• Instructions hidden as white text in a Word document can make Microsoft 365 Copilot silently alter the file it is drafting and copy the instructions into the output
• Each poisoned document becomes a carrier, so the attack spreads through ordinary internal workflows without the original malicious file and needs no macros, malware, or code execution
• Microsoft has shipped two mitigations across a 144-day disclosure, including a model upgrade, and the attack was still reproducible by the researcher

A security researcher has published a proof of concept showing that instructions hidden inside a Word document can cause Microsoft 365 Copilot to silently alter the file it is drafting, then copy those same instructions into the finished document, so the next person to use it becomes a carrier too.

Håkon Måløy, a data scientist with a doctorate in applied machine learning, disclosed the technique as the third installment of his Context Collapse series, after a 144-day coordinated disclosure with the Microsoft Security Response Center.

The reason this is being reported ahead of a fix is that it still works despite multiple attempts by Microsoft, as he notes that no robust mitigation for the broader vulnerability class is currently available.

A clever attack designed around Copilot's approach to text

The underlying attack belongs to a family known as cross-domain prompt injection, or XPIA. An attacker writes instructions in a natural-language document, formats them as white text on a white background at a small point size, and shares the file.

Because Copilot for Word strips formatting before passing text to the underlying language model, the model reads text the human never sees. This is true even for documents that are not opened by the user on purpose: The attack can trigger either when a user manually attaches a document to Copilot or when Copilot, working in Work IQ mode, searches the user's OneDrive for relevant files and finds the malicious one on its own.

It is also more dangerous than other exploits because of one key element: propagation. The hidden prompt in Måløy's proof of concept had two parts. One instructed Copilot to alter the document being drafted, in his demonstration halving every financial figure in a quarterly report.

The other instructed Copilot to copy the prompt into the new document and conceal it, framed innocuously as source tracking and readability formatting. Copilot did both, appending the instructions in white text and mentioning neither action to the user.

The disclosure timeline is the most uncomfortable part of the report. Måløy reported to MSRC on March 6 2026. Microsoft confirmed the behavior on March 31 and shipped a first mitigation in early April via a reworked Edit with Copilot experience, which successfully blocked his original prompt wording. He reproduced the attack with different wording the same week, and a second case was opened.

The second fix, on July 14, consisted of upgrading the underlying model to GPT-5.5. Måløy broke it the following day using GPT-5.6, then voluntarily offered Microsoft a further two-week delay to attempt another mitigation. The class still reproduced on the disclosure date, indicating that although a fix is in the works, the exploit is still possible to run.

A complicated issue that lacks a proper resolution

The issue goes far beyond Microsoft Word: an AI assistant must ingest untrusted content to determine whether it is relevant or hostile. But the content enters the same context window as the system prompt and the user's actual request, so by the time the model evaluates whether the text is an attack, the attacker's tokens have already shaped that evaluation.

As Måløy puts it, "the content being inspected participates in the act of inspection."

Microsoft confirmed it had reviewed the findings in a statement to The Register but stopped short of indicating a timeline for a complete fix:

“We have addressed the findings reported by the researcher and thank them for working with us through coordinated vulnerability disclosure," the company said.

"To address this class of risk, we use a defense-in-depth strategy with safeguards that block malicious instructions at multiple points and help keep tasks aligned with users’ requests. We are continuously strengthening these safeguards as the technology and threat landscape evolve. We encourage customers to install the latest updates, use multiple layers of security protection, treat content from unknown sources with caution, and review AI-generated content before using or sharing it.”

Måløy's recommendations are to treat externally sourced documents as untrusted when using them with Copilot, review attachments before starting an AI-assisted draft, and review Copilot's output carefully before sharing or reusing it.

He also suggested that generated documents should carry provenance metadata that records source material and model edits, which would not prevent injection but would make an infection traceable after the fact.

With Copilot extending further into agentic products that create and manipulate documents with less human oversight, the scope of how exploits like this could affect workflows (and users) will widen rather than narrow, and a complete solution is not yet in sight.

• Kaspersky says empty web pages are watching you, and the research backs up the warning
• Over 90% of parked domains now send visitors somewhere malicious, and clearing your cookies will not help
• Blank pages are also a problem: many 'Coming Soon' placeholders are quietly fingerprinting your device

Kaspersky has unveiled a rather underreported attack vector which is increasingly being used by threat actors to harvest private data from unsuspecting victims: registered websites that are yet to be developed.

Its warning focuses on parked domains, the registered web addresses that have no real website behind them yet, arguing that the blank screens and "Coming Soon" placeholders users dismiss as harmless are frequently doing work in the background.

The company says simply loading one of these pages can trigger silent collection of a visitor's IP address, approximate location, User-Agent string and cookie identifiers, and that operators go further by building browser fingerprints through other techniques, then feeding the result into advertising networks to assemble targeted profiles without consent from users.

Browser fingerprinting sans the permissions

The mechanics Kaspersky describes are worth understanding, because fingerprinting is the part most readers will not have encountered, and the part that conventional privacy habits do not touch.

For context, a cookie is a file placed on your machine that you can delete, thereby limiting tracking. A fingerprint is not stored on your machine at all. It is derived from how your specific hardware and software combination renders a test image, draws 3D graphics, or processes an audio signal, producing a value distinctive enough to identify the same device across unrelated sites.

Browser fingerprinting, the method used to capture such data within a browser session, is attractive to trackers because it is considerably harder to shake off. A private browsing window prevents your machine from keeping a local record of the visit, but it does not change how your hardware renders the test image, so the fingerprint it produces remains largely the same.

Such domains can also cause more direct damage than selling one's information to advertisers. Kaspersky says threat actors embed scripts that bounce visitors onward to fraudulent platforms, adult content, or online casinos. It flags typosquatting as a particularly acute risk, in which a domain differing from a well-known brand by a letter or two can capture mistyped traffic, landing the user on a phishing page or triggering a drive-by download.

This isn't the first time the problem has been reported, either, as recent research from Infoblox finding that in large-scale experiments, over 90% of the time, a visitor to a parked domain was routed to illegal content, scams, scareware, antivirus subscription traps, or malware.

Kaspersky recommends several ways to mitigate the risk, including avoiding suspicious links, clearing cache and cookies after an unintended visit, and using software that blocks web tracking.

Clearing cookies is worth noting, though: it addresses the cookie identifiers Kaspersky mentions, but by the company's own explanation it does nothing about fingerprinting, because there is nothing stored locally to clear.

Parked domains, including blank pages that appear inert, are now a routine part of criminal infrastructure rather than digital litter and should be treated with caution. At best, you give away more information than you meant to. At worst, you become the victim of an attack you never saw coming.

Artificial intelligence is fast becoming a game-changer for cybersecurity, with new frontier models such as Claude Mythos and OpenAI's GPT-5.5 demonstrating their capabilities in hunting software vulnerabilities and evaluating how they can be chained to harm an organization.

But these models have proven to be a double-edged sword, with both companies disclosing incidents where their models have escaped sandbox testing and compromised other organizations.

Couple this with how threat actors are turning to AI to increase their own skill in breaching organizations at an industrial scale, and you are presented with a bleak picture for the future of cybersecurity. But the best resilience is to adapt, and make sure those at the top can make the right decisions at the right time.

AI as a tool for defense and resilience

The latest challenge threat actors are presenting for businesses is their ability to match the skill of state-sponsored groups. The tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of these groups are being bolstered by the adoption of AI tools. Jailbreaking allows groups to use legitimate AI models to perform reconnaissance and research at scale, as well as the ability to modify and improve existing malware and attack vectors.

A recent IBM report found that since 2025 there has been a 44% increase in cyber-attacks exploiting public-facing applications, a 40% increase in vulnerability exploitation, and a 50% growth in the number of active ransomware operators. Much of this is the result of attackers adopting AI tools into their workflows.

Professor Julian Richards is a leading expert in intelligence and security who held senior roles in intelligence analysis, training program design, and strategic liaison at the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

I spoke with Professor Richards on the effects AI is having on the threat landscape, how defense strategies can adapt, and where training can be best applied to keep businesses one step ahead.

• What does cyber resilience really mean in a world where AI is being leveraged by threat actors to compromise businesses at a level that matches the craft of state-sponsored groups?

It is indeed the case that highly advanced techniques, the likes of which were previously the preserve of advanced states, are now readily available to a range of threat actors. This is partly because of thefts of highly advanced exploits such as ETERNALBLUE and their resale on the dark web.

Cyber resilience is about a range of approaches, however, which go beyond the technical into human layer factors. Keeping the response dynamic, diversified and creative will offer opportunities for resilience.

• Has the age of saving and storing vulnerabilities for later use passed, and how are defense strategies changing in regard to the rapid exploitation of vulnerabilities?

Almost certainly not, and experience from potentially parallel worlds such as that of cryptography tell us that exploits can remain productive for multiple years after their exposure.

Many threat actors are investing heavily in HNDL (harvest now, decrypt later); and a widened notion of "harvest now, exploit later" is also on the menu. Again, a reverse view offers opportunities for defenders.

