A new employee's first day should be filled with excitement and possibility. For one fintech company, it became the thread that unraveled their entire security fabric.
A new employee’s first day should be filled with excitement and possibility. For one fintech company, it became the thread that unraveled their entire security fabric. What started as a simple assumed compromise scenario ended with us gaining access to over 90% of employee passwords – including the CEO’s.
The vulnerability wasn’t in their cutting-edge financial technology. It wasn’t even in their sophisticated security systems. It was in something far more mundane: their standard employee onboarding process.
This is a story about how the smallest procedural oversight can cascade into a catastrophic security breach. And why constant, targeted attack is the only way to truly understand your organization’s cyber risk.
Our mission was straightforward: simulate an assumed compromise scenario starting with just a standard employee laptop. What we discovered was anything but standard.
The company had given us user-level access with a predictable email format (first.lastname@domain) and an equally predictable temporary password: “TempPass”. New employees were required to change this on first login – a common security practice that, in this case, would prove to be their undoing.
Using this simple pattern, we began mapping out potential usernames across the organization. With over 300 accounts identified, we had our target list. Their Active Directory implementation allowed two password attempts every 15 minutes – a limitation that might seem secure, but at scale became our advantage.
Then we struck gold: a newly created admin account, not yet activated. Using our knowledge of their onboarding process, we successfully accessed this account. The keys to the kingdom were ours.
With elevated privileges, we extracted password hashes for every user in the organization. Using our extensive 120GB+ hash database, we cracked over 90% of the company’s passwords – from entry-level employees to C-suite executives.
The very person who had hired us to test their security was now compromised.
This breach demonstrates a fundamental truth about cybersecurity: your organization is only as strong as its weakest process. A seemingly innocent onboarding procedure became the cornerstone of a complete system compromise.
The impact was clear: one small procedural vulnerability had exposed the entire organization to potential shutdown. This wasn’t just about passwords – it was about how a single point of failure could cascade through an entire enterprise.
Here’s the sobering reality: if we found this vulnerability through constant, targeted attack, imagine what malicious actors could discover given enough time. Sporadic testing for a limited time simply won’t cut it when it comes to closing the cyber risk gap.
The gap between perceived and actual cyber risk is often vast and treacherous. This fintech thought their onboarding process was secure – after all, they required password changes on first login. But without constant pressure testing from every angle, these assumptions remained dangerously unchallenged.
Don’t wait for a real attack to expose your vulnerabilities. Contact CovertSwarm today and make our attack your best defense.