Provider Capture

Provider capture occurs when infrastructure control is incorrectly allowed to become identity or authority control.

Threat examples

• Cloud account suspension makes an Entity unrecoverable.
• A hosted resolver can rewrite authority or ownership.
• A storage operator treats file possession as the right to act.
• An application administrator can silently become the sovereign root.
• Export requires provider permission that cannot be independently bypassed.

Mitigations

Persistent Entity identities, explicit delegation, signed rights/evidence, portable state, recovery authorities and independently verifiable exports reduce capture risk. Discovery/resolution providers may be useful but remain evidence/infrastructure rather than general authority.

Qualification test

Replace or remove the provider and verify that the same Entity identity, historical records and authorization conclusions survive in another environment.