AI can be used, for example, to more comprehensively and dynamically map and analyse attacks, even where they are mutating and evolving rapidly. This allows for more immediate and dynamic response.

• How are active defense strategies shaping the protection of businesses and their infrastructure, and what challenges are businesses experiencing with implementing these strategies on aging and legacy infrastructure?

As above, dynamic and active defense strategies are sensible and increasingly necessary. As with all areas of cybersecurity however, there are good and bad products on the market, and good and bad investment decisions being made.

One of the most important considerations for all businesses is making sure the defense strategy is appropriately tailored in scale and shape to the business itself; and making sure we deal with honest and adept brokers.

• AI is rapidly reducing the timescale between vulnerability discovery and exploitation for both businesses and intelligence agencies. Where do legislated threat disclosure windows play into these shrinking timeframes, and how do you perceive they will evolve?

One of the problems with compliance legislation (or indeed any legislation) is that it moves and updates much more slowly than technology. This will increasingly mean that the challenge described becomes a real problem.

In intelligence, selective disclosure has always been an understood protocol under the rubric of protecting national security, but this may not wash for commercial organisations. Two things will need to happen.

First, compliance legislation in such areas as threat disclosure will have to be written in a way that businesses are protected in fast-moving situations, allowing, perhaps, for post facto disclosure in many cases. Creative regulation and legislation is possible to allow for this.

Second, court cases may have to be brought to challenge overly stringent threat disclosure penalties, and subsequent case precedents will hopefully balance and protect organisations in this fast-moving situation. All of this will require the leveraging of advanced cyber expertise in the areas of law and legislation.

• What are the major blind spots business leaders have when it comes to the latest threats, and what is the role of AI in addressing these problems?

Probably two things, both of which have applied for a long time and are proving remarkably intractable! The first is complacency: "sure this happened to them, but it won't happen to us". Well it probably will.

The second is not understanding the importance of the human factor risk, which continues to be the biggest threat factor. Training, awareness, exercising for crises and internal compliance protocols might be irksome, but they remain crucially important for all businesses.

• What steps can business leaders take to ensure their AI tools are providing accurate intelligence and data while reducing false positives and hallucinations?

Work with reputable cyber threat intelligence suppliers and analysts. Develop expertise such that triangulation (checking across multiple sources and feeds rather than just accepting one source of information) is understood and readily implemented.

Expect the unexpected - in short, all the things that intelligence organisations have had to do since the dawn of time. For larger organisations, this is will mean a continual upskilling of key staff to be at the top of the game of understanding the dynamic threat picture.

• Where can C-suite executives seek support in making key decisions on incident response when defending against threat actors increasingly leveraging AI?

C-suite executives need to upskill themselves to really understand the threats and their dynamism in such a way that they can support everyone in the organisation battling with these issues.

It is still the case that many at the top have either a sketchy understanding of the risk, or see it as something that others in the organisation will sort out. This is increasingly untenable today.

Ultimately, those at the top will have to take the hit when it all goers horribly wrong! What this means is that training, workshopping and exercising through crisis scenarios is as important for the C-suite executives as it is for any other members of the organisation.

• Microsoft launches MAI-Cyber-1-Flash, its first in-house cybersecurity model.
• It also reveals Project Perception, an agentic system whose red, blue, and green agents find, triage, and patch vulnerabilities
• The launch comes days after OpenAI said its models escaped a sandbox and attacked Hugging Face

Microsoft has unveiled two significant security announcements - MAI-Cyber-1-Flash, the first cybersecurity model it has trained in-house, and Project Perception, an agentic defense system that finds vulnerabilities, decides which ones matter, and writes and deploys the patches.

The launch took place days after OpenAI disclosed that its own models had broken out of a sandbox and hacked Hugging Face, which makes the timing either unfortunate or pointed.

With Microsoft claiming a 96% score on CyberGym, an industrial benchmark for cybersecurity, nearly 12 points above Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5, while promising as much as 50% savings in token cost, the company says it is bringing what it calls a 'well-tuned, multi-model system with access to uniquely rich historical training data',

A competitive product with excellent timing?

The Hugging Face incident drew much attention, not all of it was negative: as it painted OpenAI's models as more capable than the company's own assessments had suggested. It also sharpened a question researchers have been raising for years: what happens when a model becomes capable enough to defeat the controls placed around it?

Microsoft's answer is well-timed and two-pronged, claiming to be both cheaper and more capable than the alternatives, though the performance figures are, so far, Microsoft's own.

MAI-Cyber-1-Flash, is a sparse mixture-of-experts transformer with 137 billion total parameters, five billion active, and a 256,000-token context window, built as a cybersecurity fine-tune of MAI-Code-1-Flash, itself developed from a MAI-Thinking-1 mid-training checkpoint.

It is designed to handle up to 90% of the tasks inside MDASH, Microsoft's multi-model vulnerability harness, with OpenAI's GPT-5.4 reserved for the hardest 10 percent.

Microsoft says that split costs about half as much as its previous best MDASH configuration. For now, it runs only within MDASH and is available to approved MDASH customers through an Azure AI Foundry private preview, with no standalone API.

Project Perception is the wrapper around it, drawing on MAI-Cyber-1-Flash for its first workflow alongside frontier models such as GPT-5.4. Three classes of agent split the work: red agents probe for paths an attacker could take, blue agents investigate and decide what constitutes meaningful risk, and green agents remediate and harden.

On the specific failure that let OpenAI's models loose, Microsoft took the precaution OpenAI did not, as it says all benchmark testing ran in a network-isolated environment with no access to production systems, the public internet, or external services.

OpenAI's sandbox, by contrast, kept one route outward in the form of an internal package-fetching service, and its models found a flaw in it, escalated privileges and worked across the research network until they reached a machine with internet access. Microsoft says its isolation held. Nobody outside Microsoft has verified that.

The harder question is not containment during testing. Project Perception moves the work out of a research network and into customer production environments, where green agents are authorized to change live systems as their normal function.

There is no sandbox to escape, because acting on real infrastructure is the product. And attribution is difficult even when someone is watching: Hugging Face detected the intrusion within days and reported it to law enforcement, but had no idea who was behind it until OpenAI said so.

It also could not get help from the leading American models, which read its defensive requests as offensive ones and refused. It ended up defending itself with GLM 5.2, a Chinese open-weight model, running on its own infrastructure.

For now, the industry's answer to dangerous capability remains narrower distribution, and the one documented case of a defender needing that capability urgently ended with them reaching for a model nobody had gated.

Artificial intelligence came at just about the right time, speeding up app and software development as the world started to contend with skills shortages, but it changed the pace so much that security teams have not been able to keep up.

Recently, we’ve seen AI being applied across multiple other domains with role-specific agents and tools, but that’s introduced its own challenges. While tools like Claude Code have proven a hit for generating, reviewing and editing code in seconds, security-focused tools like Anthropic’s Claude Mythos family of models are having broader impacts on the industry.

Anthropic itself has even admitted that Mythos is so powerful that the worry it could be abused by malicious criminals is extremely real – the Preview model is currently only available to a select number of pre-approved partners.

So with AI now capable of inspecting code, discovering vulnerabilities and suggesting fixes, do organizations even need as many human workers on the case, or can they get by with significantly fewer humans in the loop serving as AI reviewers? Recent layoffs have certainly implied as much.

The evolving role of security workers in an AI-first world

But with the entire lifecycle of development now amplified by AI, experts are warning that companies could actually be creating more work for themselves, and more than they could ever handle, leaving them facing strains from angles they weren’t previously exposed to.

For example, fewer than one in 10 companies now fix 90% of identified vulnerabilities within 90 days – implying that the volume of vulnerabilities is indeed increasing, rather than that fix efficiency is slipping.

Anthropic even revealed that its around 50 early Mythos Preview partners discovered more than 10,000 high- or critical-severity vulnerabilities – and thousands more of lesser significance.

Checkmarx CEO Sandeep Johri predicts we could soon find a balance, where vulnerabilities volume matters less and we revert our focus back toward exploitable risks. I spoke with Johri about the evolution of AppSec, where AI is and isn’t useful, and how organizations can balance speed and control.

• With the rise of AI coding tools and AI-generated software, some are questioning whether traditional application security practices are becoming outdated. Is AppSec actually becoming obsolete, or is it evolving?

Traditional application security is not obsolete. It is evolving to meet the reality of how software is being built today.

For years, the process was fairly linear: developers wrote code, security teams scanned it, and vulnerabilities were addressed later. That approach becomes much harder when software is being created at a much faster pace with the help of AI.

AI accelerates development and risk simultaneously: 70% of developers say AI-generated code created more vulnerabilities in 2025, according to our research. As code volume and complexity compound, security needs to move earlier into the development process, giving developers the tools and guidance they need while they are building.

Security teams will continue to play a critical role to help organizations develop software and maintain confidence in their enterprise applications. But their focus needs to shift from finding vulnerabilities to remediating them at scale, because we are tracking an enormous gap in most companies. Our data finds that fewer than 10% of organizations fix 90% of identified vulnerabilities in 90 days.

• AI coding tools are helping developers create software faster than ever before. What new security challenges does this introduce for organizations adopting these technologies at scale?

