Identity abuse through trusted communication channels


Identity has become a primary security boundary for most organizations, reducing the ability to solely trust other boundaries once associated with corporate networks. Users authenticate to cloud services using enterprise identities that provide access to collaboration platforms, business applications and sensitive data. With the adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) on the rise, people are shifting to platforms for communication and collaboration.

Threat actors have adapted to this shift. In addition to typical email-based phishing, attackers increasingly misuse trusted collaboration platforms to conduct identity phishing, impersonation, credential theft, malware delivery and social engineering. Over the last 12 months, our endpoint alerts of malicious activity associated with collaboration tools have more than quadrupled, as Figure 1 shows. This activity could involve compromised accounts, external federated organizations, guest accounts or trusted third-party relationships. In each case, the attackers seek to exploit the trust that people place in enterprise communication platforms.

Read more…
Source:  Palo Alto Unit 42


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Adaptavist Group breach spawns imposter emails as ransomware crew claims mega-haul

    April 21, 2026

    UK enterprise software consultancy The Adaptavist Group is investigating a security breach after an intruder logged in with stolen credentials, while a ransomware crew claims it grabbed far more than the company is currently admitting. In a letter to customers, Adaptavist’s CEO Simon Haighton-Williams said the biz detected an “IT security incident” in late March after ...

  • Amtrak data breach exposes 2.1M records, reports suggest larger leak

    April 20, 2026

    Booking a train ticket shouldn’t come with a side of data exposure, but that’s the situation Amtrak customers are now facing. The rail service is dealing with a breach after hackers claimed to have accessed and released millions of customer records online. The exposed dataset was confirmed to contain at least 2.1 million unique accounts, although ...

  • North Korean hackers blamed for $290M crypto theft

    April 20, 2026

    Over the weekend, hackers stole more than $290 million in cryptocurrency from Kelp DAO, a protocol that allows users to earn yields on idle crypto investments. By Monday, LayerZero, one of the projects affected by the hack, accused North Korea of carrying out the heist. The hack is now the largest crypto theft of the year ...

  • Mythos: An AI tool too powerful for public release

    April 20, 2026

    Anthropic’s most capable model to date, Claude Mythos Preview (aka Mythos), has been described as a “step change” in AI performance, especially on cybersecurity tasks. Anthropic tried to keep Mythos a secret until a few weeks ago, when a data leak revealed the existence of what the company said was its most powerful artificial intelligence to ...

  • Hackers are abusing Apple account notifications to distribute malware, steal money and data

    April 20, 2026

    Scammers have found a way to abuse Apple’s email notification system to deliver phishing messages and trick people into giving away sensitive data and system access. Recently, people started receiving emails from the email.apple.com domain, notifying them of a $899 iPhone purchase via PayPal. The email also shared a phone number for the victims to call, ...

  • NIST changes enrichment process for National Vulnerability Database due to surge in CVE submissions

    April 20, 2026

    The number of reported vulnerabilities has surged so sharply that it forced the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to change how it ‘enriches’ each entry. Until now, NIST would take a basic CVE record and add structured analysis, to make it more useful in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). That usually includes severity scoring ...