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Topic

Account Takeover

Attacks that seize control of user or administrative accounts, including weak password recovery flows.

Current stories

securityOne report1 publisher

Dashlane data puts passkeys at 28% of Google logins and 17% of Amazon's

Dashlane's annual report counts 2.5 million passkey authentications a month, nearly double last year. Most logins at the biggest sites still use another method, so passwords and one-time codes stay in play.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption45
Hype gap−5
Incentives60
Confidence60
securityOne report1 publisher

ESET ties fake YouTube sponsorship portals to one modular scheme that swaps brand disguises

Scammers posing as Hollyland, Nike and Spotify lure YouTube creators to fake brand-deal portals that take Google passwords and one-time codes, ESET found. One sign-in hands over Gmail, Drive and the channel itself.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence60
securityOne report1 publisher

Fake Hollyland sponsors negotiate rates with YouTube creators before phishing their Google logins

Scammers posing as Hollyland are sending YouTube creators tailored sponsorship offers that end at a fake Google login, WeLiveSecurity reported. That page takes the password and the one-time code, and with them the account that owns the channel.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+5
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence55
securityConfirmed6 publishers

Attackers used hijacked Nikkei accounts to send 9,000 phishing emails to staff and sources

Nikkei said attackers used hijacked staff Microsoft 365 accounts to send about 9,000 malicious-link emails on September 30, many to outside sources. The company believes recipients' names and addresses were exposed and expects more mail impersonating its staff.

Perspective Coverage

6 publishers
Builder
Builder 19%
Operator
Operator 60%
Investor
Investor 21%

Reality

Evidence70
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives30
Confidence65
securityOne report1 publisher

BlueKit sells account takeover from one dashboard with templates for 97 brands

BlueKit, a phishing-as-a-service kit Malwarebytes has tracked since April, runs lures for 97 brands in 176 variants from one dashboard. Its targets include corporate SSO gateways, Salesforce and GitHub, so buyers with little skill can aim polished lures at work accounts.

Publishers:malwarebytes.com

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+25
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
securityOne report1 publisher

Domino's resets customer accounts that attackers opened with reused passwords

Domino's has reset a "very small number" of customer accounts that attackers opened with passwords leaked in breaches at other sites. The company says its own systems held, but a correct stolen password was all an attacker needed to get in.

Publishers:malwarebytes.com

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+5
Incentives55
Confidence50
securityConfirmed3 publishers

Keycloak's forgotten-password flow hands over admin accounts, and the fix is already tagged

CVE-2026-18963 lets an unauthenticated request skip the emailed reset token entirely. Upstream 26.7.2 and four Red Hat errata are out, and the stopgap has to be set realm by realm.

Publishers:access.redhat.com github.com keycloak.org thehackernews.com

Perspective Coverage

4 publishers
Builder
Builder 43%
Operator
Operator 51%
Investor
Investor 6%

Reality

Evidence78
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+8
Incentives30
Confidence72
securityConfirmed7 publishers

WhatsApp trades a six-digit PIN for a real password, and a passkey for each platform

The two-step secret becomes a full alphanumeric password, and an account can now hold one passkey per platform. Both remain opt-in settings inside the app.

Perspective Coverage

7 publishers
Builder
Builder 33%
Operator
Operator 55%
Investor
Investor 12%

Reality

Evidence68
Adoption35
Hype gap+10
Incentives40
Confidence72
buildOne report1 publisher

A Firefox extension arms itself five seconds after install from a lookalike Google domain

The add-on shipped to Mozilla's store as a dispatcher and took its instructions afterwards from a page it opened itself, on a domain built to resemble googleusercontent.com.

Publishers:socket.dev

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption10
Hype gap−10
Incentives55
Confidence58
productOne report1 publisher

Login pages draw eight times the AI bot traffic they did last year

Automated traffic is now aimed at the screens where customers sign in and pay, and DataDome's year of request data shows how concentrated that pressure has become. Filtering it means deciding which humans get let in too.

Publishers:fastcompany.com

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption60
Hype gap+25
Incentives80
Confidence50
productOne report1 publisher

Polymarket's signup flow treated a stolen SSN as a password

According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 500 Polymarket US accounts were entered by people who typed in someone else's Social Security number. The flow's duplicate-identity check opened the account it matched instead of blocking the attempt.

Publishers:gizmodo.com

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption72
Hype gap−15
Incentives70
Confidence55
securityOne report1 publisher

Telus says stolen credentials gave an attacker 16 months inside consumer telecom accounts

The notifications describe logins with valid passwords, data down to partial payment card numbers, and service changes made without the customer's consent. Telus did not say how many accounts were affected.

Publishers:securityweek.com

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption30
Hype gap+10
Incentives65
Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher

Cognito ships a new user pool with MFA off and its sign-in risk model disabled

A pool created with the defaults treats a password as the whole authentication factor and scores no risk on the sign-in. In the HackerOne chain a dev.to writeup walks through, either setting turned on would have stopped the takeover.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives68
Confidence52
securityOne report1 publisher

Takedowns pushed fraud buyers into smaller specialised shops, Rapid7 says

Rapid7's read of the fraud economy names Xleet, Blackpass, Infodig and Styx as the venues doing the trade, and points teams at MITRE's Fraud Fighting Framework, introduced in early 2026, to order what they watch.

Publishers:blog.rapid7.com

Reality

Evidence34
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+28
Incentives68
Confidence55
investOne report1 publisher

Investigators traced a $240m bitcoin theft to a $47,500-a-month rental in Encino

The 4,100 coins left a Washington wallet after two callers talked their way into the holder's Google Drive, and the arrests followed an exchange signup made from a home IP plus a month of spending loud enough to advertise itself.

Publishers:apnews.com

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption68
Hype gap−6
Incentives45
Confidence58
securityOne report1 publisher

Ninety-two percent of UK account-hack loss reports arrived after Report Fraud went live

City of London Police recorded a 417% rise in account-hack losses to £6.3m in the year to March. The arithmetic underneath it shows the average loss per victim halving as small cases got recorded for the first time.

Publishers:therecord.media

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption74
Hype gap+14
Incentives58
Confidence66
buildOne report1 publisher

Keycloak's forgot-password flow hands over admin accounts, and the fix is a same-day call

CVE-2026-18963 lets an unauthenticated request skip the emailed token and reset any account on the server. Red Hat rates it 9.1. The stopgap costs you self-service recovery in every realm.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption30
Hype gap+14
Incentives45
Confidence56