The biggest challenge is that development speed is increasing faster than many security processes can keep up with. AI coding tools allow teams to create and deploy software quickly, but the code generated by AI still needs to be reviewed, tested, and secured.

Companies that ship 81-100% of their code with AI are nearly three times more likely to ship vulnerable code than those who use AI 1-20% of the time. This volume can overwhelm security teams with thousands of findings, many of which don't represent meaningful risk. The priority needs to be identifying the vulnerabilities that actually create exposure and helping teams fix those issues faster.


• Many organizations are looking to AI to help identify and fix security vulnerabilities. Why shouldn’t companies rely solely on AI models to secure the code that AI is helping create?

AI is a valuable tool for security teams, but organizations still need accuracy, context, and human oversight. AI can help identify patterns, analyze code, and accelerate remediation, but security decisions require confidence in what risks actually matter.

Frontier models can uncover hidden exploit paths, but they can also deliver inconsistent findings and false positives. Their results may change depending on the prompt, and they can still miss known critical vulnerabilities.

The challenge with relying only on AI is that organizations may create a false sense of security, or “automation bias.” AI models can generate code and help analyze vulnerabilities, but they need to be paired with security expertise and proven security practices.

The most effective approach combines AI-driven capabilities with strong security foundations, so teams can move faster while maintaining control over risk.

• As companies adopt more AI tools throughout the development process, what are the biggest security risks they need to consider beyond just AI-generated code?

Organizations need to think beyond the code itself and look at the entire AI ecosystem being introduced into software development. Many companies are adopting AI tools, models, agents, libraries, and other components faster than they can establish governance around them. This creates visibility challenges because security teams may not know what AI technologies are being used, where they exist in applications, or whether they meet security requirements.

Another concern is shadow AI, where employees use AI tools without formal approval or oversight. Organizations need visibility, clear policies, and a way to manage these technologies as part of their overall software supply chain.



Perhaps the most urgent problem is the expansion of the attack surface itself. With LLMs, it has never been faster, cheaper, or easier for bad actors to exploit software. Issues that sat undetected for years are now being surfaced and weaponized at machine speed. Of the vulnerabilities Mythos has found so far, 99% haven't been patched, according to Gartner.

• How does the rise of AI change the role of security teams? Does the traditional approach to finding vulnerabilities need to shift toward a model focused more on prioritization, remediation, and continuous protection?

Identifying vulnerabilities is no longer enough when organizations already have more findings than they can realistically address. Security has to become continuous, embedded in development workflows, working in lockstep with developers, to build securely from the start while maintaining visibility and control.



We are shifting the focus to understand which issues create the greatest risk to give developers the context to address them fast, where code is written in the IDE.

Fidelity now matters more than volume. One verified true positive is worth more than a hundred low-confidence findings. If developers can’t trust what they’re shown, they’ll start ignoring it. That’s why organizations are increasingly looking at metrics like F1 score, which measure precision and recall together, rather than raw finding counts.

• What does the future of application security look like in an AI-driven software development world? Will organizations need a different approach to balancing speed, innovation, and security?

The future of application security will require a more integrated approach. Organizations are going to continue adopting AI because the productivity benefits are significant, but security needs to evolve alongside that innovation.

Security will become more agentic, more intelligent, and more closely connected to the development process. Part of that evolution is combining deterministic, rules-based scanning with AI-driven reasoning in a single process, rather than running them as separate, disconnected tools. Deterministic methods catch what’s already proven; AI reasoning catches what’s novel. Together they’re more complete than either alone.



In addition, deterministic models have real cost advantages. Asking a frontier model to reason its way to security (i.e. extra review passes, self-generated threat models) burns tokens fast. That cost compounds the longer a vulnerability survives: cheap to fix in the IDE, more expensive in CI/CD, most expensive once it's live in runtime. And every time a developer has to stop and pull a vulnerability out of code that's already shipped, that's velocity lost to rework instead of innovation.

Teams will need technology that can help identify real risks, support faster remediation, and provide visibility across the entire software lifecycle. The organizations that succeed will be those that make security part of how they build software, allowing developers to move quickly while reducing unnecessary risk.

• For organizations that are embracing AI coding tools today, what steps should they take to make sure they can innovate quickly without introducing unnecessary security risks?

The first step is visibility. Organizations need to understand where AI is being used, what tools are being introduced, and what impact those tools have on their applications.

Remediation is far cheaper the earlier it happens — catching an issue in the IDE costs a fraction of catching it further down the pipeline. But there’s another unsettling gap in our research: nearly all developers have access to in-IDE security tools, but fewer than one in five actually secure code as they write it. The cost of fixing that issue compounds as it passes through later stages of development.



In addition, organizations need clear governance around AI adoption, because only 22% currently have formal AI governance policies in place. That means defining policies, monitoring usage, and making sure teams have the right security controls as they continue to innovate.



AI will continue to change software development. The companies that benefit most will be the ones that embrace the technology while building security into the process from the beginning.

Though attack vectors and threat environments have changed since the advent of the internet, one thing has remained a constant – humans use software, and software has predefined parameters.

That distinction is exactly why social engineering remains so effective. Cybercriminals exploit predictable weaknesses in human behavior, granting them accesss to accounts and other sensitive information.

For the first time ever, that long-standing assumption is being turned on its head. In today's increasingly autonomous world, AI agents can take action on behalf of humans, creating an entirely new class of attack vectors that target machine autonomy rather than human weaknesses.

The boundary between software and user is getting really, really blurry

The purpose of an agent isn't just to retrieve information or wait for a human's approval – its responsibilities can include interpreting objectives, developing plans, choosing tools, accessing data autonomously and taking actions. In short, agentic AI bridges both software and user.

This doesn't make everything we know about software and SaaS security obsolete, but it does mean that many of the assumptions underpinning today's controls are no longer sufficient. Humans will continue to use conventional software, but alongside agentic workflows, leaving organizations responsible for security both types of environment.

Thankfully, the fundamentals remain – least privilege, strong authentication and separation of duties will all be central to the next wave of cybersecurity. What will change, though, is how those principles will be applied to agents, which don't behave as software or human users.

AI agents need identities of their own

The first requirement is to stop treating agents like features hidden inside applications, or software in their own right. An enterprise agent should actually have a first-class identity just like any other human colleague.

This means AI agents should have unique identities, named owners (line managers), clearly defined purposes and specific permissions. But they should also have their own lifecycles akin to software, such as creation dates, review points and expiry dates.

"Expiry dates or periodic recertification are important because agents can otherwise become long-lived access paths that are harder to govern than human users," Zendesk Chief Security Officer Vinay Patel explained to me in an exclusive interview.

At the end of the day, these are the sorts of controls that already exist for human users because organizations already understand the risks of unmanaged access, due to role changes or company departures, for example.

Without treating AI agents as users in their own right, companies risk accumulating abandoned agents, stored credentials and even data access paths whose original business purposes may have disappeared – an unthinkable consequence for humans, so one that should be treated just as severely for AI agents.

Human-in-the-loop automation is the future

Importantly, AI agents don't just occupy one space. They can act autonomously, be commissioned on a task-by-task basis by a human user, or operate somewhere between the two. Patel told me that an "audit trail should preserve both identities: the human who initiated or authorized the action and the agent that executed it."

For fully autonomous agents, a log tying them back to their "owner, purpose, and approved policy" is still just as important.

But of course, it all boils down to flawless visibility and effective management. "Companies need inventory and discovery across the places agents can be created or embedded, including SaaS platforms, internal automation tools, development environments, and third-party integrations," Patel added.

Organizations must monitor not only which agents are deployed, but whether their permissions and behavior remain aligned with their original business purposes.

Recent NIST research raises many of the same priorities, including verifiable records of agent actions, intent, data sources and generated output. But while NIST is developing guidance around agent adoption, visibility, control and accountability, agents are already being deployed, and often without the necessary safeguards.

Traditional IAM falls short

A separate Cloud Security Alliance paper concluded, "traditional identity and access management (IAM) protocols, designed for static applications and human users, can’t keep up."

The researchers argue that credentials and permissions should be task-specific, short-lived and easily revokable, unlike human identities which are generally set for the duration of their employment contracts.

The CSA also recommends applying zero-trust principles by treating agent compromise as a credible possibility. By enforcing least privilege, isolating systems and continuously verifying access, organizations can limit the potential consequences of an attack or misconfiguration as they adapt to this new security environment.

Accountability starts before deployment

Patel says that, "accountability should not collapse onto a single party by default." It's as much the responsibility of adopters as it is lawmakers, and even end users.

Key to understanding vulnerabilities and potential risks is identifying where the failure occurred: "user’s instruction, the agent owner’s governance, the developer’s design, the platform provider’s controls, or the enterprise’s deployment model."

Above all else, Zendesk's Chief Security Officer argues that "accountability must be defined before deployment, not reconstructed after an incident."

In the short term, this work could slow AI adoption as companies address controls that might've been overlooked during early, informal experimentation. The danger arises when a successful pilot actual progresses into production without pausing to define ownership, permissions and other policies.

Before scaling agent deployments, organizations should pause other ensure the right foundations are in place. Governance becomes much harder to retrofit once an agent has actually been embedded.

