Inside the Salt Typhoon Hack: Why Traditional Security Models No Longer Work

Read full article here: https://www.britive.com/resource/blog/salt-typhoon-hack-legacy-cybersecurity/?utm_source=nhimg

The Salt Typhoon cyberespionage campaign has exposed the growing weakness of traditional cybersecurity methods. Over two years, this advanced persistent threat (APT), believed to be backed by a Chinese state-affiliated group, infiltrated multiple U.S. telecommunications companies, compromising critical infrastructure at a national scale.

This breach highlights an urgent truth: legacy security tools and static defenses are no longer effective against identity-driven, long-duration attacks. The modern threat landscape demands continuous visibility, zero standing privileges, and dynamic, identity-aware controls.

The Breakdown of Legacy Defenses

Traditional network security relies on perimeter-based protection, firewalls, segmentation, and encryption. But attackers like Salt Typhoon bypassed these controls by exploiting weaknesses in identity and access management (IAM).

Through meticulous reconnaissance, the attackers targeted vulnerable privileged accounts, standing permissions, and unprotected service identities embedded deep in telecom systems. By using legitimate credentials, they moved laterally across networks undetected, proving that even the most fortified perimeters crumble when identity is unguarded.

What Went Wrong

The investigation revealed that over-entitled admin accounts and persistent permissions were key enablers of the attack.

• Privileged Accounts: Once hackers gained access to a single administrative credential, they could reach over 100,000 routers within the infrastructure.
• Standing Permissions: Non-human identities (like service accounts) had continuous access, allowing the attackers to maintain stealthy, long-term persistence.

Without proper least privilege enforcement or multi-factor authentication, one compromised identity effectively opened the entire network.

Key Lesson #1: Identity Is the New Security Perimeter

The Salt Typhoon breach reinforces that identity not the network, is the new security boundary. Every human, machine, and service identity must be treated as a potential entry point.

Organizations need an “Identity Firewall”, a system of dynamic access controls that limit who (or what) can access critical assets based on time, context, and role. Access should be:

• Ephemeral – granted only when needed and automatically revoked after use.
• Micro-segmented – isolated by role, location, and sensitivity level.
• Auditable – continuously monitored for anomalies or privilege drift.

Key Lesson #2: Zero Standing Privileges and Just-in-Time Access Are Essential

The Salt Typhoon incident is a powerful case study in the dangers of standing privileges. A single over-provisioned admin account can open the door to catastrophic compromise.

Modern enterprises must embrace Zero Standing Privileges (ZSP) and Just-in-Time (JIT) access to eliminate permanent entitlements. Permissions should only exist for the exact duration of a task—and disappear once the task is complete.

This approach not only minimizes breach exposure but also enforces compliance with evolving cybersecurity standards from CISA, NIST, and NSA.

Modern PAM: The Defense Model for Today’s Threats

Legacy privileged access management (PAM) tools often fail to adapt to dynamic cloud environments. Modern Cloud PAM (CPAM) solutions like Britive, represent the new generation of defense against identity-based threats by:

• Providing dynamic, time-bound access that prevents standing credentials.
• Offering real-time visibility into every human and non-human identity.
• Ensuring audit-ready compliance with frameworks like NIST, HIPAA, and GDPR.
• Scaling natively across cloud, multi-cloud, and on-premises environments.

In the context of Salt Typhoon, a Zero Trust, JIT-based PAM approach could have restricted attacker movement and limited exposure from compromised credentials.

Final Thoughts

The Salt Typhoon hack marks a turning point in cybersecurity. The perimeter is no longer where security begins, it’s where identity control must take over.

Organizations must modernize their security strategies around identity governance, Zero Trust, and cloud-ready PAM solutions. By eliminating standing privileges, enforcing least privilege, and securing both human and non-human identities, enterprises can defend against the next generation of identity-driven attacks.