The developer credential economy: Why exposure data is the new front line in the supply chain war

**Executive summary:** Recent high‑profile supply‑chain incidents (including the Axios npm compromise and the Anthropic Claude source leak) indicate an emergent "Developer Credential Economy" where attackers steal and trade privileged developer credentials inside ephemeral CI/CD and build environments; the report argues EDR is reactive and lacks visibility into these environments and recommends adopting Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)—short‑lived tokens, lockfile audits, hardening build hooks, and attack‑surface mapping—to prevent credential theft and neutralize systemic infrastructure risk.