Preparing for the autonomous workforce

The question is no longer how, or even whether, AI agents will become part of the enterprise – it's about how employers can establish the necessary controls before they're more common than human workers.

The most valuable security investments today focus on visibility, control, accountability and governance, not forgetting over investments tech admins are making across data foundations and interoperability.

But thankfully, none of this requires a business to abandon the security principles it's spent decades developing. All it requires is for leaders to extend and reframe these for the agentic world.

The future enterprise will combine the human-software environment we already know with a new end-to-end agentic layer – neither one of these will replace the other. Companies preparing for this new hybrid will see the greatest returns.

• Just 27% of Gen Z respondents use antivirus software for mobile devices, and are less likely to regularly change passwords
• 57% of Gen Z spend more time online than offline, Kaspersky finds
• And only 28% regularly backup important personal data stored on their phones

Gen Z has no awareness of cybersecurity, online safety principles, or the risks of not changing your password. With just over half (52%) of respondents admitting they have had devices, data, or online accounts attacked, only 27% actually employ standard countermeasures like mobile antivirus tools.

In a study of 7200 respondents from 18 countries, the company also found only 28% regularly backup important personal data stored on their phones.

An average Gen Z-er appears to rely almost completely on their smartphone, which is where they store the information they value most, apparently without cloud backups or syncing in place. The survey has shown that social media accounts have been hacked (17%) and gaming accounts lost (12%), but smartphones have further risks to personal privacy if the correct precautions are not taken.

Gen Z needs to appreciate the risks

Access to personal photographs, identity documents, email, financial details, and of course social media profiles can be acquired via a compromised smartphone, opening the victim to a host of targeted attacks. Direct financial attacks can be made, identity theft, and more, depending on how successful the attacker is. Keeping the device out of an attackers reach, rather than inadvertently sharing its contents, is the safer course of action.

Irina Ermilova, Vice President for Consumer Product Management at Kaspersky, looked to address the apparent disconnect between a generation that has grown up with internet access and portable digital tech, and its lack of cybersecurity nous.

“Gen Z has grown up online, so digital services often feel intuitive and familiar to them. However, familiarity should not be confused with security expertise," she noted. "Being able to navigate apps, platforms and devices confidently does not necessarily mean being able to identify scams, manage passwords securely or protect personal data.”

“The findings show that cybersecurity tools and habits need to become as natural part of everyday digital life as messaging, gaming or using social media.”

Training Gen Z to find digital threats

Looking for a solution to this lack of cyber-risk awareness, Kaspersky has launched an interactive online game aimed at Gen Z users. Case 404 is a "cyber-detective adventure" in the point-and-click mold, set in the future with fictional cases that have been inspired by actual digital threats.

In playing the game, Kaspersky hopes that Gen Z users will spot the scams and phishing attempts, and take that knowledge with them into the real world and stay safe and secure online.

• 2.2 million vehicles are susceptible to a Bluetooth-based attack in the state of California
• The vulnerability is due to dealer-installed security systems
• Researchers at the University of California San Diego found that the Acrisure-built security devices all rely on the same secure key

A vulnerability has been found in KARR and SWDS automobile security systems manufactured by Acrisure that enables remote control via Bluetooth. The vehicles had the security systems installed by car dealers in California, specifically as anti-theft and tracking devices. Thanks to this hack, however, it seems that vehicles can be unlocked, with some further control given to the attacker.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego found that the 2.2 million automobiles were purchased from Southern Californian dealers since 2017, although the secondary market means that the vehicles could be elsewhere in the US, and even as far afield as Japan.

Worryingly, the researchers also found a publicly-accessible database holding information about all vehicles with the security system equipped.

How Bluetooth controls these cars

The researchers determined that the automobiles were purchased from Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Ford, and Jeep dealerships, and the affected vehicles have the “KARR-SWDS” label on the driver-side window, with the anti-theft device mounted under the dashboard.

Usage is straightforward: a mobile app connects to the KARR security system over Bluetooth and includes functions such as locking and unlocking doors, controlling the horn, and flashing the headlamps. It can also prevent the car from starting, although this only works if it isn’t already running.

The problem is with the implementation, which the researchers discovered relied on the same secure key on the KARR security systems. Once cracked, all cars equipped with the same device were believed to be open to attack.

Changing the secure key isn’t an option, and neither is disabling the Bluetooth. Of particular concern is that researchers found that even if the buyer doesn’t pay for a subscription for the app and the KARR system, the hardware is still in place. Worse, it has the same access to the vehicle’s doors, ignition, horn, and headlamps.

“Removing the devices is not trivial,” UCSD compsci PhD candidate and paper co-author Yibo Wei said in the report on the research (which is fully released in August). “You have to open up the dashboard and cut and reconnect the wires that are deeply intertwined with the car’s computers and ignition system.”

The patch is in

Jerry Yu, also co-author, wrote “Instead of smashing a window to get access to a vehicle, thieves could simply connect remotely via Bluetooth to the device inside the vehicle, and make it unlock car doors.”

KARR has told media outlets that only vehicles installed “with certain Bluetooth-related components” are affected, and the company has issued a firmware update.

• Accomplish AI showed Claude Cowork could escape a VM sandbox via Linux zero‑day CVE‑2026‑46331
• Agent accessed host Mac files, risking exfiltration of SSH keys, cloud credentials, and more
• Anthropic shifted Cowork to default cloud execution; local users must harden configs to mitigate exposure

Recent news of a ChatGPT agent escaping the sandbox and attacking services on the internet raised quite a few eyebrows, but it seems it’s not the only one capable of running wild. Security researchers Accomplish AI are saying they achieved similar results with Anthropic’s Claude Cowork.

In a new report, the researchers said they ran a local session in a Mac-hosted virtual Linux machine and then observed as the agent broke free of the VM and started reading and writing files on the underlying system.

“We connected a folder to a fresh Claude Cowork session, sent one short message, and watched the agent escape the sandbox,” Oren Yomtov, principal security researcher at Accomplish AI, told The Hacker News. “From inside the VM, it reached the host Mac and read and wrote files all over it, far outside the folder we'd connected, with no permission prompt anywhere.”

Defaulting to cloud execution

This means that, in theory, the agent can be used to access or exfiltrate anything that’s stored on the Mac’s user account, including SSH keys, cloud credentials, and more. To break out of the sandbox, the agent exploited CVE-2026-46331 ("pedit COW"), a Linux kernel privilege-escalation vulnerability. This flaw, fixed in mid-June this year, was given a severity score of 7.8/10 (high).

Accomplish AI disclosed these findings with Anthropic, which allegedly acknowledged them but did not issue a direct fix. However, the version of Claude Cowork that was released afterwards defaults to cloud execution which, the publication claims, addresses the issue. Still, users who opt to run the agent locally rather than in the cloud will remain exposed.

Mitigations are possible, though. Users should disable unprivileged user namespaces, grant/revoke seccopm permissions, stop modules autoloading, and restrict sharing of the whole host into the VM.

"Scope it to the folders that were actually connected instead of all of /, or at least mount it read-only, and run coworkd with ProtectSystem=strict in its own mount namespace so it isn't re-execing binaries a session user can poison," Accomplish AI explained. "Then even a full guest-root has nothing to land on, the last two steps of the chain have nowhere to go."

• Proofpoint reports Russian TA488 exploited Zimbra zero‑day CVE‑2025‑66376 in espionage campaigns
• “Half‑click exploit” let attackers compromise systems when victims merely viewed malicious emails
• Targets included NATO, Ukrainian government, and defense entities; group vanished after Feb 2026 exposure

Russian state-sponsored cybercriminals have been abusing a zero-day vulnerability in the Zimbra email and collaboration platform to conduct espionage against western targets - primarily military and government agencies, experts have warned.

Cybersecurity researchers Proofpoint claim the campaign has been ongoing for at least a year, possibly longer, describing it as a “half-click exploit”, because the victims don’t even need to do anything specific in order to get infected.

Usually, when an attack is done via email, the victim is required to at least download a file or click a link. In this case, a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the Zimbra web-based email service allowed the Russians to infiltrate the computers as soon as the victim views the email, nothing more.

Targeting NATO and Ukraine

The vulnerability in question is now tracked as CVE-2025-66376. It was assigned a severity score of 7.2/10 (high), and was patched in November 2025. However, the threat actors have been leveraging it long before Zimbra patched it up.

Proofpoint says numerous groups were observed, throughout the years, abusing this flaw. This time around, though, the group in question is tracked as TA488, also known as Laundry Bear or Void Blizzard.

“After successful exploitation, TA488 established persistent access to the systems and exfiltrated emails from the targeted users,” Proofpoint’s report reads. Besides emails, the crooks hunted for passwords, email directories, two-factor authentication tokens, and more. The group has been “consistently” targeting NATO and Ukrainian government organizations, alongside entities in the defense industrial base,

The group seems to be defunct now, since the researchers could not find any activity post February 2026. At that time, security researchers Seqrite disclosed a detailed breakdown of the group’s infrastructure and modus operandi, resulting in TA488 burning down months-old setups and vanishing.

