United States based insurance company State Farm has begun to send out email notifications to users whose online account login credentials were discovered by an attacker during a credential stuffing attack.

A credential stuffing attack is when attackers compile usernames and passwords that were leaked from different company’s data breaches and use those credentials to try and gain access to accounts at other sites. This type of attack works particularly well against users who use the same password at every site.

In a “Notice of Data Breach” sent to users impacted by this breach, State Farm says:

State Farm states that a bad actor was able to confirm the username and passwords of impacted users, but that no personal information was viewable and that fraudulent activity was not detected. It is not known, based on the data breach notification, if the attackers actually logged into the accounts as well.

In response to these attacks, State Farm reset the passwords for accounts whose login credentials were confirmed by the attacker.

According to the data breach notification filed with the Office of the California Attorney General, the first detected credential stuffing attack was on Saturday, July 6, 2019. Subsequent attacks were on Monday, July 8, 2019, Friday, July 12, 2019, Saturday, July 13, 2019, Sunday, July 14, 2019, Wednesday, July 17, 2019, Friday, July 19, 2019, Saturday, July 20, 2019, and Monday, July 22, 2019.

BleepingComputer has reached out to State Farm for further information on the breach dates and the number of accounts impacted in the event but had not heard back at the time of this publication. This article will be updated when a response is received.

Credential stuffing attacks becoming common

Credential attacks are becoming more common as data breaches expose the account credentials of their users.

Knowing that many people use the same password at numerous sites, attackers capitalize on this by compiling these exposed credentials and attempting to access other accounts that the user may have.

It has gotten so bad, that the 2019 State of the Internet report by Akamai states 28 billion credential stuffing attempts were detected in the second half of 2018.

These types of attacks have caused companies like TripAdvisor to monitor data breaches for exposed accounts and compare them to the login credentials of their own user accounts. When they detect a match, TripAdvisor invalidates the account and makes the user reset their password.

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