9 Identity-Based Threats Redefining Cybersecurity in 2026 (Beyond Credential Stuffing)

This report summarizes nine identity-focused threats reshaping authentication in 2026—ranging from agentic AI hijacking and deepfake voice fraud to MFA fatigue, AitM proxy session theft, MCP token misuse, synthetic identity fraud, SIM swap attacks, and long-term 'harvest now, decrypt later' collection for future quantum decryption—arguing that legacy password/SMS/push-based MFA approaches are insufficient and recommending phishing-resistant, device-bound, zero-store and post-quantum-aware authentication architectures (e.g., FIDO2 passkeys and post-quantum primitives).