What Is an Email Account Takeover Attack?

An email account takeover is a type of account takeover attack in which a cybercriminal gains unauthorized access to a user’s email account. Cybercriminals can gain access by stealing your email’s login credentials or finding them on the dark web. When a cybercriminal has gained access to your email account, they can lock you out of your account, monitor your activity, access your sensitive information, take over other accounts and impersonate you. 

Continue reading to learn how cybercriminals compromise your email account, what cybercriminals can do with your email account and how to protect your email from an account takeover.

How Cybercriminals Compromise Your Email Account

Cybercriminals use a variety of cyber attacks to steal your login credentials and gain access to your email account. They exploit security vulnerabilities such as weak passwords or careless cyber hygiene to compromise your email. Here are a few ways that cybercriminals can compromise your email account.

Password-related attacks

Password-related attacks are when cybercriminals try to gain unauthorized access to online accounts or sensitive information by guessing your login credentials. This type of cyber attack relies on poor password practices such as using weak, predictable passwords or reusing the same password across multiple accounts. 

The ways that cybercriminals exploit users with poor password practices and crack their passwords:

• Brute force attacks: Cybercriminals use trial and error to guess a user’s passwords. They will use common dictionary words, phrases, or combinations of letters, numbers and symbols to guess your passwords. They use programs to input every possible combination and rely on people using weak passwords that are short and predictable. 
• Credential stuffing: Cybercriminals get a hold of verified login credentials either from a security breach or the dark web. They use that set of credentials to gain access to other accounts that reuse the same password.
• Password spraying: Cybercriminals use a commonly used password and try to match it with a list of usernames until they get a match. Once the password goes through the list, they repeat the process with another commonly used password.

Malware

Malware is malicious software that can infect your device and steal your information. Malware is installed using social engineering tactics that trick users into clicking on a malicious link or downloading a malicious file. Once malware is installed on your device, cybercriminals can use it to spy on you, alter your files, damage your device, exploit vulnerabilities and steal your personal information. There are different types of malware including ransomware, trojan horses and keyloggers.

Phishing attacks

Phishing is a type of cyber attack in which cybercriminals trick users into giving up their sensitive information. In this type of attack, cybercriminals send emails or text messages with malicious attachments or links. When the target clicks on the malicious attachment, they download malware on their device. Or if the target clicks on the malicious link, they are sent to a spoofed website which either downloads malware on their device or harvests their sensitive data. These spoofed websites often try to impersonate legitimate login pages.

Man-in-the-middle attacks

Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks are a type of cyber attack in which cybercriminals intercept data between two exchanging parties. Cybercriminals rely on unencrypted networks such as public WiFi, which allow them to see any traffic that has been passed through. When a user connects to an unencrypted network, cybercriminals can eavesdrop, steal or alter the data transmitted over the network. 

What Can Cybercriminals Do With Your Email Account?

When cybercriminals get a hold of your email credentials, they can take over your account and use it for malicious purposes. Here are the ways cybercriminals can use your email account.

Access your other online accounts

With your email, cybercriminals can access your other online accounts that are associated with that email. On the login page of your accounts, they can click on the “forgot your password” link and reset the password for other accounts. Once they change the password, they can compromise your account and access any information stored on it. Depending on the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) method used, some cybercriminals can also bypass MFA if it is sent to the compromised email account.

Commit identity theft

Your email address can grant access to your personal information. Depending on what is associated with your email account, a cybercriminal can steal your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and use it to commit identity theft. Identity theft is when a cybercriminal steals your personal information to impersonate you and commit fraud. Cybercriminals can apply for a loan, access the money in your bank accounts or charge medical bills to the victim’s health insurance. With access to your email, cybercriminals can have lasting effects on the victim such as damaged credit, debt, bankruptcy and potentially a criminal record. 

Send emails impersonating you

With your email account, cybercriminals can impersonate you online to compromise other user’s accounts or gain access to sensitive data. They can send phishing emails from your email address to your contacts and trick them into giving up the login credentials to their accounts or other personal information. If cybercriminals have compromised your work email, they can use your email to gain access to your organization’s confidential data. By using your actual email address, cybercriminals can easily gain the trust of your colleagues and trick them into giving them what they need.

How To Protect Your Email From Account Takeover

To prevent cybercriminals from gaining access to your online accounts and personal information, you need to protect your email account from getting taken over. Here are the ways you can protect your email account from cybercriminals.

Use a strong and unique password to protect your email account

You need to use a strong and unique password to protect your email account. A strong password is a unique and random combination of letters, numbers and special characters that is at least 16 characters long. It omits personal information, sequential numbers or letters, as well as commonly used dictionary words. 

The password for your email should be different from the passwords you use for any of your other accounts to prevent a credential stuffing attack from compromising your accounts. You need to use strong passwords to make it difficult for cybercriminals to crack. The longer and more complex your password is, the harder it is for cybercriminals to figure out.

You can use a password manager to generate and safely store the password for your email. A password manager is a tool that securely stores and manages your login credentials in an encrypted vault. With a password manager, it ensures your passwords are strong and different for every account by identifying any weak passwords and prompting you to change them.

Enable MFA on your email account

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is a security measure that requires you to provide an additional form of authentication. When a user tries to log in to their account, they need to provide their login credentials along with another form of identification. You need to enable MFA on your email account to protect it from cybercriminals. MFA adds an extra layer of security and protects your email account from unauthorized access. Even if a cybercriminal had compromised your login credentials, they wouldn’t be able to access your email because they could not verify your identity.

Don’t click on suspicious attachments or links

Cybercriminals can steal your email login credentials using phishing attacks. To avoid accidentally installing malware on your device or giving up your login credentials, ensure that you do not click on any suspicious attachments or links

You should avoid any unsolicited messages with suspicious attachments. You can use antivirus software to scan attachments to check if they are safe and to ensure they don’t have any malware hidden in them.

Before clicking on links, you need to check the URL for any spelling errors or discrepancies to ensure it is legitimate. For example, look for the replacement of letters that try to trick you into thinking it is from a legitimate source such as amaz0n.com instead of amazon.com. You can also use a URL checker to verify the safety of a website. 

Add or update your email account recovery

Most email service providers allow you to set up a recovery method in case you forget your login credentials. The email account recovery setting also alerts you about any suspicious activity or unauthorized login attempts. Set up email account recovery to either your phone number or a separate email address, in order to protect your email account.

Monitor your email’s security notifications

Most email service providers will alert you about activity regarding your email’s security such as changes in security settings, password changes, attempted logins and logins from a new device or different location. If you get alerted of any suspicious activity from your email, you need to take immediate action such as removing unauthorized devices, changing your passwords and adding additional authentication.

Use a dark web monitoring tool

Dark web monitoring is a process in which a tool scans the dark web and monitors for your personal information such as your email address and login credentials. It alerts you if it finds any of your personal information on the dark web, which allows you to take action to prevent damage. Dark web monitoring will help alert you if the login credentials to your email were found on the dark web and allow you to change them before cybercriminals can compromise your email account.

Use Keeper® To Protect Your Email Account

You need to protect your email account to prevent cybercriminals from gaining access and using it for malicious purposes. You can protect your email account by using a strong and unique password, enabling MFA, avoiding suspicious attachments or links, adding or updating your email’s recovery option, monitoring your email’s security notifications and using a dark web monitoring tool.

If you are worried that your email account’s login credentials have been compromised, Keeper offers a free dark web scan to check if your email was found on the dark web.