Trusted Connections, Hidden Risks: Token Management in the Third-Party Supply Chain unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/third-par…

You are about to log off for the weekend when a high-severity alert flashes on your cloud security tool’s dashboard. A single, unfamiliar OAuth token is making hundreds of connections from three different IP addresses, two of which are flagged as belonging to an unknown VPN service. The token belongs to a third-party application integrated with the company’s Salesforce instance, one of those forgotten dormant integrations. A threat actor has stolen an OAuth token to bypass traditional defenses and is enumerating CRM accounts and exfiltrating sensitive data.

A pit forms in your stomach; you are experiencing a supply chain attack.

The incident is not just an internal issue. This supply chain threat involves a lack of monitoring by the third-party integration that exposed the third-party company and potentially its customers to a devastating, wide-reaching breach. This underscores a critical threat landscape of inconsistently managed integrations and tokens. Downstream clients of a third-party application may easily overlook dormant integrations, insecure token storage and long-lived tokens.