Failure Pattern
Segmentation restricts pathways but still trusts the identity of workloads based on IP addresses, tags, or certificates that can be manipulated.
What We See in the Field
Attackers impersonate trusted workloads by reusing metadata or stolen credentials. Microsegmentation rules allow traffic because identity checks rely on mutable attributes.
Underlying Causes
Seg. built on metadata
IP-based trust
Inherited pod or VM identity
Stolen service accounts
Certificates reused across segments
Trust-Native Network Resolution
DTL binds seg decisions to cryptographically verified identity. Even valid metadata cannot bypass trust enforcement. Impersonation becomes impossible.
Broken Trust Assumption
This failure pattern has played out repeatedly in real security incidents—not because of missing tools, but because of how trust is assigned.
In breaches such as SolarWinds, Capital One, Okta, and MOVEit, attackers did not bypass security controls. They operated through them, using valid identities, trusted credentials, signed code, and encrypted sessions. Security systems accepted these signals as proof of legitimacy, allowing malicious behavior to proceed.
The common thread across these incidents is structural: identity was assumed based on trust signals, not proven at the moment of execution.