Common Cyber Attack Vectors in the Defense Industrial Base

Word count: ~1,010 Specificity markers: (1) NIST/CMMC control refs — AT.L2-3.2.1, AC.L2-3.1.12, IR.L2-3.6.1; (3) Tool names — DMARC, MFA authenticator apps; (4) Common mistake — believing small contractors aren't targeted; (5) Decision point — prioritizing which controls to address first based on attack likelihood

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The Defense Industrial Base (DIB) — the network of companies that design, manufacture, and supply products and services to the Department of Defense (DoD) — is one of the most targeted sectors in the world. Not because every contractor is doing headline-grabbing classified work, but because the DIB is the soft underbelly of national defense. Nation-states and criminal groups that can't get inside DoD networks directly look for ways in through contractors.

Understanding how these attacks actually work is useful because CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) controls aren't arbitrary. Most of them exist in direct response to documented attack patterns. When you know what attackers do, the controls make more sense — and you can prioritize implementation based on actual risk.

Phishing and Spear-Phishing

This is how most breaches start. An employee gets an email that looks legitimate — from a colleague, a vendor, or the DoD — clicks a link or opens an attachment, and hands an attacker a foothold in the network. Phishing (mass emails targeting anyone) and spear-phishing (carefully crafted emails targeting specific individuals at specific companies) are the entry point for the majority of successful intrusions into DIB networks.

Spear-phishing targeting the DIB often uses publicly available information — LinkedIn profiles, contract award announcements, CAGE code lookups — to craft convincing lures. An email that references your real contract number, your real contracting officer's name, and asks you to review an updated technical document is harder to spot than a generic scam.

CMMC addresses this directly through the Awareness and Training (AT) domain. Practice AT.L2-3.2.1 requires security awareness training for all system users. The training has to actually teach people to recognize and report phishing — not just acknowledge that phishing exists. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) email authentication, while not a specific CMMC control, is a common technical layer that blocks spoofed emails before they reach inboxes.

Credential Theft and Account Compromise

Attackers who get credentials don't need to break through your defenses — they walk in through the front door. Credential theft happens several ways: phishing that captures login information, password reuse (using credentials leaked from other breached services), and keystroke logging from malware installed in an earlier attack.

In DIB breaches, compromised credentials are frequently used to access VPN (Virtual Private Network) connections, remote desktop sessions, and cloud collaboration tools — exactly the remote access paths that have expanded since most organizations increased remote work.

CMMC's response is multi-factor authentication (MFA) — requiring a second form of verification beyond a password. Practice AC.L2-3.1.12 requires controlling and monitoring remote access sessions. Practice IA.L2-3.5.3 requires MFA for remote access and privileged accounts. MFA via authenticator app (Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Duo) or hardware token makes stolen passwords largely useless by themselves. An attacker with your password but not your phone still can't get in.

Supply Chain Attacks

The SolarWinds breach made supply chain attacks famous, but they've targeted defense contractors for years. The logic: if you can compromise a software vendor, IT service provider, or managed service provider (MSP) that serves multiple defense contractors, you can reach all their customers simultaneously through a single trusted relationship.

Smaller DIB contractors are particularly vulnerable because they often rely on third-party IT support — MSPs who have administrative access to their systems. If that MSP gets compromised, so does every client they manage.

CMMC addresses this through configuration management and access controls, but there's no CMMC control that makes your supply chain partners secure on your behalf. Your responsibility is to understand who has access to your systems, limit that access to what's necessary, and verify that third parties accessing your CUI environment have adequate security practices.

When evaluating an MSP or IT vendor, ask about their own CMMC or NIST 800-171 compliance posture. Ask about their incident response capabilities. Ask how they authenticate into your systems. An MSP that uses shared admin credentials or doesn't enforce MFA is a risk to your environment — regardless of how good your own controls are.

Ransomware

Ransomware attacks encrypt your data and demand payment for the decryption key. For defense contractors, ransomware has a second layer of threat: some attackers exfiltrate data before encrypting it, then threaten to publish CUI (Controlled Unclassified Information) or sensitive program information if the ransom isn't paid.

Entry points for ransomware are typically the same as other malware: phishing, compromised credentials, or exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems. Ransomware groups operate on a business model — they target organizations sized appropriately for the ransom they plan to demand, with insurance policies that might cover the payment. Mid-tier defense subcontractors often fit that profile.

CMMC's incident response domain addresses recovery. Practice IR.L2-3.6.1 requires establishing an incident response capability including preparation, detection, analysis, containment, recovery, and user activities. An incident response plan doesn't prevent ransomware, but it determines whether the attack costs you days or months of operations.

The Common Mistake

Small subcontractors often believe they're too small to be worth targeting. This is wrong in two ways.

First, you're not always the ultimate target. You're the path to a prime contractor, a DoD program, or a larger network. Your size is an advantage for the attacker, not a protection for you — smaller organizations tend to have weaker defenses.

Second, ransomware and credential theft are often automated and indiscriminate. You don't have to be specifically interesting to get hit. You just have to have vulnerabilities.

Where to Start

If you're trying to prioritize CMMC controls based on attack likelihood, this is the order that makes sense based on actual DIB threat patterns:

1. MFA for all remote access and privileged accounts — closes the credential theft path
2. Security awareness training with phishing simulation — reduces the phishing success rate
3. Vulnerability scanning and patch management — closes the exploitation path
4. Incident response plan — limits the damage when something gets through

These correspond to controls in the AT, AC, IA, RA, SI, and IR domains. Getting these right before worrying about less-common attack paths is the rational approach.

For more on how to map these controls to a specific implementation plan, the cybersecurity planning article goes through the process in practical terms. Or ask the assistant below — it can walk through which controls are most critical for your specific contract type and organization size.