As the world becomes increasingly digital, cybercriminals are using account takeover detect ATO fraud to gain access to user accounts and carry out fraudulent activities. The most common motive is financial, from stealing cryptocurrency to selling personal information on darknet markets. In addition to stealing money, attackers can use stolen accounts to carry out more serious crimes like ransomware and data breaches.

Attackers are gaining access to more online services than ever before. They exploit users’ lax security habits, such as reusing the same password across multiple websites, and breach verification login pages on mobile sites and native mobile app APIs to steal usernames and passwords. Once they have these, they can use brute force or credential stuffing to crack accounts.

Unmasking Account Takeover Fraud: How to Detect and Protect Your Online Accounts

As cybercriminals perfect their methods and adapt to new technologies, organizations are struggling to keep up with the threat. With most ATO attacks giving away a myriad of small clues, the best way to detect them is by using bot and online fraud detection technology that analyzes all of the tiny signals coming from users, their devices, geolocations and account activity to determine whether they are human or not. Graph analytics is an especially powerful tool that makes it easy to spot these anomalies, as it allows analysts to explore the connections within data to quickly identify suspicious behavior.

When an attacker takes over a user’s account, they will typically start by changing the password to make it inaccessible to the victim. They will also try to cover their tracks by deleting notifications and emails. They may then perform a series of fraudulent activities over an extended period, so that they can escape detection for as long as possible.