{"id":48724,"date":"2022-10-04T16:15:07","date_gmt":"2022-10-04T16:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/microsoft-watch-out-for-password-spray-attacks-especially-you-basic-auth\/"},"modified":"2022-10-04T16:15:07","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T16:15:07","slug":"microsoft-watch-out-for-password-spray-attacks-especially-you-basic-auth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/microsoft-watch-out-for-password-spray-attacks-especially-you-basic-auth\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft: Watch out for password spray attacks \u2013 especially you, Basic Auth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft is warning Exchange Online users about a rise in password spray attacks, urging those that have yet to disable Basic Authentication to at least set up authentication policies to protect their users and data.<\/p>\n

In a post<\/a> this week, Microsoft’s Exchange Team said that enterprises still using Basic Authentication are being targeted by password spray attacks, a type of brute-force tactic in which an attacker “sprays” a targeted system with a large number of usernames and a list of common passwords to see if any of them will work.<\/p>\n

“It’s often hard to detect as the username keeps changing; accounts don’t get locked because the account being attacked changing,” the team wrote. “Attackers also distribute their efforts over their targets and keep changing their source IP. It’s a numbers game essentially, and computers are quite good at numbers. And as attacks go, it works<\/i>.”<\/p>\n