How vulnerable are single sign-on systems to modern credential attacks

Modern SSO systems based on SAML and OIDC are generally resilient, but their central role makes identity providers attractive targets, with most breaches arising from implementation weaknesses, credential abuse, insecure recovery processes, and poor token management rather than flaws in the protocols themselves. Key threats include real-time MFA relay attacks, stolen session or OAuth tokens, compromised SAML signing keys that enable forged assertions, social engineering of help desks, and dormant or overprivileged accounts created through weak lifecycle management and SaaS provisioning. Although centralized authentication can create broad consequences if compromised, it also improves policy enforcement, auditing, and control compared with fragmented application logins and password reuse. Recommended defenses include phishing-resistant FIDO2 hardware keys, protection of signing keys, short-lived and device-bound sessions, continuous behavioral monitoring, strong help-desk identity proofing, automated provisioning and offboarding, regular account audits, least-privilege authorization, and alignment with NIST identity-assurance guidance.

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