The New Pattern Behind Major Attacks in Korea

Recent security incidents in Korea reveal a repeating pattern that shows attackers understand the operational realities of Korean enterprises better than many organizations anticipate. Recognizing this pattern is the 1st step toward strengthening defense and reducing the time between initial compromise and effective response.

1. Identity is the new entry point

Attackers rarely begin with brute force when more effective options exist. They start by acquiring valid credentials through phishing, MFA fatigue attacks, and password reuse which are methods that continue to succeed at scale. Once they obtain a legitimate identity, their activity blends into normal user behavior, allowing early signals to slip past traditional monitoring tools.

PAGO’s perspective: DeepACT continuously correlates identity anomalies with endpoint and network behavior, elevating weak identity signals that legacy tools often overlook.

2. Cloud misconfigurations open quiet paths inside

As organizations accelerate cloud and hybrid adoption, small configuration gaps often remain unnoticed. A single exposed storage bucket, an over-permissioned service account, or an unmonitored API endpoint can provide attackers with a silent path deeper into the environment without triggering alerts typically associated with high-noise intrusion techniques.

PAGO’s perspective: Our CTEM (Continuous Threat Exposure Management) framework identifies these low-noise misconfigurations early, reducing the entry points attackers rely on for lateral expansion.

3. Lateral movement is becoming faster and more deliberate

This stage showcases the attacker’s understanding of enterprise environments.

After establishing an initial foothold, they quietly map internal topology and move across systems until they reach valuable data or critical operational assets, often mimicking legitimate administrative behavior. These movements exploit gaps that naturally exist between endpoint security tools, network detection systems, and cloud-native logging.

PAGO’s perspective: DeepACT integrates signals from EDR, NDR, and cloud telemetry, allowing our MDR analysts to detect lateral activity patterns that fall between individual tools.

4. Data exfiltration happens long before detection

In many cases, the first meaningful alert appears only after significant data has already left the environment. Attackers compress and encrypt data, then exfiltrate it in small increments over time to avoid volume-based anomaly detection. By the time unusual outbound traffic is noticed, critical information is often already staged for exploitation.

PAGO’s perspective: Continuous monitoring of outbound behavior, combined with context-aware detection, allows early identification of slow, staged exfiltration attempts.

5. The incident reveals fragmented visibility

Post-incident reviews often show that organizations collected many pieces of the puzzle but never assembled them. Endpoint logs, network captures, and cloud audit trails exist in separate systems without meaningful correlation. This fragmentation creates the exact operating conditions attackers need to remain undetected until substantial damage has occurred.

PAGO’s perspective: DeepACT unifies these signals into a single detection and response layer, reducing the visibility gaps attackers depend on.

Why does this pattern keep repeating? Modern threat actors invest significant time understanding how Korean enterprises operate. They know cloud adoption is outpacing security architecture maturity, that SOC teams face staffing shortages and alert fatigue, and that operational realities create predictable blind spots in monitoring and configuration. They design intrusions around these realities relying on quiet movement, identity misuse, small misconfigurations, and organizational overload.

What changes the outcome: Organizations that shift from reactive incident response to proactive threat hunting are breaking this cycle.

They:

• Detect signs of credential misuse before attackers weaponize them

• Correlate weak signals across endpoint, network, and cloud telemetry

• Maintain continuous monitoring instead of business-hours visibility

• Minimize dwell time through rapid containment

This is where MDR becomes essential, not optional.

PAGO’s MDR teams provide:

• 24/7 continuous monitoring beyond what internal teams can sustain

• Correlation across previously siloed security layers

• Real-time response, regardless of when activity occurs

• Korea-specific threat understanding, informed by hundreds of local investigations

This approach transforms subtle anomalies into early containment opportunities, significantly reducing dwell time and limiting damage long before exfiltration occurs.

The organizations demonstrating the strongest resilience are those that clearly understand the gap between what internal resources can realistically cover and what continuous detection requires, and bridge that gap through specialized MDR partners who operate around the clock.

If you are experiencing any suspicious activity, contact our team for free threat cleaning.