Identity Abuse Through Trusted Communication Channels

Identity has become a primary security boundary for most organizations, reducing the ability to solely trust other boundaries once associated with corporate networks. Users authenticate to cloud services using enterprise identities that provide access to collaboration platforms, business applications and sensitive data. With the adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) on the rise, people are shifting to platforms for communication and collaboration.

Threat actors have adapted to this shift. In addition to typical email-based phishing, attackers increasingly misuse trusted collaboration platforms to conduct identity phishing, impersonation, credential theft, malware delivery and social engineering. Over the last 12 months, our endpoint alerts of malicious activity associated with collaboration tools have more than quadrupled, as Figure 1 shows. This activity could involve compromised accounts, external federated organizations, guest accounts or trusted third-party relationships. In each case, the attackers seek to exploit the trust that people place in enterprise communication platforms.

This changes the role that collaboration platforms play within enterprise security. They are not just productivity applications, they have become part of the enterprise attack surface. Unit 42 researchers found that 99% of the alerts generated related to chat or voice phishing operations, indicating that attackers often gain access to these environments through targeted phishing operations. After a successful compromise, attackers can then communicate using the identity and privileges of the compromised user. This allows malicious activity to appear as normal collaboration activity.

Security controls typically remain focused on email and authentication events, often providing limited visibility into activity occurring within authenticated collaboration sessions.