When Trust Becomes the Attack Vector: Why Security Culture Matters More Than Ever

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When Trust Becomes the Attack Vector: Why Security Culture Matters More Than Ever

I’ve been tracking some concerning trends in this week’s security news, and there’s a pattern emerging that I think we all need to pay attention to. Attackers are getting smarter about exploiting the one thing that’s hardest to patch: human trust.

The New Face of Social Engineering

The most unsettling story I came across involves what researchers are calling “Contagious Interview” attacks. Here’s how it works: attackers pose as potential employers, invite developers to participate in coding challenges, and ask them to clone a seemingly legitimate repository in VS Code. Once the victim grants trust to the repository’s author, malicious code executes with no further user interaction required.

What makes this particularly clever is how it weaponizes our normal workflow. How many of us have cloned repos for interviews, code reviews, or collaboration without thinking twice? The attack succeeds because it fits perfectly into expected behavior patterns.

Similarly, KnowBe4’s recent research revealed a dual-vector campaign where attackers use stolen credentials to deploy legitimate RMM software like LogMeIn. Instead of dropping custom malware that might trigger detection, they’re using tools that IT teams trust and whitelist by default. As the researchers put it, “attackers are bypassing security perimeters by weaponizing the necessary IT tools that administrators trust.”

The Vulnerability Pipeline Keeps Flowing

Meanwhile, CISA added four more actively exploited vulnerabilities to their KEV catalog this week, including a nasty PHP remote file inclusion flaw in Synacor Zimbra Collaboration Suite (CVE-2025-68645) with a CVSS score of 8.8. The fact that these are already being exploited in the wild should be a wake-up call for anyone still running unpatched systems.

We also saw significant security updates from major platforms. Zoom and GitLab both released patches for critical flaws, including CVE-2026-22844 affecting Zoom’s Node Multimedia Routers, which could allow meeting participants to achieve remote code execution. That’s particularly concerning given how central video conferencing has become to business operations.

Why Security Culture Is Our Best Defense

Here’s where things get interesting, and why I think the most important story this week might be the one getting the least attention. Dark Reading reported on how effective security cultures are shifting toward encouraging CISOs and security teams to “raise their hands unabashedly” when they spot risks.

This cultural shift couldn’t come at a better time. When attackers are exploiting trust relationships and using legitimate tools against us, technical controls alone aren’t enough. We need people who feel empowered to speak up when something seems off, even if they’re not sure.

Think about those interview attacks I mentioned earlier. In a healthy security culture, a developer might feel comfortable asking: “Hey, is it normal for an interview process to require repository access like this?” In organizations where people are afraid to look stupid or slow down business processes, that question might never get asked.

The Real Challenge Ahead

What worries me most about these trends is how they target the intersection of technology and human behavior. We can patch CVE-2025-68645, we can update Zoom, and we can implement better endpoint detection. But how do we patch the human tendency to trust?

The answer isn’t to eliminate trust – that would make us ineffective. Instead, we need to build systems and cultures that make verification feel natural rather than paranoid. When someone asks you to clone a repo for an interview, having a process to verify the request should feel as routine as checking the sender’s email address.

We also need to get better at threat modeling scenarios where legitimate tools become attack vectors. If your organization uses RMM software, have you considered what it would look like if an attacker gained access to those credentials? Are there additional controls you could implement that wouldn’t interfere with normal operations?

Moving Forward

The security challenges we’re facing today require us to think beyond traditional perimeters and technical controls. When attackers can use VS Code repositories and LogMeIn installations as delivery mechanisms, we need defenses that account for the human element.

That means building cultures where people feel safe reporting suspicious activity, creating processes that make verification feel natural, and accepting that some of our most trusted tools might also be our biggest risks.

The good news is that we’re starting to have these conversations. The bad news is that attackers are already several steps ahead.

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