• Researchers show Gatekeeper can be bypassed by replacing a previously run legitimate macOS app with malware
• Attack requires prior user‑level code execution, then swaps in a malicious app that Gatekeeper won’t re‑verify
• Apple dismissed the issue, saying locally rebuilt bundles fall outside Gatekeeper’s scope, leaving risk to social engineering

A pair of researchers claims to have found a way around Gatekeeper, a built-in macOS security feature that helps protect users from running malicious or untrusted software. However Apple doesn’t really see it that way and has seemingly decided not to pursue the issue further.

Gatekeeper’s modus operandi is rather simple - when a user downloads an app from outside the App Store, it verifies the product comes from an identified developer and is notarized by Apple. If it can’t verify it - it won’t allow it to run on the machine.

Now, security researchers Talal Haj Barky and Tommy Mysk claim that, as long as a legitimate app was run at least once on a macOS device, it can be replaced with a malicious version, and Gatekeeper won’t even blink its virtual eye.

Locally built

That also means the attack is not that straightforward to pull off. The threat actor needs to have a way to execute user-level code (for example, a malicious app, a compromised software package installed through a package manager, or a prompt injection attack that tricks an AI agent).

Once that is obtained, they can archive a legitimate app, remove the original, then replace it with malware, and Gatekeeper will not try to re-authorize it. That malicious version can then trick the victim into compromising the device even further, since a certain level of trust was already established.

After reporting the issue to Apple, the company apparently just closed it.

"Apple doesn't consider this attack to be 'modifying' the signed executable," Mysk said. "Instead, Apple says that by archiving/restoring the app bundle, the proof-of-concept code overwrites the entire app bundle, making it locally built. Locally built app bundles are not covered by macOS guards. And this is why access to Keychain or TCC protected directories require system authorization prompts. And for users to accept those is a matter of social engineering attacks that Apple considers out of scope."

Via The Register

• Recorded Future found an Iran-linked group spreading spyware
• The malware is delivered through fake VPN and media player apps
• Researchers assess that most targets are Iranian users

A new report from Recorded Future's Insikt Group describes a campaign that inverts the whole point of a privacy tool: fake VPN apps built specifically to spy on the people who install them.

Researchers have linked fresh infrastructure to an Iran-nexus threat cluster they track as TAG-182, which is using fake VPN and media player downloads to allegedly deliver a surveillance tool called MarkiRAT. The group is "highly likely" to be targeting Iranians living inside and outside the country, the report says.

It's a blunt reminder that choosing one of the best VPN services is a lot more secure than downloading free, unvetted tools.

Fake apps, real surveillance

Insikt Group identified a cluster of attacker-controlled domains allegedly used to stage downloads of applications that appear nowhere on Google Play or Apple's App Store.

Two names stand out: Pis2ray VPN and a media player branded YESHICA, which was quietly renamed YESHICA YEPlayer in March 2026 after researchers publicly exposed the original.

According to researchers, if you download and run one of these files, you get MarkiRAT, a remote access Trojan. In plain terms, that is software that hands control of your device to somebody else.

Analysts have documented it capturing screenshots and uploading them to attacker-run servers, while disguising itself under believable process names.

It also abuses BITS, the background service Windows uses to fetch updates, to pull down further files. Because that activity looks like ordinary system housekeeping rather than an attack, it tends to slip past routine cleanup.

MarkiRAT is not new. It has previously been used by Ferocious Kitten, a group Kaspersky documented conducting years of covert surveillance against activists inside Iran.

Recorded Future stops short of attributing TAG-182 to any specific Iranian agency, but places it within a broader ecosystem of state-aligned surveillance groups.

Why a fake VPN makes such an effective lure

Distribution runs largely through social media. Insikt Group found Instagram posts promoting Pis2ray VPN in the weeks following street protests in Iran in late 2025, and again around the country's prolonged internet shutdown, which ended with partial restoration of access on 26 May 2026.

The people most desperate for a virtual private network (VPN) in a censored country are exactly the people most likely to install one from a social media link, because the official stores are often the very thing they cannot reach.

Recorded Future considers it almost certain that most targets are located in Iran or tied to anti-government movements in Europe and North America. TechRadar has covered previous Iran-linked fake VPN campaigns, and this one seems to follow the same pattern with better infrastructure.

How to stay safe

Most readers will never be targeted by a state actor, but the underlying lesson travels.

Install VPN apps only from official stores, and check that the provider has a real, verifiable presence outside the app listing.

Treat any VPN promoted through an Instagram post, a Telegram channel, or a direct message as suspect, however polished it looks.

Star ratings are a weak signal, since fake reviews are cheap.

• Huntress spots malicious Claude Artifact spoofing Claude Desktop, spreading SectopRAT malware
• Victims were redirected via Bing ads, infecting at least 29 organizations between July 21–22, 2026
• Claude removed the artifact after 7,000+ views; malvertising risks persist despite disclaimers on artifacts

At least 29 organizations have been infected with a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) after mistaking a public Claude Artifact for a legitimate Claude page.

A Claude Artifact is an interactive document, or piece of code, that the AI generates and then hosts on the Claude platform. It can then be shared with other people as an example, or proof of concept, for different solutions. The link to an artifact usually looks something like this:

claude[.]ai/public/artifacts/ca466f1f-21c0-42af-b329-8f1c7534a891

Claude Artifacts are often used for phishing and other forms of scams, and we’ve seen it in ClickFix attacks in the past. Claude responded by adding a disclaimer to every artifact, stating that the content is user-generated and thus unverified.

In this particular case, a malicious artifact was created to spoof the download page for Claude Desktop. Victims would get redirected to an attacker-controlled domain, where instead of the Claude app, they’d download SectopRAT, a remote access trojan capable of stealing credit card data, personal information, files, passwords, and more.

Promoting the scam

The artifact was then promoted on Bing, showing up at the very top of search results to people searching for “Claude Desktop App”.

For years, the cybersecurity community has warned about malvertising, urging users to double-check the domain before clicking on any links, even promoted ones. However, the problem here is that the ad takes the victims to the legitimate Claude domain, making scrutiny that much harder.

The campaign was spotted by security researchers Huntress, who said that between July 21 and July 22, 2026, their SOC “lit up with a swathe of unusual executable installs, Defender exclusions, and anomalous persistence across 29 organizations, all coming from ClaudeDesktop.exe.”

Claude has since removed the malicious artifact, but not before it raked up more than 7,000 views. It is possible that other organizations, outside Huntress’ field of view, also fell victim to this scam.

• Zenity Labs found AgentForger, a flaw in OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent Builder
• Malicious links could instantly deploy rogue agents that exfiltrate sensitive data without user prompts
• OpenAI patched the issue by removing the risky URL parameter; no abuse detected

AI agents are handy for answering customer emails, or tracking reports for newly released security vulnerabilities. But what if they go rogue and turn on the very enterprise they’re supposed to support?

Security researchers from Zenity Labs have found a way for cybercriminals to trick people into deploying such agents into their own tech stack. Since all it takes is a single click, the disruptive potential of these attacks is arguably significantly bigger than anything else a phishing attack could do.

The flaw was discovered in OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent Builder, a feature that lets users create custom AI agents. The researchers dubbed it “AgentForger", explaining that the issue stems from an overly permissive parameter in the tool, which allowed anyone to create ChatGPT links that include virtually any instructions.

Agent trust failure

As soon as the victim clicks on the link, they send the instructions to Agent Builder which acts on them immediately - without prompting or otherwise notifying the victim.

In theory, a single phishing email could trick a person into deploying a malicious agent that exfiltrates sensitive data or does anything else that company’s AI agents are permitted to do. To make matters worse, the AI agent would persist on the infrastructure indefinitely, doing the attackers’ bidding until caught.

“This is an agent trust failure, and existing security controls were never built to see it,” commented Michael Bargury, co-founder and CTO of Zenity.

The researchers disclosed their findings with OpenAI in early June 2026, and the company came back with a fix a few days later.

The bug was solved by removing the URL parameter that originally enabled the attack, it was explained. There is no evidence that it was previously discovered, or abused, by malicious actors.

• Proofpoint 2026 AI‑Era Ransomware Report found 54% of victims paid attackers despite warnings
• 37% faced repeat extortion after paying; 2% paid but never regained access to files
• Experts urge prevention: phishing awareness, offline backups, and AI‑powered endpoint protection

Security researchers Proofpoint have seemingly proved once again that paying ransomware actors does not guarantee they’ll walk away for good - in fact, they’ve proven that in many cases, they’ll simply come back for more because they know they can get paid.

The company's “2026 AI-Era Ransomware Report”, based on a survey of almost 1,000 security professionals across 12 markets, found globally, more than half (54%) of affected organizations paid their attackers to regain access to locked files and prevent them from sharing stolen documents on the dark web.

This is despite repeated pleas by law enforcement and the cybersecurity industry not to engage with the attackers and not to, under any circumstances, pay the ransom demand. Proofpoint argues that the real-world pressure organizations suffer when faced with disruptions is, in many instances, simply too big to tolerate.

