Beyond the Password: Why Hackers Target Your Credentials in Motion

Today marks another World Password Day, a well-intentioned reminder for individuals and organizations alike to double down on password hygiene: make it long, make it complex, and—above all—make it unique. But for cybersecurity insiders, the conversation has moved far beyond complexity scores and character substitutions.

“On World Password Day, we take a moment to recognize the importance of strong authentication practices,” says Jared Atkinson, Chief Technology Officer at adversary-focused cybersecurity firm SpecterOps. “From using complex passwords to enabling multifactor authentication and leveraging password vaults, these measures form the bedrock of identity security. But while these tools help protect credentials at rest and during login, they don’t address what happens next—when identities are in motion.”

Atkinson’s words point to a critical but often underappreciated vulnerability: the lifecycle of a credential doesn’t end once you log in. Every authentication spawns a set of digital breadcrumbs—browser cookies, Kerberos tickets, authentication tokens, and session keys—that quietly traverse corporate networks, keeping users logged in and systems accessible. And as Atkinson warns, “These credentials in transit are often overlooked, yet they present some of the most attractive targets for attackers. Adversaries don’t need to break passwords if they can steal an active session.”

Credential Theft, Post-Authentication Style

For many companies, the password feels like the final barrier between user and intruder. But in today’s enterprise environments, post-authentication attack techniques have surged in popularity, thanks to the proliferation of credential artifacts across devices and cloud applications.

“The reality is that attackers don’t always need your password,” explains Atkinson, whose career spans advanced persistent threat hunting in U.S. Department of Defense networks and leading incident response operations. “They need a credential. And an active session token or Kerberos ticket is often enough to unlock lateral movement.”

It’s a tactic that’s been weaponized in some of the most high-profile breaches of the past decade, including incidents where attackers used pass-the-hash or pass-the-ticket attacks to jump from one compromised machine to another, escalating privileges until they achieved domain admin control.

Shifting from Prevention to Visibility

If passwords and multifactor authentication only solve part of the problem, what comes next? Atkinson advocates for a broader strategy: Attack Path Management, an approach focused on mapping and mitigating the pathways adversaries use once inside a network.

“This is where Attack Path Management becomes essential—shedding light on how these ephemeral identities can be exploited and how a single compromise can cascade through an environment toward full domain control,” he says.

It’s a proactive philosophy, blending elements of identity threat detection and response (ITDR), lateral movement analysis, and privilege escalation prevention. Rather than merely reacting to credential theft, it prioritizes understanding the structural weaknesses that allow credentials in motion to be abused in the first place.

The Invisible Risk of “Everything Works”

The irony, as cybersecurity practitioners know, is that these credential artifacts are largely invisible to end users. “You log in once, and everything just works,” says Atkinson. “But that seamless access is powered by a whole chain of temporary credentials flying under the radar.”

Unfortunately, that same seamlessness makes these tokens difficult to track and protect. Few security teams have visibility into how credentials propagate across hybrid environments or how cached credentials accumulate on endpoints.

As enterprises accelerate cloud adoption and integrate more third-party services into their authentication flows, the problem only grows more complex. An attacker with access to an overlooked session token can effectively piggyback into cloud applications, VPNs, or SaaS platforms, bypassing traditional perimeter defenses.

Beyond Awareness

World Password Day may continue to push the message of better password practices—and rightfully so. But for defenders like Atkinson, it’s also an opportunity to highlight the blind spots left unguarded by strong passwords alone.

“Security doesn’t stop at the password prompt,” he emphasizes. “We need to protect identities throughout their entire lifecycle—both at rest and in motion.”

Because in today’s cyber landscape, it’s not just about who knows the password. It’s about who can grab the session.