FT3 went open source because shared defense demanded it. That worked: the industry validated the language and built on it. FT3 2.0 now moves to trust groups, where access is measured in reciprocity.
By Vincent Passaro9 min read
How an Attacker Engineer sees the work
Frameworks, operating language, and systems for understanding adaptive adversaries.
Clarity, trust, and disciplined execution for teams working under real pressure.
Where fraud defense is moving, what is fragmenting, and what the field must build together.
The complete publication record, newest first.
The break-in and the fraud are one kill chain. When companies and law enforcement split who investigates what, neither side sees the actor’s whole operation.
By Vincent Passaro6 min read
A detection posture built around the decline spike misses how card testing actually works. Card testing sits inside a larger operation.
By Vincent Passaro5 min read
Three incident reports from 2026 use the same terminology, but they don't establish the same facts. Each documents a different level of observable behavior, and only one provides direct evidence of the AI's actions.
By Vincent Passaro5 min read
NRF’s Retail Fraud Taxonomy and FT3 describe overlapping fraud behavior. Their classifications, granularity, and defensive relationships reflect different design choices.
By Vincent Passaro7 min read
FT3 2.0: An industry-available, multidimensional fraud framework that combines lifecycle position, authorization state, and abuse family as independently assignable coordinates within a machine-readable operating model connecting behavior to data, analytics, detection strategies, and controls.
By Vincent Passaro9 min read
FT3 went open source because shared defense demanded it. That worked: the industry validated the language and built on it. FT3 2.0 now moves to trust groups, where access is measured in reciprocity.
By Vincent Passaro9 min read
Fraud defense now requires language for delegated authority, scoped consent, and machine-speed behavior. Explore the three-axis coordinate model.
By Vincent Passaro9 min read
FT3 built the operating language for fraud defense before the market had one. The next phase is making that language executable.
By Vincent Passaro9 min read
Five fraud frameworks like FT3 and MITRE F3 emerged in 18 months. Here is why the industry must move past fragmentation toward operational interoperability.
By Vincent Passaro12 min read
Mission-critical leadership is not about control. It is about creating the clarity, rigor, and trust teams need to move under pressure. Exploring executive leadership, cross-functional alignment, mentorship, and disciplined execution build teams that can change outcomes when the stakes are real.
By Vincent Passaro14 min read
Inside every adversarial system, there is a moment when the harm is real but the language is still behind the event. Traces the work of turning messy, high-stakes domains into shared operating language defenders can use to name, map, automate, prosecute, and disrupt.
By Vincent Passaro9 min read
Open source is shared defense, which is why FT3 had to be visible, inspectable, and extensible and how open frameworks become defensive infrastructure when defenders can test them, improve them, and build on them.
By Vincent Passaro6 min read
Before defenders can automate, disrupt, or prosecute, they need a shared language that survives the handoff.
By Vincent Passaro6 min read
STIX 2.1 is the language of CTI, but it fails at modeling financial fraud like card testing. Vincent Passaro breaks down the architectural gaps and the cost of custom extensions.
By Vincent Passaro6 min read
Excerpts from a long-form conversation about Incident Response at scale as not just a test of tools. It is a test of language, memory, trust, and decision-making while the facts are still arriving. Vincent Passaro reflects on Tier-3 IR, AWS-scale response, and the lessons that later shaped FT3.
By Vincent Passaro14 min read