Asking for a second payment

The logic behind the “don’t pay” argument is simple - by paying, the victims are motivating the attackers to do more damage, and are funding future attacks. At the same time, there is no guarantee that the decryption keys will work, that the attackers will really delete the files they had stolen, and that they won’t strike again in a few weeks.

This final argument has now been proven. While around half (56%) of victims paid one ransom and regained access, more than a third (37%) faced a second extortion demand soon after paying. Another 2% paid and never regained access at all.

Instead of paying the ransom demand, the industry suggests businesses protect their premises by educating their employees on the dangers of phishing, keeping updated backups in offline storage, and running (if possible, AI-powered) endpoint detection and protection services across the entire tech stack.

Via TechCrunch

• JFrog found Newtonsoftt.Json.Net, a trojan NuGet package mimicking the popular Newtonsoft.Json library
• Malware specifically targeted Digitain’s crash‑game backend, rigging outcomes with insider knowledge of its codebase
• Issue was quickly fixed but attackers remain unidentified

Security researchers JFrog have discovered a unique trojan targeting one specific company, while letting everyone else who’s infected walk away unharmed.

Named Newtonsoftt.Json.Net, the trojan is a typosquatted NuGet package variant of the hugely popular JSON library called Newtonsoft.Json. The legitimate package is one of the most-used code libraries in the .NET programming world, needed by almost every project in existence. It is a small piece of software that helps .NET applications read, understand, and exchange data between different systems.

According to JFrog, someone published an almost identical package, copied the real author’s name, license, and made it work as intended. For almost anyone who installed it, it worked entirely normal. However, for developers working on Digitain’s crash-game backend, it’s a whole different story.

Rigging the games

Digitain is an Armenian software company providing online sports betting and gaming software platforms to gambling companies around the world.

On the infected machine running Digitain’s real crash-game code, the malware swaps in a rigged number instead of a fair one, using a formula based on the date and time.

What this means is that the results of the gambling game are rigged, allowing the attackers to know, in advance, which rounds are manipulated and place their bets accordingly.

The malware also sets up a private confirmation channel to report back for every rigged round, allowing the attackers to know if the cheat code still works or not.

JFrog did not identify the attackers, but they did stress that it was most likely an insider.

Apparently, only someone with inside knowledge of Digitain’s codebase (for example a current or former employee, or a contractor) could have built such an exploit, since it required knowledge of the exact internal function name inside Digitain’s game engine that decides the crash-game outcome.

The researchers reached out to Digitain on July 7 2026 and were notified, two days later, that the issue had already been escalated to the team and, in the meantime, fixed.

• Varonis Threat Labs uncovered Dolphin X, a powerful RAT with 329 features across 10 categories
• Its standout “AI Profiler” ranks victims by usage and sends summaries to attackers daily
• Malware is sold on the dark web via subscription tiers, starting at $80 per month

What if malware could talk to its operator and tell it which of the infected victims is worth paying attention to, and which not? A few years ago, this might have been science fiction but today, thanks to breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI), not only is it possible, it’s also already available on the black market.

Security researchers Varonis Threat Labs recently disclosed finding a rather revolutionary remote access trojan (RAT) called Dolphin X.

Even without advanced AI capabilities, the RAT is quite potent, acting as an infostealer, a Hidden Virtual Network Computing (HVNC), a DDoS botnet, or a loader. Just its infostealer capabilities are nothing short of impressive - it can target more than 300 applications to steal browser passwords, enterprise credentials, cryptocurrency wallet data, DevOps secrets, and different sensitive files, and it comes with 329 features split into 10 categories.

AI Profiler

However, the AI capability is the one that stunned the researchers. Called “AI Profiler”, the feature ranks victims by app usage, browsing history, and more, sending a daily summary to the attackers.

The malware is now being offered on the dark web, where other criminals can subscribe to one of three tiers. The basic tier costs $80 per month, while the top tier is around $230 per month. Lifetime subscription costs $1,140 for basic access, and goes up to $3,420 for the top tier.

"Dolphin X’s collection scope reaches well beyond browser passwords to SSH keys, cloud tokens, and DevOps credentials," Varonis said in its write-up. "On the wrong machine, a single infection could expose access to an entire production environment."

"Its use of AI is also interesting because it shows us how AI is being integrated into more cybercrime tooling."

• Guardio Labs found CVE‑2026‑48294 in Adobe Acrobat Chrome extension, enabling cross‑site data disclosure
• Attackers could steal WhatsApp Web chats if victims opened malicious landing pages with extension active
• Adobe patched the flaw in version 26.7.2.0; update recommended for 314M extension users

If you have Adobe Acrobat’s extension for Chrome, and you like chatting through WhatsApp Web, there is a potential security vulnerability you might want to address.

Security researchers from Guardio Labs discovered a “universal cross-site scripting (UXSS)-class cross-origin data disclosure vulnerability”, which is another way of saying that a website could use the flaw to read the contents of a different website, loaded in a separate tab.

The vulnerability was found in the Adobe Acrobat Chrome extension and is now tracked as CVE-2026-48294. It was given a severity score of 7.4/10 (high), and affects versions 26.5.2.2 and earlier. Guardio Labs dubbed it “HermeticReader” because of what it exploits.

"Insultingly ordinary" setup

The extension comes with different integrations, such as Google Drive or, in this case - WhatsApp Web. The WhatsApp integration component, internally known as "Hermes" is where the bug was found.

In theory, an attacker could create a new landing page and share it with the victim via email, instant messaging, SEO poisoning, or other methods. If the victim 1) has the vulnerable version of the Adobe Acrobat Chrome extension installed; 2) has WhatsApp loaded in a separate tab; and 3) opens the malicious landing page, it could trigger the extension’s vulnerable code path and allow the attackers to access everything the victim has on their WhatsApp.

Some sources argue that threat actors could use this vulnerability to pull one-time passcodes delivered via WhatsApp.

"The setup is almost insultingly ordinary: an attacker-controlled page, dressed to look like the kind of page you land on via search results, marketing emails, etc.," Guardio Labs wrote in its analysis.

"The visitor, who already has the Adobe Acrobat extension installed, opens that page. The page wakes up a dormant engine inside the extension, reaches directly into WhatsApp Web. Seconds later, the rendered WhatsApp Web view - the chat list, contact names, messages, the profile name, the text of whatever conversation is open - the whole WhatsApp in the attacker's hands."

Adobe has since publicly acknowledged the issue and thanked Guardio Labs’ researchers for their help. It has also fixed the problem in version 26.7.2.0 that’s currently available for download. The extension has more than 314 million users.

Via The Hacker News

• South Korean government discloses ten‑month cyberattack on the National Diplomatic Academy’s online education system
• Data stolen included user IDs, names, emails, and encrypted passwords of at least 6,000 individuals
• MFA shut down IT systems, deployed enhanced security, and delayed disclosure due to diplomatic sensitivity

Current and former employees of the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), as well as other government personnel, may have had their data siphoned out by cybercriminals in an attack that lasted for ten months.

The South Korean government has disclosed an attack against the online education system of its National Diplomatic Academy. The system, set up in 2022 by the country’s premier institution for educating and training diplomats, apparently contained a security vulnerability that unnamed threat actors managed to exploit.

In an announcement published on the official website of the South Korean government, both the details about the flaw, as well as about the attackers, were not disclosed.

Thousands are affected

However, it did note that the attack took place between April 2025 and February 2026. During these ten months, cybercriminals were able to steal user IDs, names, emails, as well as encrypted passwords of trainees in the National Diplomatic Academy Online Education System.

Unique identification information, sensitive information, mobile phone numbers, home addresses, and photos were not compromised, it said.

In response to the attack, MFA shut down its entire IT infrastructure and deployed “enhanced security measures”, without elaborating what these measures were. It urged all employees to remain vigilant of incoming emails, and to reach out if they receive anything “suspicious”.

While the official announcement lacks details, BleepingComputer reported that the attack impacted “at least 6,000 individuals, 350 of them being current government attachés dispatched abroad.” Citing an MFA spokesperson, the publication said the Ministry decided to disclose the incident with a five-month delay due to the “sensitive nature” of the attack, and the need to thoroughly analyze it before going public.

"We recognized this issue in February, but we announced it five months later because of the sensitivity of the matter regarding our diplomatic and security affairs, and the need for careful review and analysis," said South Korea Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Park Il.

Via BleepingComputer

• Kaspersky detailed ransomware cases in Colombia and Mexico where attackers exploited misconfigured systems
• Victims’ drives were locked with BitLocker, ransom notes printed via office printers
• New group “XEntry Team” claimed responsibility; misconfigurations remain a major breach risk

Cybercriminals have, in true Hollywood fashion, started using office printers to notify victims they were struck by ransomware.

Security researchers at Kaspersky have detailed two incidents which recently took place, one in Colombia, and one in Mexico, where cybercriminals took advantage of misconfigured systems.

However both had the same outcome - the attackers used BitLocker to lock down key drives, and then used office printers to print out their ransom notes.

XEntry Team claims the attacks

In Colombia, a machine containing eight terabytes of mission-critical data had its Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) disabled due to compatibility issues. It also had an internet-exposed Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) running, which enabled relatively easy access for the attackers.

