When Attackers Exploit Trust, Zero Trust Must Limit What Comes Next

The article discusses recent impersonation and social-engineering incidents—highlighting a high-profile messaging impersonation and the Spring Ring campaign—that exploit trust and contact-list information rather than software vulnerabilities; it explains how attackers use convincing identities, cloned voices, and personalized pretexts to elicit access or credentials, describes the potential for initial compromise and lateral movement (including observed NTLM activity), and recommends identity verification controls, data minimization, phishing-resistant authentication, and rapid incident response.