San Francisco, CA: April 24, 2026 – Reported cybercrime losses to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center were cited at more than USD 20.9 billion for 2025, an increase of 26% on the year before. Flashpoint's 2025 reporting tracked more than 23 million hosts infected with infostealer malware, which together yielded some 2.1 billion harvested credentials.
Stolen credentials do not stay hidden. They are sold in bulk, bundled with cookies and session tokens, and used to take over customer accounts, send convincing phishing from a real address or access a brand's own systems.
For brands, the practical link is twofold. Compromised customer accounts lead to fraud complaints that are attributed to the company, and compromised staff or agency accounts can be used to reach customers directly.
“Credential theft is the quiet first step behind many of the impersonation cases we handle. Spotting the leak early gives a brand a chance to reset accounts before the abuse starts,” says Marcus Whitfield, cybersecurity and digital risk intelligence expert at MarkScout.
MarkScout's dark web and cyber intelligence monitoring watches criminal marketplaces, forums and messaging channels for client credentials, brand mentions and sale of access, and alerts security teams with enough context to act.