The Mexico attack was somewhat different. Three months before springing to action, the attackers discovered misconfigurations in the MSSQL service which granted them privileged access to the target environment. They spent the next couple of months lowering the server’s security settings, dropping web shells, and even though some triggered EPP alarms, the victims never investigated thoroughly.

In the Colombia case, the attackers asked for only $3,000, an offer the victims quickly accepted. Therefore, there was not enough forensic evidence left behind to conduct a thorough investigation. Kaspersky did not say how much money the attackers asked for in the Mexico case, or if the victims ended up paying or not.

In both cases, the attackers did not exploit a vulnerability, or even target an oblivious employee with social engineering. Instead, they exploited misconfigurations, which continue to be one of the biggest causes of breaches and data leaks.

“We strongly recommend configuring the RDP in strict accordance with cybersecurity best practices to prevent unauthorized access,” Kaspersky warned. “This is especially critical: according to our Global Report: Anatomy of a Cyber World, more than 13% of incidents are related to policy violations and configuration errors, confirming that misconfigurations continue to pose a significant risk.”

The attacks were done by a group calling itself “XEntry Team”. There are no prior reports of this group, and it is either a previously unknown threat actor, or a simple rebrand.

• Apple fixes Hide My Email flaw which exposed anonymous addresses through bounced spam logs
• Hidden emails created before July 7, 2026 may still be exposed in third‑party logs
• Users should update and consider regenerating hidden addresses to reduce lingering exposure risk

A year after first being discovered, a vulnerability in Apple’s Hide My Email feature has finally been fixed - however some users will probably remain at risk until they make changes on their end, as well.

The Hide My Email feature is part of the paid iCloud+ offering and allows users to quickly create a new, anonymous email address - very handy for people who don’t want to share their email with different products across the web. It is also important since some companies tend to sell this information to third parties who then, unsolicited, start sending spam emails and various offers.

In June 2025, security researcher Tyler Murphy found a way to link these anonymous emails to the “real” addresses, making the entire service useless. He disclosed his findings to Apple, who responded with a fix. However, the issue remained, and Murphy went back-and-forth with Apple, until finally deciding to go public.

Was it finally patched?

Now, he says the issue had finally been resolved, but there are caveats:

“We don't know how often hidden email addresses were leaked in email logs. For many major email hosts, the leak was triggered simply by an email being automatically rejected as spam, even if it was a legitimate message. Such emails probably didn't make it to your inbox, so you can’t review your spam folder to learn whether you were affected,” he said.

Even though the bug is now fixed, he thinks the risk to Hide My Email users remains. “Because non-malicious emails could bounce, revealing your hidden email address, and because mail transfer logs are often retained, we'd assume that any hidden email address linked to a Hide My Email address created before July 7, 2026, may have been exposed and could still be in third-party logs.”

Apple released a working fix on July 3 2026, with users urged to update immediately.

Via 404 Media

• Chick‑fil‑A confirmed a credential stuffing attack between June 17–19, breaching thousands of accounts
• Exposed data includes names, emails, membership numbers, payment details, birthdays, and addresses
• Company logged out users, removed payment methods, restored balances, and notified multiple US states

Chick-fil-A is notifying its customers of a worrying cyber incident involving their sensitive information being leaked.

In a data breach notification letter being sent to affected customers, the fast food giant said it recently identified “suspicious login activity”, which prompted it to investigate further.

That investigation determined that unidentified threat actors ran a credential stuffing attack between June 17 and June 19 2026, successfully breaching an unknown number of accounts.

Logging everyone out

A credential stuffing attack is when threat actors use automated systems to try thousands of username/password combinations against a service to see which ones work. The login credentials are usually obtained on the black market, in advance.

Since the attackers broke into people’s accounts, the data found inside was exposed. According to the notification letter, that data includes names, email addresses, Chick-fil-A One membership numbers, mobile pay numbers, QR codes, last four digits of payment cards, and the amount of Chick-fil-A credit.

“The information may have included the month and day of your birthday, phone number, and address,” the company added.

After it discovered the intrusion, Chick-fil-A logged everyone out of their accounts and removed any stored payment methods. It also restored impacted customers’ account balances and, in some cases, added rewards to victim accounts, too.

We don’t know exactly how many people are affected by the breach, but it is definitely in the thousands.

BleepingComputer found that the company notified the Texas Attorney General that the breach impacted 2182 of its citizens. Similar notifications went out to Iowa, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, and Rhode Island.

Chick-fil-A is one of the largest fast-food restaurant chains in the US, operating more than 3,000 restaurants across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. It employs over 200,000 people and generated about $10.3 billion in annual revenue in 2025.

• Flock is abandoning plans for a 'human distress detection' feature
• It had previously been rolled out as a small trial
• Consumer groups say it's evidence of 'mission creep' from the company

It's fair to say Flock isn't the most popular tech company at the moment, with major consumer concerns around surveillance and privacy in regards to its widespread license plate cameras — but it has at least now pulled one of its most contentious features.

That feature is 'human distress detection', which was recently trialed on a small scale, and used Flock's network of urban acoustic detectors to listen out for sounds of human screaming and panic. If those sounds were detected, then the police would be alerted, potentially giving law enforcement a head start in responding to an incident.

After "careful consideration and community consultation", Flock says it's now removing the human detection element. The acoustic detectors remain in place, and continue to listen out for sounds including gunshots and vehicle crashes — but the 'human distress' element experiment is over, and won't be rolled out more widely.

In a detailed defense of its technology, Flock says "the system cannot understand speech, analyze language, or identify voices". Audio isn't recorded by default, but a rolling five-second window is continually processed. If a matching event is detected, then the clip is processed, encrypted, and stored.

A 'victory' for campaigners

Consumer rights and privacy groups are welcoming the decision. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has declared the move a "victory" for campaigners, though the organization still has many concerns around the existing gunshot and collision technology the microphones are still set up for.

"Gunshot-detecting microphones eventually being used to listen for screaming is exactly the type of mission creep that we've seen happen with other pieces of surveillance technology, including Flock's license plate readers," says Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the EFF.

The reaction online to the feature being pulled is less triumphant — most commentators simply don't believe that Flock is going to limit these acoustic detectors in the ways it says it will. "I don't believe that for a second," is a Reddit response typical of the general sentiment, amid ongoing privacy concerns.

What doesn't help Flock's reputation is that its representatives have apparently lied before about what its devices can do, and what data is being collected — making it difficult for citizens to fully trust its stances on privacy, even if this latest move does seem like a win.

• Cybernews found Carla’s exposed AWS bucket with 48,000 PDFs containing customer rental data
• Files included names, emails, phone numbers, rental details, and travel patterns useful for phishing
• Carla secured the database after disclosure; no evidence of malicious access, but risk remains

Car rental comparison and booking platform Carla kept a database with sensitive customer information unlocked on the open internet, freely available to anyone who knew where to look.

Cybersecurity researchers from Cybernewsreported finding an exposed Amazon Web Services (AWS) bucket with approximately 48,000 PDF files. These files, which was later determined belonged to Carla, contained car rental details and drivers’ personal information.

Among other things, these files held vouchers and confirmation numbers, drivers’ names, email addresses, and phone numbers, rent periods, costs, pick-up and drop-off locations, as well as general vehicle information.

Carla reacts

Cybernews says the data could have been used in convincing phishing attacks. Not only would malicious actors get contact information, but they could also deduce individuals’ travel patterns, which could be used to establish trust with the victims - a crucial step in social engineering attacks.

After disclosing the findings with Carla, the company locked the database down. Currently, there is no evidence that it was accessed by malicious actors in the past, but Cybernews says “if our team uncovered it, so too may have threat actors that have automated tools searching specifically for unprotected corporate data.”

The service does not own a feel of its own. Instead, it works like a travel booking site, aggregating offers from hundreds of rental providers and offering users to compare prices and reserve cars online.

Misconfigured databases continue to be one of the key causes of major data spills. Businesses often misunderstand the shared responsibility model of cloud providers, leaving systems with default settings, or setting up weak and easily guessed credentials.

Cybernews recently also reported discovering an exposed ElasticSearch cluster belonging to Nextcloud and containing 367,000 records of employee data, client company data, contracts, and various scripts.

• OpenAI researchers confirm an AI agent escaped sandbox, exploited zero‑days, and attacked Hugging Face
• Controlled experiment with GPT‑5.6 Sol showed autonomous chaining of vulnerabilities and credential theft
• Security experts call it unprecedented, urging stronger AI governance, accountability, and protection models

OpenAI has confirmed one of its AI agents broke out of a sandbox, found and exploited zero-day vulnerabilities to gain access to the open internet, and then attacked a platform.

Not just any platform too - the agent was able to breach Hugging Face, one of the biggest AI and machine learning companies on the Internet today.

The good news is that this was a controlled experiment done by white hat researchers. The bad news is that if it could be done by researchers - it could probably be done by malicious actors, too.

Whatever it takes

In a blog post explaining the incident, OpenAI revealed the experiment was part of its testing of GPT‑5.6 Sol and an “even more capable pre-release model” to see how well they would perform on the ExploitGym benchmark.

