Zero trust architecture posts dive into the technical frameworks and infrastructure designs that support zero trust implementations. Topics include identity-aware proxies, software-defined perimeters, network access control, policy engines, and integration with cloud and hybrid environments.
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The VPN That Let Attackers Walk Right In In January 2024, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed that Chinese state-sponsored threat actors had exploited Ivanti Connect Secure VPN vulnerabilities to breach multiple U.S. federal agencies. The attackers didn't kick down the door. They walked through
In January 2024, Microsoft disclosed that a Russian threat actor known as Midnight Blizzard breached corporate email accounts — not through some exotic zero-day, but by password-spraying a legacy test account that lacked multi-factor authentication. One forgotten account. No segmentation. No least-privilege enforcement. The result: a nation-state actor reading executive emails
Port 3389: The Door You Left Wide Open In January 2024, the FBI and CISA issued a joint advisory warning that the Phobos ransomware group had been exploiting exposed Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) services to breach organizations across government, healthcare, education, and critical infrastructure. The attackers didn't use
The Industry That Can't Afford a Single Mistake In November 2023, the ransomware attack on ICBC's U.S. broker-dealer arm disrupted settlement of billions of dollars in Treasury trades. The largest bank in the world — by assets — was reduced to sending trade settlement data via USB
A Single Misconfigured S3 Bucket Exposed 3 Billion Records In 2021, a researcher discovered that a misconfigured cloud storage bucket belonging to data analytics firm Cognyte had exposed more than five billion records. Capital One's infamous 2019 breach — a misconfigured web application firewall in AWS — cost them over
The Misconfigured Bucket That Exposed 540 Million Records In 2019, researchers at UpGuard discovered that Facebook user data — over 540 million records — sat exposed on misconfigured Amazon S3 buckets maintained by third-party app developers. Nobody hacked anything. Nobody exploited a zero-day. The data was simply left open to the public
The Personal Phone That Took Down a Hospital Network In 2023, a nurse at a regional hospital plugged her personal phone into a workstation USB port to charge it. That phone carried malware picked up from a third-party app store. Within 72 hours, ransomware had encrypted patient records across three
In February 2024, a misconfigured system at Change Healthcare led to one of the most devastating ransomware attacks in U.S. healthcare history. The ALPHV/BlackCat group exploited a Citrix remote access portal that lacked multi-factor authentication — a basic security for system control that should have been in place years
In January 2024, Microsoft disclosed that a Russian threat actor group known as Midnight Blizzard had breached its corporate email systems — not through some exotic zero-day exploit, but through a password spray attack on a legacy test account that lacked multi-factor authentication. If Microsoft, a company that literally sells cloud
In January 2023, T-Mobile disclosed that a threat actor had been siphoning data from 37 million customer accounts since November 2022 — through a single exploited API. The attacker moved laterally for weeks without triggering alarms. If you've ever wondered what is zero trust and why the entire industry
