Identity abuse is the misuse of legitimate accounts, credentials, or account-management workflows to gain unauthorized access. Instead of breaking through perimeter defenses, an attacker may steal a password, hijack a session, exploit a password-reset flow, or trick a helpdesk into changing recovery details. Because the activity uses trusted identity systems, it can blend into normal logins and be harder to spot than malware-driven intrusion.
This matters because identity is often the new control plane for cloud services, email, VPNs, and business applications. In real attacks, identity abuse can involve social engineering, MFA fatigue, compromised recovery email, stolen OAuth grants, or abuse of SaaS admin tools. Defenders reduce risk by using phishing-resistant MFA, tightening account recovery and helpdesk verification, limiting consent and token scopes, reviewing privileged accounts, and monitoring for unusual login patterns, device changes, and suspicious permission grants.