Passwords, Dumps, and Data Viper
Vinny Troia PhD · 2020
One inevitability known by the people within the security industry is that everyone, whether everyday end users, experienced technical users, threat actors, or anyone in between, will, at some point, reuse passwords. Recycling passwords is how threat actor groups like Gnostic Players, MABNA, and many others are able to access Office365 environments, Amazon S3 accounts, and private code repositories. This chapter discusses how hacked databases and password lists can be used to find new information on targets. It presents a detailed description of Data Viper and how information from clearweb and darkweb forums can be used to trace the movements of threat actors and in the right context can ultimately lead to their identification. The chapter provides an example of how the Data Viper tool could be used to uncover the identity of a threat actor by searching for common passwords located within data breaches.