Failure Pattern
DevOps automation systems run with high privilege and weak identity controls. Attackers exploit them to deploy malicious changes rapidly.
What We See in the Field
A compromised pipeline pushes code, updates configurations, or deploys containers across an environment. Tools trust the DevOps automation because tokens or credentials validate.
Underlying Causes
Overprivileged CI/CD roles
No workload-bound identity
Tokens stored in plaintext locations
Pipeline impersonation
Metadata-based authentication
Trust-Native Network Resolution
DTL ensures every automation step originates from a verified workload with a unique identity. Attackers cannot impersonate pipelines or orchestrators.
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.