US academic credentials advertised for sale in dark web forums

The FBI’s cyber division has issued a new Private Industry Notification, alerting US colleges and universities that higher education credentials have been advertised for sale on online criminal marketplaces and publicly accessible sites.

According to FBI data, as of January 2022, Russian cyber-criminal forums offered access to credentials from several US-based universities and colleges across the country, with prices ranging from a few hundred to several thousand US dollars.

According to the document, over 36,000 email and password combinations (some of which are duplicates) for email accounts ending in .edu were discovered on a publicly accessible instant messaging platform in May 2021.

The Private Industry Notification also stated that exposing such sensitive credential and network access information could result in cyber-attacks against individual users or affiliated organizations, particularly privileged user accounts.

If attackers successfully compromise a victim’s account, they may attempt to drain the account of stored value, leverage or re-sell credit card numbers and other personally identifiable information, submit fraudulent transactions, exploit for other criminal activity against the account holder, or use for subsequent attacks against affiliated organizations, according to the document.

The FBI paper explained that credential harvesting against organizations is frequently caused by spear-phishing, ransomware, or other cyber intrusion tactics. To counteract these threats, the document advised colleges, universities, and other academic institutions to establish and maintain strong relationships with the FBI Field Office.

Additionally, the Bureau makes recommendations to keep all systems and software up to date, implement user training programs and phishing exercises for students and faculty, and implement strong password hygiene measures. The original text of the Private Industry Notification includes a complete list of the recommendations.