That’s the Real Me: How to Prevent Account Hijacking

Can’t find your emails? Having trouble accessing sensitive documents stored in your cloud drive? There’s a very good chance your account has been hijacked.

In this blog, we’ll break down the main warning signs of a compromised account and what you can do to prevent account hijacking.

What is Account Hijacking?

Account hijacking describes a specific type of cyber attack in which a threat actor gains unauthorized access to someone else’s account. This might take the form of financial fraud, cloud service account takeovers, emails, or social media. 

There are different methods of account hijacking, with phishing attacks among the most common. Sophos found that 41% of IT professionals report daily phishing attacks on their environments. More on that later. 

MSPs also have to worry about cloud account hijacking. Sharing sensitive documents in the cloud can lead to serious security problems if malicious actors gain access. 

Verifying legit cloud accounts becomes exceptionally challenging for any IT professional, especially when managing multiple clients with multiple cloud services and unverified or inactive users. A single compromised account can quickly escalate into a major data breach. 

4 Warning Signs Your Account May Be Hijacked

Before you spend all day trying to restore those compromised accounts, it’s important to take note of the warning signs that your account might be hijacked. 

Warning Sign #1: Unusual Login Activity – Pay very close attention to any suspicious login activities. This might include logins from unfamiliar geolocations, devices, or unusual login hours that don’t match the user’s normal patterns. If you see IP addresses from unfamiliar locations or multiple failed login attempts within a relatively quick timeframe is a clear indication of an account hijacking attempt. Note how long the suspicious activity has been going on and take immediate action to secure the account.

Here are a few actionable steps you can take in the meantime.

1. Temporarily lock the account 

2. Notify the user

3. Analyze recent account activities for any unauthorized actions or changes

4. Check if any of the user’s devices have been compromised

5. Monitor all activities until the instance has cleared security

Warning Sign #2: Missing Emails and Files – Is your inbox completely empty all of a sudden? Have you checked the spam folder lately with no luck? Emails that have been marked as “read”, moved to different folders, or deleted without your consent might be a tell-all sign that a threat actor has gained access to your account. But it gets worse, unfortunately. Deleted emails present other concerns, such as customer data privacy and the loss of sensitive documents. 

Data taken from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) showed that the average cost of a successful business email compromise (BEC) attack is more than $125,000. Ouch. A BEC attack is a type of account compromise where threat actors typically leverage spear phishing to target organizations and impersonate C-level execs or other groups within the organization.   

If you’ve noticed any suspicious inbox activity, take proactive security measures by notifying any affected parties to avoid data privacy issues and ensure that no unauthorized filters or forwarding rules have been set up to divert your emails internally.

Warning Sign #3: Unknown Devices in Account Settings – Do you recognize that iPad with the unverified IP connected to your cloud environment? Something as simple as installing the latest Windows OS update can prevent a threat actor from compromising your accounts or from a catastrophic breach, as we saw with the recent CrowdStrike incident. 

Unmanaged devices connected to your cloud environments can pose serious risks that can ripple across your organization. BYOD? An even bigger headache for IT managers. 

Here are a few steps to effectively manage unknown devices.

1. Identify unauthorized devices connected to your cloud environments 
2. Disable any devices that you do not recognize
3. Patch, Patch, Patch! 
4. Continuously monitor all devices for unusual behavior 
5. Conduct routine cybersecurity risk assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of your device management practices 

Warning Sign #4: Strange Account Recovery Requests – There is almost nothing as frustrating as being locked out of your account. Despite your best efforts to recall every single password you’ve ever used, there is a certain limit to logging back in before being timed out. Normally, this issue would be resolved by resetting a password or submitting a ticket, but not if your account has been compromised. 

What are the signs?

Unfamiliar attempts to reset your account password or unlock your account may be another indicator that your account has been hijacked. Attackers often use stolen credentials to reset passwords and gain control over accounts. Research from the 2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that 83% of breaches involved external actors, with nearly half (49%) involving stolen credentials.

Pay attention to any suspicious emails asking you to reset your password or account recovery notices that you didn’t request. Those are common phishing tactics that attackers use to lure you into a trap and provide them with your personal information. The big “payday”. 

Don’t click on those suspicious account recovery links, no matter how tempting it might be. 

How to Defend Against AI-Generated Phishing Attacks & Malicious LLMs

Phishing attacks are the main primers of account hijacking, and they are becoming harder to detect by the day. 

AI-generated phishing attacks have made organizations rethink their email security strategy altogether. Threat actors are leveraging smart prompts to carry out the attacks using out-of-the-box malicious AI-generated LLMs such as FraudGPT. 

FraudGPT has gained traction in the dark web and among hacking communities as the “ChatGPT for malicious actors” as it features advanced algorithms that can manipulate human-generated content. This further complicates the email security game as threat actors can easily create phishing pages from a set of templates without the heavy lifting. 

By the way, in case you were wondering, subscriptions begin at the “low cost” of $200 per month with annual plans reaching $1,700.

So, how can you spot these advanced phishing attacks and prevent account hijacking? 

There is a way with Guardz. 

Prevent Account Hijacking with AI-Driven Multilayered Phishing Protection

Protect yourself from account hijacking and email security threats with Guardz. Guardz offers AI Multilayered Phishing Protection which includes automated email detection and threat quarantine capabilities and fully integrates with your cloud workspaces.  

Secure your client inboxes and cloud-based accounts from advanced phishing attacks and other social engineering tactics with Guardz. Schedule a demo today