In 2016 we saw the world come to grips with the fact that data breaches are almost a matter of when, not if, as some of the world’s largest companies announced spills of incredible magnitude. In 2017 and 2018, we started to see regulatory agencies make it clear that companies need to proactively protect users from attacks fueled by these breaches as they show little sign of slowing.In the time between Shape’s inaugural 2017 Credential Spill Report and now, we’ve seen a vast number of new industries roll up under the Shape umbrella and, with that, troves of new data on how different verticals are exploited by attacker—from Retail and Airlines to Consumer Banking and Hotels. Shape’s 2018 Credential Spill Report is nearly 50% larger and includes deep dives on how these spills are used by criminals and how their attacks play out. We hope that the report helps companies and individuals understand the downstream impact these breaches have. Credential stuffing is the vehicle that enables endless iterations of fraud and it is critical to have eyes on the problem as soon as possible. This is a problem that is only getting worse and attackers are becoming more advanced at a rate that is devaluing modern mitigation techniques rapidly.Last year, over 2.3 billion credentials from 51 different organizations were reported compromised. We saw roughly the same number of spills reported each of the past 2 years, though the average size of the spill decreased slightly despite having a new record breaking announcement reported by Yahoo. Even after excluding Yahoo’s update from the measurements in 2017, we saw an average of 1 million credentials spilled every single day.These credential spills will affect us for years and, with an average time of 15 months between a breach and the report, attackers are already well ahead of the game before companies can even react to being compromised. This window of opportunity creates strong motives for criminals, as evidenced by the e-commerce sector where 90% of login traffic comes from credential stuffing attacks. The result is that attacks are successful as often as 3% of the time and the costs can quickly add up for businesses. Online retail loses about $6 billion per year while the consumer banking industry faces over $50 million per day in potential losses from attacks.
Source: Shape Security Blog : Key Findings from the 2018 Credential Spill Report