Cybersecurity 
The European Union (EU) is redefining its digital landscape with sovereignty, security and trust at the core. In the 2025 EU State of the Union, Commission
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Published on October 31, 2025
Credential abuse occurs when cybercriminals use stolen or leaked credentials to gain unauthorized access to online accounts and critical systems. As part of broader cyber attacks, credential abuse is a highly effective attack vector, especially when many people reuse the same password across multiple accounts. Credential abuse can lead to data breaches, identity theft, financial loss and lasting reputational damage for both individuals and organizations.
Continue reading to learn how credential abuse occurs, its impact on businesses and ways to prevent it.
Credential theft vs credential abuse
Although credential theft and credential abuse are sometimes used interchangeably, these terms refer to two distinct stages of a cyber attack. Credential theft is the initial act of stealing usernames and passwords through social engineering tactics like phishing emails, malware infections or data breaches. Credential abuse occurs after the credentials have already been stolen. At this stage, cybercriminals use the stolen credentials to infiltrate systems through credential stuffing or brute force attacks, launch account takeovers or move laterally within a network.
Essentially, credential theft is like a robber stealing the key to your house, whereas credential abuse is when that key is used to enter your home and search through your valuable belongings.
How does credential abuse occur?
Credential abuse typically follows specific tactics that cybercriminals use to steal credentials in the first place. Here are some of the most common ways cybercriminals obtain credentials before exploiting them:
- Phishing: Cybercriminals use phishing to trick people into sharing their login credentials. Victims receive emails or messages that appear to be from trustworthy sources, but once they click on a malicious link or attachment, victims are taken to fraudulent login pages. After a victim enters their credentials on the spoofed site, the cybercriminal captures them and can use them to access other accounts.
- Malware: Malware can infect devices and silently steal credentials in the background. One type of malware – keyloggers – records every keystroke on a victim’s keyboard, including credentials, without their knowledge or permission. Once credentials are stolen, they’re transmitted to the cybercriminal, who may use them later to gain unauthorized access to systems.
- Poor password habits: Weak and reused passwords are valuable to cybercriminals. If a password is reused across multiple accounts, cybercriminals only need to steal one set of credentials to potentially access many accounts. Even if a password isn’t reused, a weak or commonly used one is an easy target for brute force attacks.
- Data breaches: When organizations experience data breaches, large numbers of usernames and passwords can be exposed. These stolen credentials are usually sold on the dark web, where cybercriminals purchase and exchange them for future cyber attacks.
- Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks: In a Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack, the cybercriminal secretly intercepts the communication between a user and a website. If the connection is unsecured, the cybercriminal can capture login credentials as the user enters them.
How credential abuse impacts businesses
Credential abuse introduces a variety of security risks to businesses of all sizes. When cybercriminals gain unauthorized access to critical systems using stolen credentials, the consequences can range from financial losses to data breaches and long-lasting reputational damage.
Financial losses
One of the most significant impacts of credential abuse is financial damage. According to IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report, compromised credentials cost organizations an average of $4.6 million per breach, making it one of the most expensive attack vectors. Businesses face high costs when responding to security incidents like credential abuse, including hiring cybersecurity experts, implementing new precautions, compensating affected customers and handling legal violations.
Data breaches
Stolen credentials are one of the leading causes of data breaches, allowing cybercriminals to bypass security systems and access sensitive data. Data breaches typically result in the exposure of sensitive data, including customer data, employees’ intellectual property and confidential business information. Once the data is leaked or sold on the dark web, organizations can face severe consequences, including lawsuits and fines for violating compliance standards.
Reputational damage
Beyond the financial and security repercussions, credential abuse can cause serious damage to an organization’s reputation. Customers and investors expect businesses to protect sensitive information, and a data breach caused by weak security practices can destroy that trust. A notable example of a credential stuffing attack is Roku, which had over 590,000 customer accounts compromised due to weak and reused credentials. Security incidents like these result in negative headlines, customer loss and long-term brand damage that’s difficult to repair.
How to prevent credential abuse
Protecting your organization from credential abuse requires the right security measures and ongoing user awareness. Here are the main ways you can reduce the risk of credential abuse in your organization:
- Use a password manager: Implement a trusted password manager in your organization so employees can generate, store and autofill strong, unique passwords. Choose a password manager like Keeper® that includes dark web monitoring to alert users if their credentials appear in known data breaches or on the dark web.
- Enforce strong password policies: Require strong, unique passwords for all accounts. Enforce a minimum password length of 16 characters with a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.
- Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Add an additional layer of security beyond passwords with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), like an authenticator app or hardware security key, to prevent unauthorized access. Consider more modern types of MFA, including passkeys or biometrics, which are much more difficult to compromise.
- Train employees to spot phishing attacks: Educate employees on how to identify suspicious emails, fake login pages and other common phishing attempts. Regular security training and phishing tests help improve your organization’s overall awareness of cyber threats and reinforce positive cyber hygiene.
Protect your credentials with Keeper
From data breaches to financial damage, credential abuse can cause serious security and reputational risks. Luckily, the risk of these threats can be reduced with the proper tools and best practices. Keeper helps secure employee credentials with zero-knowledge encryption, enforces strong password policies, enables MFA and monitors the dark web for compromised credentials. With Keeper Business Password Manager, your organization can safely manage and share passwords with team members while minimizing the risk of credential abuse.
Start your free trial of Keeper today to enhance your organization’s credential security.
Frequently asked questions
What are credential-based attacks?
Credential-based attacks are cyber attacks that occur when cybercriminals use stolen or leaked usernames and passwords to gain unauthorized access to online accounts or critical systems. These attacks involve credential stuffing, brute force attacks or phishing attempts to exploit login credentials. Since many people reuse passwords, just one set of compromised credentials can potentially give cybercriminals access to many online accounts.
How are credentials compromised?
Credentials are compromised mainly through phishing, malware and data breaches. Cybercriminals also use credential stuffing and brute force attacks to exploit weak or reused passwords, and Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks to intercept logins on unsecured networks. When people have poor password habits and use public WiFi, their credentials are more likely to be compromised.
What credentials could be compromised?
Many types of credentials can be stolen, including the following:
– Usernames and passwords
– One-Time Passwords (OTPs)
– Security tokens
– API keys
– SSH keys
– OAuth tokens
Less obvious security measures that can also be valuable to cybercriminals include security questions/answers and device-bound authentication data. If any credentials are compromised, cybercriminals can use them to access your accounts, impersonate services, steal data or move laterally within a network.
