Your IT stack is the enemy: How 84% of attacks evade detection by turning trusted tools against you

It’s 3:37 am on a Sunday in Los Angeles, and one of the leading financial services firms on the West Coast is experiencing the second week of a living-off-the-land (LOTL) attack. A nation-state cyberattack squad has targeted the firm’s pricing, trading and valuation algorithms for cryptocurrency gain. Using common tools, the nation state has penetrated the firm’s infrastructure and is slowly weaponizing it for its own gain.According to CrowdStrike’s 2025 Global Threat Report, nearly 80% of modern attacks, including those in finance, are now malware-free, relying on adversaries exploiting valid credentials, remote monitoring tools and administrative utilities with breakout times (sometimes less than a minute).No one in the SOC or across the cybersecurity leadership team suspects anything is