KOCHI: As daily life becomes more reliant on online services, changing passwords of your netbanking and shopping accounts as well as your OTT credentials, has become important.
For, Account Take Over (ATO) crimes – online identity theft where a cybercriminal accesses bank, e-commerce or OTT accounts of the victim, siphons money, steals credit or debit card information or loyalty points, sometimes to commit another cybercrime – are on the rise.
A study by Technisanct Technologies Pvt Ltd, a Kochi-based cyber security firm, reveals that there is a surge in the demand for OTT accounts and passwords and the same are available for nominal prices on the dark web.
The Technisanct team, after accessing 12,000 OTT platforms, 7,500 e-retail and e-commerce applications and 4,500 EdTech brands over five months (January to May), found that many Indian users still use passwords they created in 2014, making things easy for cyber criminals.
There has been nearly a 90 percent hike in the number of ATO crimes taking place in India in 2021. Most of the crimes occur on major brands in EdTech, OTT platforms and e-commerce and e-retail applications.
“People using the same password and many digital business companies not imposing two-factor authentication or not prompting regular change of login passwords actually exposes users to ATO crimes, credential stuffing and credential cracking,” said Nandakishore Harikumar, Founder & CEO, Technisanct.
Credential stuffing is where hackers use credential information sourced from data breaches to gain access to the victim’s other accounts.
Credential cracking is another method widely reported in India in which hackers use dictionary lists or common usernames and passwords to guess their way into an account.