A chained exploit is an attack path that combines two or more vulnerabilities, weaknesses, or misconfigurations so the attacker can reach a target that none of the flaws could unlock on its own. One bug may expose a foothold, another may bypass authentication, and a third may turn that access into privilege escalation or lateral movement.
This matters because security controls are often designed to stop single failures, but real intrusions frequently succeed by linking them together. In cloud, SaaS, and identity-driven environments, a chain can start with a public-facing flaw and end with access to accounts, source code, or internal systems. Defenders reduce this risk by patching quickly, restricting account privileges, using phishing-resistant authentication, segmenting sensitive repositories, and monitoring for unusual access paths. Chained exploits are dangerous because they shrink the gap between a minor weakness and a major breach.