Cybersecurity Vendors Under Siege: A Deep Dive into Real-World Attacks

SentinelOne has detailed the curtain on what it’s like to be targeted on the frontlines of today’s threat landscape. Their new report reveals how real-world attacks—ranging from financially motivated ransomware groups to nation-state adversaries like North Korea (DPRK) and China—have become a constant test of their operational resilience.

One of the most prolific threats identified was the massive infiltration effort by DPRK-affiliated IT workers. SentinelOne revealed, “Our team has tracked roughly 360 fake personas and over 1,000 job applications linked to DPRK IT worker operations applying for roles at SentinelOne — even including brazen attempts to secure positions on the SentinelLabs intelligence engineering team itself.”

These adversaries are not merely spamming companies with job applications. Instead, they are refining their methods, using “stolen or fabricated personas” and mimicking legitimate job seekers with alarming sophistication.

Beyond nation-state threats, SentinelOne faces relentless attacks from ransomware operators seeking to abuse their platform for offensive purposes. Gaining access to security platforms can give adversaries a major advantage: “Console access can be used to disable protections, manipulate configurations, or suppress detections,” the report warns.

The dark web economy around security platform access is thriving. Threat actors openly buy, sell, and trade access on forums like XSS[.]is, Exploit[.]in, and RAMP, while more sophisticated players migrate their operations to private messaging apps like Telegram and Signal.

Highlighting this disturbing trend, SentinelOne points to the Black Basta ransomware group, noting that “operators were observed testing across multiple endpoint security platforms—including SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, Carbon Black, and Palo Alto Networks—before launching attacks.”

Threat Landscape — Forum post offering security product access

The ecosystem even includes “EDR Testing-as-a-Service” offerings, where threat actors can fine-tune malware against security products discreetly, dramatically raising the success rate of real-world attacks.

An emerging trend is ransomware groups bypassing underground markets altogether. Nitrogen, a ransomware operator linked to Russian nationals, impersonates real companies to purchase security software licenses under false pretenses. As SentinelOne reports, “Nitrogen typically targets small, lightly vetted resellers—keeping interactions minimal and relying on resellers’ inconsistent KYC practices to slip through the cracks.”

By weaponizing legitimate licenses, threat actors can test malware and refine attacks without ever setting foot on dark web markets, raising the stakes for vendors and resellers alike.

On the nation-state front, SentinelOne details extensive reconnaissance efforts by Chinese APT groups, particularly through a threat cluster codenamed PurpleHaze. First identified during an intrusion at a logistics service provider associated with SentinelOne, PurpleHaze uses sophisticated tactics such as:

Deploying the GoReShell backdoor (based on reverse SSH)
Leveraging ORB networks to obscure infrastructure
Using advanced malware like ShadowPad, often obfuscated with ScatterBrain

SentinelOne states, “We assess with high confidence that PurpleHaze is a China-nexus actor, loosely linking it to APT15 (also known as Nylon Typhoon).” The campaign demonstrates how supply chain attacks are becoming a favored vector for infiltrating high-value targets indirectly.

Despite no secondary compromise of SentinelOne’s own infrastructure, the incident was a stark reminder: “Even when our own infrastructure remained untouched, the targeting of an external service provider surfaced important considerations.”

As the report advises, “Organizations should refine their threat modeling processes to explicitly account for upstream supply chain threats, especially those posed by nation-state actors.”

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