Cloud event buses trust publishing workloads by metadata or IAM roles attackers can steal. Compromised systems publish malicious events that propagate rapidly.

Cloud firewalls rely on IP ranges, ports, and IAM metadata. Attackers compromise workloads inside trusted ranges and bypass firewall rules.

Encrypted traffic hides payloads and actors. Network detection tools only see ports and IPs, not true identity.

Endpoint agents enforce policies but do not provide cryptographic identity for the device or workload. Attackers exploit this gap to impersonate trusted systems.

Distributed databases replicate data across nodes with implicit peer trust. Attackers compromise one node and poison the entire cluster.

Service accounts and IAM roles often grant far more access than necessary. Attackers use one compromised role to spread across environments.

Baselining tools rely on past behavior and metadata. Attackers mimic legitimate patterns to bypass detection.

Cloud VMs reuse certificates, metadata, and even disk images. Attackers use clones to masquerade as legitimate systems.

SIEM enrichment layers often enrich events using metadata that does not reflect true workload identity. Attackers exploit this mismatch.

Remote command tools like SSH or automation frameworks rely on credentials rather than workload identity. Attackers weaponize them using stolen keys.

Orchestration systems trust control-plane nodes and agents without verifying hardware-bound identity. Attackers compromise one node and influence many workloads.

GPU clusters trust compute jobs based on metadata. Attackers exploit this to run malicious workloads on high-value compute nodes.

Insecure service workers continue running in the background and can manipulate cached content.

The browser auto-fills or autocompletes identity fields into phishing pages that look legitimate.

Network Access Controls (NAC) validate devices at connection time but not continuously. Attackers compromise devices after initial validation.

Distributed system architectures replicate data and actions based on metadata that does not represent true identity. Attackers exploit this to poison systems quickly.

Malicious pages overlay or frame legitimate login forms, stealing credentials or tokens, meaning browser sandboxing failed.

Private browsing in incognito windows hide local artifacts but still send full identity and session tokens to the network.

Internal APIs assume internal traffic is safe. Attackers compromise internal workloads and abuse these trusted API channels.

Cloud queues accept messages based on IAM roles, not workload identity. Attackers use compromised workloads to inject malicious messages.