Insider Threats Are the New Zero-Day & Why 2025 Proves It...

When cybersecurity teams talk about “advanced threats,” the mind jumps to 0-days, supply-chain attacks, or exotic malware frameworks. But in 2025, attackers aren’t burning sophisticated exploits unless they have to.

They’re buying access.

The CrowdStrike insider incident, where an employee accepted a $25,000 offer to share internal screenshots with the Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, is just the latest reminder that the most dangerous vulnerability in any organization isn’t a system. It’s a person.

CrowdStrike contained the incident quickly and confirmed no systems were breached. But the real headline isn’t the attempted intrusion, it’s the tactic behind it.

And this tactic is accelerating.

It Seems Insider Threats Are Exploding in 2025

Three forces have converged-->

1. Cybercrime groups are merging and collaborating...

Scattered Spider, LAPSUS$, and ShinyHunters forming a “supergroup” is like combining three nation-state-level social engineering teams. Their goal isn’t to hack harder, it’s to hack smarter.

2. Recruit-a-tech trend is real...

Threat actors now actively recruit insiders. Not just admins. Anyone with access and a camera.

They don’t need credentials if they can get...

• screenshots

• SSO dashboards

• cookie tokens

• internal Slack or email threads

• architecture diagrams

The CrowdStrike insider didn’t hand over passwords, he handed over knowledge. Knowledge is an attack surface.

3. Money Talks! Economic pressure has lowered the cost of betrayal...

2025’s economic stress is fueling insider recruitment. Financial hardship is now a vulnerability class.

$25,000 sounds absurdly low for access to one of the world’s top cybersecurity firms, but to a desperate employee, it’s life-changing, and attackers know this.

Some Recent Insider Incidents That Prove This Trend

Here are some major insider or insider-adjacent attacks from the last few years that illustrate how real this problem is:

1. Tesla Insider Sabotage (2020), Attempted Bribery by Russian Hackers

A Tesla employee was offered $1 million to install malware on the Gigafactory network. He reported it, but imagine if he didn’t. This would have been one of the most devastating ransomware attacks in U.S. history.

2. Twitter / X Insider Breach (2020)

A teen hacker group bribed a Twitter employee to access internal admin tools. Result:

• Compromise of Biden, Obama, Apple, Musk, and others

• Full access to reset passwords

• Ability to hijack verified accounts

The group didn’t hack Twitter’s systems. They hacked an employee.

3. LAPSUS$ Uber & Rockstar Games Compromises (2022)

LAPSUS$ recruited teens and contractors to gain access to Okta, Uber, and Rockstar’s internal environments.

And their playbook? Recruit insiders --> pay them --> get screenshots --> escalate --> leak.

Sound familiar?

4. Singtel / Optus & 3rd-Party Vendor Insider Abuse

High-profile data breaches in Australia traced back to:

• third-party vendors

• contractors

• improperly offboarded accounts

Insider risk + vendor ecosystem = a perfect attack chain.

5. Salesforce Third-Party Vendor Attack (2025)

The Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters recently claimed to exfiltrate 1 billion+ records from Salesforce customers through a third-party vendor (Gainsight). Even if Salesforce itself wasn’t breached, the ecosystem was.

In modern cloud architecture, a vendor insider is still an insider.

Why I Believe Insider Threats Are the Hardest to Defend Against...

Because insiders already have:

• credentials

• access

• context

• trust

Security tools can detect anomalies, but not intent. Zero Trust can validate identity, but not loyalty. SIEMs can correlate events, but not desperation.

Insider threats sit at the intersection of...

• psychology

• financial pressure

• opportunity

• social engineering

No firewall can mitigate that.

So, What Must Modern Organizations Do?

Here is what forward-leaning security teams (and CISOs) are doing in 2025...

Behavioral analytics, not just identity analytics

Track how people use access, not just whether they logged in.

Session monitoring for high-risk roles

Admins, DevOps, engineers, and customer success teams need enhanced oversight.

Deception artifacts for insider detection

Honeytokens, decoy dashboards, fake cookies, great for spotting malicious insiders early.

Strict vendor access governance

Third-party access is now one of the biggest insider vectors.

Continuous background and financial risk checks

Not punitive, protective. Just like we do for privileged roles in finance.

Security culture that prioritizes reporting over punishment

The Tesla case proves it... Employees WANT to do the right thing when they feel supported.

What's The Real Lesson From CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike wasn’t breached. Its defenses worked. SOC caught the anomalous behavior. The insider was fired and referred to law enforcement.

But the takeaway isn’t the outcome... it’s the trend.

Attackers are skipping the perimeter and going straight for the employee.

Insiders have become the latest zero-day.

If the cybersecurity world doesn’t treat insider risk as a core pillar, not a compliance checkbox, 2026 will be far worse.