This story was originally published on HackerNoon at:
https://hackernoon.com/nobody-hacked-the-firewall-inside-the-year-identity-became-the-whole-battlefield.
Identity, not firewalls, is now the real cybersecurity perimeter, as state actors and social engineering groups exploit trust to breach organizations.
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Modern cyberattacks are no longer focused on breaking firewalls or exploiting network vulnerabilities — they target identity itself. Campaigns like Salt Typhoon show how nation-state actors can remain undetected inside telecom infrastructure for years by exploiting trusted systems like lawful intercept backdoors. Meanwhile, groups like Scattered Spider achieve similar impact using pure social engineering, tricking help desk staff into resetting MFA and granting access without any malware. Together, these threats reveal a fundamental shift in cybersecurity: the weakest link is no longer the system, but the moment human or process trust is granted to a false identity.