“Credential Stuffing” Isn’t the Kind of Stuffing Anyone Wants This Thanksgiving

As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday, most people are thinking about family, travel, and time away from work. But this season also highlights an issue that quietly affects many organizations: devices that go missing, get taken home, or never make it back to IT.

Around this time of year, equipment tends to move around more. Employees grab spare laptops before traveling, departments clean out offices, and older devices get pushed aside for “later.” It’s normal and unintentional—but it creates a cybersecurity gap that often goes unnoticed.

That gap plays directly into one of the most common attack methods organizations face today: credential stuffing.

What Credential Stuffing Actually Means

Credential stuffing refers to attackers taking real usernames and passwords—often from unrelated breaches or reused credentials—and trying them across different login portals until something works.

It is simple, automated, and unfortunately effective.

But the part that receives far less attention is how often attackers gain useful login information from old, unmanaged devices that quietly leave organizations without proper tracking.

Why Untracked Devices Make These Attacks Easier

Modern laptops and tablets store a significant amount of access information, including:

• saved VPN credentials
• browser-stored passwords
• email tokens
• cloud application sessions
• remote access histories
• single sign-on tokens that may bypass MFA

When a device leaves an organization without documentation—during a remodel, a clean-out, a holiday break, hybrid work shifts, or staff turnover—the access stored on that device leaves with it.

If the accounts connected to that device are still active, an attacker doesn’t need sophisticated techniques. They simply use whatever the device already remembers.

This is why missing equipment continues to show up in investigations of unauthorized access and credential misuse. The device itself becomes the attacker’s starting point.

Why Devices Go Missing More Often During the Holidays

The end of the year tends to increase the likelihood that devices move without documentation:

• employees take devices home for travel
• departments reorganize or tidy up
• older laptops are set aside during upgrades
• storage rooms get cleared out
• temporary or “borrowed” equipment doesn’t get recorded

Again, none of this is intentional. It is normal operational drift—but it has security consequences when accounts tied to those devices remain active.

This Is Not a Technology Problem. It’s an Awareness Issue.

Organizations don’t need new tools or complex systems to reduce this risk. The most meaningful change is simply recognizing that untracked equipment can make credential-based attacks far more likely to succeed.

A quick year-end review of retired equipment, a clear intake location, and consistent documentation can dramatically reduce exposure—without cost or new software.

Where IT Asset Disposition Comes In

Once devices make it back into the right hands, proper IT asset disposition ensures data is securely destroyed, access is removed, and documentation is handled appropriately. It closes the loop on everything that happens after equipment is taken out of service.

SEAM supports organizations across South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, and the surrounding region with the end-of-life portion of this process—but the most meaningful protection starts much earlier, when employees and departments understand how important it is not to let retired devices quietly disappear.

As we head into the holiday break, it’s a valuable reminder that misplaced equipment remains one of the most preventable cybersecurity risks. Being intentional about where retired devices go helps reduce the opportunities attackers rely on.

If your organization wants to strengthen its device retirement process or ensure proper end-of-life handling, contact SEAM anytime to talk through options.