| Seattle

When authn breaks: real world failures | BSidesSeattle 2025

  • Authentication
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Authentication failures can be devastating, yet we keep seeing the same patterns in the industry across incidents. Although painful, these breaches are still how our industry learns and improves — as long as we actually apply those lessons.

We’ll talk through real case studies including the Okta/LAPSUS$ breach, CircleCI token compromise, and Uber MFA bypass — to examine why authentication systems fail and what critical signals were missed. We’ll talk through lessons learned, and how you can avoid similar issues in your environment, whether your organization is a builder or user of identity providers. You’ll leave understanding common auth system blind spots and how to avoid them.