Sophisticated methods attackers use to maintain durable, low-noise access to cloud and SaaS environments long after initial compromise—the hardest part of any breach to eradicate.
What This Category Represents
Identity Persistence Techniques capture how attackers maintain long-term, low-noise, durable access to cloud and SaaS environments after initial compromise. Unlike traditional endpoint persistence, identity-layer persistence works across devices, survives password resets, bypasses MFA, and operates silently via tokens.
This category focuses on techniques that embed attackers inside authentication flows, OAuth apps, service principals, SCIM provisioning, refresh tokens, trusted devices, directory sync systems, and compliance loopholes. Identity persistence is the core of modern cloud intrusion longevity.
Why It's More Powerful
Works across all devices
Survives password resets
Bypasses MFA controls
Operates via silent tokens
Persists through offboarding
Can last months or years
Attacker Goals in This Category
Continuous Access
Maintain access without reauthentication and regenerate new access tokens silently to avoid detection by security monitoring systems.
Identity Impersonation
Impersonate users or apps indefinitely and recreate backdoor identities after deletion attempts by security teams.
Control Bypass
Bypass Conditional Access policies and MFA requirements while staying embedded in automation and provisioning flows.
Ecosystem Propagation
Avoid traditional remediation steps and propagate persistence into SaaS and multi-cloud ecosystems for maximum reach.
These patterns are hallmarks of state-sponsored operations and advanced ransomware campaigns operating at enterprise scale.
Conditional Access bypass through compromised trusted devices using Primary Refresh Token (PRT) persistence mechanisms.
Threat Landscape Summary
Who Uses These Techniques
Advanced persistent threat (APT) groups
Long-term espionage operators
High-end ransomware affiliates
Insider threat actors
Supply-chain attackers
What They Enable
Silent admin re-entry capabilities
Fully invisible access patterns
Durable identity footholds
Cloud-wide privilege escalation
Cross-platform persistence mechanisms
Critical Reality: Identity persistence is the hardest part of any breach to eradicate. Traditional endpoint or network-focused incident response cannot remove identity-layer persistence without comprehensive identity security remediation.
Key Understanding Points
Powerful Persistence Anchors
OAuth apps, service principals, and SCIM flows are extremely powerful persistence anchors that operate with broad permissions across cloud environments.
Token-Based Bypass
Token-based persistence bypasses MFA and device trust controls entirely, rendering traditional authentication security measures ineffective against these techniques.
Dangerous Device Trust
Trusted devices and Primary Refresh Token (PRT) persistence are among the most dangerous techniques, operating below security monitoring thresholds.
Shadow Operations
Shadow admins and enterprise apps often operate outside human visibility, making detection and remediation significantly more challenging for security teams.
Self-Repairing Persistence
Provisioning-based persistence automatically repairs itself after cleanup attempts, requiring comprehensive directory and sync system remediation to fully eradicate.
IR Limitations
Traditional endpoint or network-focused incident response procedures cannot remove identity persistence without specialized identity security expertise and tooling.