Attackers don't need to be sophisticated. They just need your password.
Credential theft is the most common entry point. Phishing, adversary-in-the-middle attacks, brute force, credential stuffing, credential dumping—there are a dozen ways to get someone's login, and attackers have automated most of them.
Account takeover (ATO) comes next. Once they have credentials, they're in your email, your SaaS tools, your cloud environments. And they're patient. They'll sit there for weeks, learning your organization before they do anything visible.
Session hijacking is the one that catches people off guard. Attackers can steal session cookies and tokens to maintain access even after a password reset—and to bypass MFA entirely. You can do everything right, and they still get in.
Impersonation and fraud round out the picture. Fake vendor identities, spoofed emails, social engineering that exploits your processes—these are the scenarios that turn a compromised account into a wire transfer that's already gone.
None of this requires a sophisticated nation-state actor. Most of it happens at the hands of organized, financially motivated Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) groups running it like a business.
