Supply chain attacks target trusted vendors, software providers, and managed services to inject malicious code or steal credentials - using the victim's own trusted relationships as the attack vector into their systems.
Attackers map the target organization's trusted vendor ecosystem before striking. The ideal vendor has wide deployment, deep system access, automated update mechanisms, and weaker security than the ultimate target.
The attacker compromises the vendor's internal credentials - developer accounts, CI/CD service tokens, or code signing keys. This grants the access needed to inject malicious code into the legitimate software build process.
With developer credentials, the attacker modifies source code or build scripts in the CI/CD pipeline. The malicious modification is carefully crafted to appear benign, evade code review, and survive automated security scanning.
The build pipeline compiles the backdoored source into a signed software update. Because the build process is legitimate and uses the vendor's own code signing certificate, the package appears completely authentic - passing every integrity check.
Victim organizations automatically pull and install the trojanized update through their normal patch management processes. Security teams often explicitly whitelist vendor updates - the very mechanism designed to keep systems safe becomes the attack vector.
With C2 established inside thousands of organizations, attackers selectively activate only high-value targets to avoid detection. Communication mimics legitimate vendor traffic, blending into expected network behavior while the attacker conducts careful reconnaissance.
At high-value targets, attackers extract credentials, source code, classified documents, and internal communications. Forged SAML tokens allow persistent authentication as any user - even after passwords are changed, the attacker remains inside.