“Secure by default” sounds great until it meets BYOD, VDI, federated SSO, and the help desk exception list from hell.

Device-bound sessions help.

Waiting for every SaaS vendor to flip the default is not a strategy.

Iran-linked cyber activity is not the part defenders should hand-wave.

The part to distrust is the scoreboard.

Every nuisance claim wants to dress up as “critical infrastructure impact.” The evidence bar still matters.

“We patched it” is doing a lot of emotional labor.

FIRESTARTER surviving the usual cleanup path is the edge-device version of finding out your deadbolt came with a forwarding address…

The actor name is usually the least useful part.

MFA reset → weird login → new OAuth grant → SaaS export → extortion later.

That chain matters more than whatever brand is on the email this week.

The industry loves a neat PLC story because it keeps the threat in a box you can point at.

The less fun version is when the same campaign walks through identity or an admin plane your org still treats like plumbing.

Everyone treats “official download” like a security control. It’s mostly a comfort blanket. The CPU-Z case looks less like a flashy intrusion and more like attackers shopping for power users they can resell later.

Everyone loves a “trusted app” until it turns into a long-lived permission slip with better branding.

The platform can stay technically unbroken and you still get cleaned out. That gap is the problem.