Overview

Attackers are pivoting away from high-visibility exploits and going straight for soft-target vendors — IT service providers, managed security partners, and SaaS integrations. Over the last 30 days, at least six publicly reported incidents involved compromised vendor credentials used to breach downstream clients. The tactic works because defenders rarely audit vendor access beyond initial onboarding.

Key Findings

• Service-Account Abuse: Stolen vendor accounts and API tokens are being reused to access production tenants.

• Update Injection: Two supply-chain events this month involved tampered update packages (signed but modified).

• Trusted Network Pivot: Threat actors maintain access through VPN tunnels shared with vendors that lack MFA enforcement.

• Telemetry Blind Spots: SOCs often exclude “partner” IPs from anomaly baselines, giving attackers free passes.

Defender Actions

1. Inventory vendor integrations and terminate any unused service accounts immediately.

2. Enforce MFA on all third-party accounts and service connections — no exceptions.

3. Correlate vendor activity across endpoints and cloud logs for anomalies (after-hours, unusual geo).

4. Implement least privilege by restricting vendor access to scoped resources only.

5. Add detection rules for unsigned or newly re-signed update executables hitting shared software repos.

Closing Note

Supply-chain intrusions don’t need new exploits — they just need your trust. If you rely on outsourced IT or SaaS management, assume compromise is a shared liability. Audit, isolate, verify.