is where the hacker tries to use leaked credentials from one website and try to log into anyother website. A rainbow table is a precomputed database of password hashes designed to optimize storage and retrieval by balancing time and memory usage.
Final Note
Seeing a high volume of account logins, an increased amount of failed login attempts, and other common signs of a password spraying attack. And the best way to avoid this brute force attack is to use a reliable password manager that saves your passwords, passkeys and financial information in a secure vault. We recommend FastestPass for it, for its premium password management features.
