Preventing OAuth Attacks in SaaS: Lessons from the Salesforce-Drift Breach

Read full article here: https://www.akeyless.io/blog/how-akeyless-stops-oauth-attacks-like-salesforce-drift/?utm_source=nhimg

In August 2025, over 700 organizations were compromised when attackers hijacked OAuth tokens from Drift, a Salesforce integration. The stolen tokens gave them direct access to Salesforce orgs, bypassing MFA and standard login protections.

This supply-chain style OAuth attack highlighted a painful truth:

• Static, long-lived tokens are ticking time bombs.
• Decentralized secrets sprawl creates blind spots.
• Non-human identities (NHIs) like tokens often lack monitoring.

Akeyless offers a different approach — securing, rotating, and monitoring secrets in real time to shut down attacks before they spread.

Centralized Secrets Management: Lock Down OAuth Tokens

Akeyless provides a cloud-native vault for OAuth tokens, API keys, and credentials. Built on Zero-Knowledge Encryption with patented Distributed

Fragments Cryptography (DFC), even Akeyless cannot access your secrets.

By consolidating secrets into a single platform, you:

• Eliminate hidden tokens in configs or repos.
• Gain centralized visibility across SaaS apps.
• Close the gaps exploited in the Drift incident.

Dynamic Rotation: Make Stolen Tokens Worthless

Attackers love long-lived tokens. Akeyless defeats them with automated rotation:

• Replace OAuth tokens, API keys, and passwords on a fixed schedule.
• Enforce short lifespans (hours or minutes).
• Update tokens across SaaS platforms and pipelines automatically.

If Drift tokens had rotated dynamically, attackers would have lost access before they could bulk-harvest Salesforce data.

Just-in-Time Access: Zero Standing Privileges

Instead of static tokens sitting in integrations, Akeyless issues ephemeral credentials on demand. These tokens:

• Exist only for the session.
• Expire automatically.
• Apply equally to humans and NHIs (pipelines, microservices, AI agents).

In a Drift-style breach, JIT access would have shrunk attacker dwell time from days to minutes, preventing mass data theft.

Real-Time Monitoring: Spot Attacks Before They Spread

The Drift attack went undetected for weeks. Akeyless prevents this with:

• Immutable audit logs of every secret access.
• Granular monitoring across SaaS and CI/CD pipelines.
• SIEM integrations (Splunk, Datadog, ELK) for real-time alerts.

Unusual OAuth token use — like bulk Salesforce queries from Tor or AWS IPs — would trigger alerts immediately, giving defenders time to respond.

Supply Chain Protection Across SaaS & DevOps

OAuth trust chains are only as strong as the weakest app. Akeyless secures the entire supply chain with:

• Secure token injection into GitHub Actions, Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD tools.
• Secrets never hardcoded or exposed in repos.
• Unified visibility across all SaaS apps and integrations.

This ensures a single vulnerable integration, like Drift, can’t cascade into a multi-platform breach.

Compliance and Zero Trust, Built-In

Akeyless helps enterprises align with SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, DORA, and NYDFS by:

• Enforcing least privilege with Zero Standing Privileges.
• Automating token and cert lifecycles.
• Providing audit-ready logs for regulators.

Why Akeyless for OAuth Security?

Zero-Knowledge Encryption – Secrets are inaccessible to anyone but you.
Automated Rotation – Neutralizes stolen tokens automatically.
Just-in-Time Access – Ephemeral credentials with Zero Standing Privileges.
Real-Time Monitoring – Catch anomalies before damage is done.
Supply Chain Security – End-to-end SaaS and DevOps protection.

Stay Ahead of the Next OAuth Attack

The Salesforce-Drift OAuth breach proved that token mismanagement is one of the biggest SaaS security threats. With Akeyless, you can:

• Secure and centralize OAuth tokens.
• Automate rotation and lifecycle management.
• Enforce Zero Trust with JIT access.
• Detect attacks in real time.

Bottom Line

OAuth tokens have become one of the weakest links in SaaS security, as the Salesforce-Drift breach made painfully clear. Attackers don’t need to hack passwords or bypass MFA when a single long-lived token gives them the keys to your most sensitive systems.

The lesson is simple: secrets need to be managed like any other critical identity. Static tokens and scattered vaults are no longer enough.

Akeylesscloses this gap by bringing centralized secrets management, automated rotation, just-in-time access, and real-time monitoring into one platform. With Zero Standing Privileges and Zero-Knowledge encryption, Akeyless gives enterprises the control and visibility they need to stop OAuth attacks before they spread.