Week 6 OAuth2 Conceptual Quiz

The OAuth Vulnerability That Shook the Cybersecurity World December 2020. Security teams at Microsoft, FireEye, and multiple US government agencies discovered they'd been breached. Not through a zero-day exploit or sophisticated malware. Through stolen OAuth tokens. The SolarWinds supply chain attack—one of the most sophisticated cyber operations in history—used a simple but devastating technique: OAuth token theft . Attackers compromised the SolarWinds Orion update mechanism, gained access to customer environments, and then stole OAuth access tokens . What Made This So Devastating? With stolen OAuth tokens, the attackers could: ✅ Access corporate email accounts (Microsoft 365) ✅ Read confidential documents (SharePoint) ✅ Impersonate legitimate users (no password needed) ✅ Bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA didn't matter—they had valid tokens) ✅ Maintain access for months (tokens refreshed automatically) The impact: 18,000+ organizations potentially compromised Multiple US federal