Most breaches begin with an identity that no one considers important. Not a privileged account. Not an administrative console. A contractor login. A vendor service account. A part-time employee credential stored in OSINT.

Attackers rely on these overlooked identities to gain initial access because they know the path from “unimportant user” to “critical access” is often much shorter than organizations realize.

This blog walks through a realistic attack chain that Lares adversarial engineers uncover repeatedly across industries.

The Attack Chain

Step 1. OSINT Exposure
Adversaries collect information about:

• employee and contractor email addresses

• password patterns

• authentication portals

• cloud service usage

• forgotten login pages

A single data point is rarely damaging on its own. Combined, they often provide everything needed for an initial foothold.

Step 2. Initial Access
Password reuse is common across organizations, vendors, and contractors. Attackers attempt authentication using predictable variations until something works.

This does not violate a vulnerability.
It violates an assumption.

Step 3. MFA Bypass
Many enterprises enforce MFA on primary systems but leave legacy or fallback authentication methods enabled.

Attackers know this.
They enumerate until they find the method that allows them in.

Step 4. Cloud Role Escalation
IAM policies tend to expand over time. Rarely do they contract. This drift creates unintended privilege inheritance that attackers exploit.

If a low-value identity can assume a cloud role with higher permissions, the attack moves from opportunistic to strategic instantly.

Step 5. Lateral Expansion 
Cloud audit logs capture events.
Detection rules interpret them.

Most detection logic is tuned for endpoint compromise, not identity misuse. Attackers exploit this by blending into normal authentication behavior patterns.

Step 6. Impact Access
From cloud roles, attackers pivot into:

• production data repositories

• CI/CD pipelines

• internal administrative systems

• SaaS platforms linked by SSO

What began as a “minor account” escalates into full compromise.

Why This Pattern Matters

Across hundreds of assessments, Lares sees the same conditions:

• Identity governance gaps
• Inconsistent MFA enforcement
• Over-permissive cloud roles
• Limited detection logic for authentication anomalies
• Blind spots between endpoint and cloud security teams

This is why attackers prefer identity-first intrusions.
It works almost every time.

If your organization wants to understand how attackers would escalate inside your environment, adversary testing is the most reliable way to find out.

See how Lares validates identity and cloud attack paths.