{"id":13291,"date":"2017-10-25T12:51:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T12:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/?p=13291"},"modified":"2020-02-01T11:39:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-01T11:39:52","slug":"30-ceos-credentials-leaked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/breach\/email\/30-ceos-credentials-leaked\/","title":{"rendered":"30% of CEOs have had their credentials leaked"},"content":{"rendered":"
Almost one in three CEOs have had their usernames and passwords leaked as part of a data breach, new figures have shown.<\/p>\n
Infosec company F-Secure analysed the known email addresses of more than 200 CEOs from top businesses across ten countries, comparing these details to leaked spam lists and account databases distributed by hackers.<\/p>\n
It found that 30% of CEOs had their password leaked when a service they had signed up for with their corporate account fell victim to a breach.<\/p>\n
The biggest cause of this was professional networking service LinkedIn, which was linked to 53% of the leaked accounts F-Secure analysed. Hackers infiltrated the service back in 2012, then last year\u00a0released the account details of 117 million people<\/a>.<\/p>\n Next on the list was Dropbox, which 18% of CEOs had signed up to. F-Secure did, however, point out the caveat that someone else could have used a CEO’s email address to attempt to sign up for a service.<\/p>\n The issue of password re-use – where people use the same login details for multiple services – means that CEOs may need to change the passwords for other services than those their email addresses were leaked by.<\/p>\n For instance, hackers could try CEOs’ credentials leaked in the LinkedIn and Dropbox breaches to attempt to gain access to sensitive corporate information through credential re-use attacks.<\/p>\n “This study once again underscores the importance of proper password hygiene,” said F-Secure CISO Erka Koivunen. “The CEO’s credentials may have leaked even when they have done nothing wrong.<\/p>\n “We can assume that many of the services we’ve created an account in have already been compromised and the old passwords are out there on the internet, just waiting for targeted, motivated attackers to try them against other services.”<\/p>\n