Failure Pattern
Threat intelligence focuses on known bad indicators, not identity misuse. Attackers exploit trusted systems using no known signatures.
What We See in the Field
A compromised workload performs malicious actions using valid credentials and clean IPs. Threat intel sees nothing wrong because no external indicators are triggered.
Underlying Causes
Threat intelligence built around known IOCs
Identity-blind internal behavior
Clean infrastructure used for attacks
Metadata too shallow for detection
Trust placed in signals that do not verify identity
Trust-Native Network Resolution
DTL enforces identity before traffic flows. Even if no known indicators exist, untrusted identities cannot create sessions. Trust replaces signature-based gating.
Broken Trust Assumption
The attacks that exposed this failure pattern were not stealthy break-ins. They were trusted operations.
During incidents such as SolarWinds, Capital One, and Okta, malicious activity was carried out using valid identities and approved execution paths. Certificates were valid. Tokens were accepted. Sessions were authenticated. From the system’s point of view, nothing appeared wrong.
This is the risk of trust inferred from credentials, location, or prior authentication.