Revisiting Cloud Security Attacks: Credential Attack

Abstract

Security has a ubiquitous influence on cloud services. With technology advancement, the superiority of attacks is continuously scaling in volume. In response, the security experts have increased the defensive perimeters, enhanced the malware protection and upgraded the countermeasures to detect malicious activity. However, weak identity and access management system and destabilized privilege system has created loopholes for cloud security, resulting in abnormal development using unsecured credentialing challenges and vulnerable applications. Organizations, which do not focus on the importance of secure credentials, are at greater risk. Credentials (password) are considered as easiest and cheaper measures for security but are more susceptible to be stolen. The organizations internally might use technologies to protect credentials by applying new policies using an exclusive username and password credentials, which may protect their cloud accounts. In spite of this fact, the valuable cloud information at data stores accessed remotely by virtual logins to an organization leads to attack issues and challenges. Thus, a credential attack is the major root cause of other attacks occurrence. The objective of the research study is to revisit the concept of credential attack and its emerging root causes. The focal point is to represent a broad overview of credential attack, intensifying as a vital security aspect in the cloud. The paper purposes to reconsider the prior literature and highlighting on conclusive findings for prospective research in the interrelated sphere of influence based on the published reports and industry/organization work.