ExploitGym is a cybersecurity benchmark that measures if an AI agent can turn a known software vulnerability into a real, working exploit. OpenAI ran it in a “highly isolated environment, with network access constrained to the ability to install packages through an internally hosted third-party software that acts as a proxy and cache for package registries.”

But the models found a way through. They identified and chained vulnerabilities in the package registry cache proxy to obtain open internet access and then attacked Hugging Face, reasoning that the solutions for the ExploitGym benchmark might be found there.

“In one example, the model chained together multiple attack vectors, including using stolen credentials and zero-day vulnerabilities to find a remote code execution path on the Hugging Face servers,” OpenAI said.

The security community is up in arms over what OpenAI called, "an unprecedented cyber incident,” while Ansgar Dodt, VP Product Management, Software Monetization at Thales said this “demands a fundamental rethink of software protection.”

Bill Conner, president and CEO of AI integration and automation expert Jitterbit, said that while investing in AI is “critically important,” “overly aggressive policy cannot compromise AI accountability, transparency and data privacy.”

“To lead in AI, governments and organizations must lead with principles. Responsible AI governance isn’t a side note but the foundation of lasting global influence.”

• Xbox users face account recovery issues ahead of the all-digital console future
• Xbox support offered help to more users after one had their account deleted after being hacked
• Some gamers are now hesitant to buy any of Microsoft's digital games or software

Sony's disc-less future for PlayStation consoles commences in 2028, and unsurprisingly it's left gamers unsettled, with Microsoft reportedly following in a similar direction. Unfortunately, it comes at a time when a digital future looks unsafe and insecure.

As reported by GamesRadar, Xbox has recently offered support to gamers who have lost access to their accounts due to hackers, in order to recover access to game libraries. This is directly involved with the case where one user had their 25-year-old Microsoft account hacked, and subsequently deleted, losing access to tons of personal OneDrive data and games.

In a response to the user, Joshua Khane, and the initial account deletion post, the Xbox support account issued an apology, stating it is actively working to 'restore access' to Khane's purchases, despite the account deletion email stating that it was 'irreversible'. Notably, it also highlighted that its 'DMs are open' for other users facing account recovery issues.

However, that's not done enough to satisfy users, as most suggest that Xbox support's DMs are simply full of bots, while others suggest that buying games on any of Microsoft's gaming ecosystems might be a risky move.

One user stated: "I was not affected by this, but watching the developments makes me feel very unsafe as an Xbox customer. Not sure if I should keep buying games and software from Microsoft if this is the way I'll be treated if my account ever gets hacked."

Most importantly, the drama arrives ahead of a disc-less console future, not just for Sony PlayStation users. Microsoft's Project Helix is reportedly set to feature a disc-to-digital function, known as 'Positron', allowing gamers to turn discs into permanent digital copies.

Xbox issues with account deletion after being hacked, and over 500 movies instantly removed from user libraries on PlayStation, aren't doing much to instil faith in users on both ecosystems to trust in an all-digital future.

It's now evidently clear that once physical game copies are out of the picture, users' access to games will be at the disposal of Microsoft and Sony, and that explains why gamers are continuously voicing their frustrations — but it's hard to say if those complaints will change anything.

• Zhejiang University researchers warned GPU workloads could destabilize local grids and cause blackouts
• Attackers could exploit ~1,000 GPUs to drain current and generate excess heat in systems
• Theoretical attack dubbed Bit2Watt; mitigations include detecting malicious patterns and energy buffering systems

Whenever an AI data center thinks really, really hard, it can increase its power consumption so much to trigger disruptions and possibly even blackouts and gear malfunctions. So, is it possible for a malicious actor to trigger this scenario deliberately, in order to cause physical harm?

Multiple researchers from the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, wrote a research paper titled “Bit2Watt: A Cyber-Physical Vulnerability Exploiting GPU Workloads Across Power and Computing Infrastructures.”

In it, they claim that a malicious cloud tenant is, in theory, capable of launching GPU workloads so intensive that they cause physical damage.

Suggesting mitigations

"Our results indicate that GPU loads can reach modulation frequencies exceeding 6,000 Hz, compared with only a few hertz observed in conventional household loads such as air conditioners," the team wrote in its research paper.

"Such high-frequency modulations can substantially induce voltage excursions, harmonic distortion, and damping degradation."

An attacker could use around 1,000 GPUs to target a one-megawatt local power grid consisting primarily of distributed energy sources (such as solar panels), making it lose almost half of the electrical current, while generating around 20% more heat than usual.

"This not only threatens the availability of the computing equipment but also produces a negative damping ratio of -0.27, introducing an unstable mode into the system," the paper adds.

"Once the protections are triggered and computing loads are shed, it can trigger cascading failures, potentially leading to blackouts exceeding 80 percent in large-scale power systems."

AI data centers creating huge energy consumption swings is no news, and it’s a challenge some of the brightest minds of today are trying to solve.

Luckily, the attack is (still) purely theoretical, and the researchers published the paper to warn about potential misuse. They also suggested mitigations - defenders could look for malicious computational patterns, while operators should create energy buffering systems for unusual spikes in demand.

Via The Register

• Group‑IB discovers HollowGraph malware targeting Israeli entities, exfiltrating files via Microsoft Graph API
• Operators hide instructions in future calendar entries, then attach encrypted stolen data to events
• At least 12 systems were compromised; overlaps with Lyceum noted but attribution remains low‑confidence

Cybercriminals have found a way to communicate with the malware installed on victim devices through compromised Microsoft Calendar apps, experts have warned.

Security researchers at Group-IB have detailed a newly discovered piece of malware called HollowGraph designed to exfiltrate sensitive files from compromised devices.

What makes the malware stand out is the way it communicates with its operators. The best way to spot hidden malware is to monitor the traffic flowing in and out of a device, which is why cybercriminals try their best to hide this traffic, or blend it with another, legitimate one. In that respect, HollowGraph is unique because it abuses Microsoft Graph API and a compromised Microsoft 365 mailbox calendar.

A dozen victims

After landing on a device and compromising the Microsoft 365 account, HollowGraph uses that account’s permissions to access Microsoft Graph. Operators create calendar entries containing instructions and place them far into the future (in the year 2050) to avoid being spotted. After acting on the instructions and harvesting valuable information, the malware exfiltrates it through the same channel.

Instead of uploading files to a suspicious server, HollowGraph attaches encrypted stolen data to calendar events and sends it through Microsoft Graph. For defenders, all of this traffic seems legitimate and usually flies under their radars.

So far, all of the victims are Israeli entities, Group-IB said. The researchers identified at least 12 compromised systems, three of which were still actively communicating with the attackers’ infrastructure during the investigation.

The researchers did not attribute the attack to any known threat actor, but hinted at a potential. They identified technical similarities in command structures and plugin mechanisms between HollowGraph’s framework, Cavern, and a .NET backdoor used by Lyceum (an Iranian-nexus threat actor associated with OilRig). However, Group-IB explicitly emphasizes that these overlaps are not distinct enough, so they assess this link with low confidence.

• Scammers are pretending to offer FBI support to victims
• Victims are becoming double-victims after falling for this trap
• FBI's IC3 warns never to pay for support – support will come from law enforcement

Scammers are increasingly impersonating FBI personnel and the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) to defraud people who have already lost money to cybercrime, ultimately leading to them being exploited twice in quick succession by capitalizing on their weaknesses.

Attackers pose as support for recovering lost money and assisting with IC3 complaints, but the real objective is to defraud victims out of even more money or sensitive information.

But savvy victims should be able to identify these scams relatively easy, because despite a rising volume, the attack vector remains highly suspicious.

Victims are being hit twice via fake FBI scams

Rather than targeting the FBI's website, scammers send direct messages to victims or attract them via posts or ads on social media. "Some individuals received an email or a phone call, while others were approached via social media or forums," the FBI explained.

In the post, the FBI warns that attackers meet victims where they are, such as on Facebook, then quickly move them away to other, more secure channels like Telegram and connect them with other associates.

"The IC3 will not ask for payment to recover lost funds," the bureau warned, noting that victims should be weary of being contacted after reporting an attack. "If further information is needed, individuals will be contacted by FBI employees from local field offices or other law enforcement officers."

Victims who have either been attacked once, or attacked for a second time while trying to report the first attack, should report it via www.ic3.gov. The DOJ Elder Justice Hotline (1-833-FRAUD-11) also offers support for citizens aged 60+.

• Estée Lauder confirms Oracle E‑Business Suite breach from August 2025, only disclosed in June 2026
• Attackers stole extensive personal, financial, health, and employment data from HR management platform
• Breach tied to CVE‑2025‑61882, a critical Oracle EBS RCE flaw exploited across 100+ organizations

If you remember the Oracle E-Business Suite vulnerability that was exploited around October 2025 in numerous attacks, you can now add Estée Lauder to the list of victims.

The cosmetics giant has confirmed having been hit, despite the initial breach happening almost a year ago, following an investigation in mid-June 2026 uncovering the incident.

In a data breach notification letter that is now being sent out, the company said that “on June 19, 2026, we determined through our investigation that, on or around August 9, 2025, an unauthorized third party gained access to the Oracle E-Business Suite system and obtained personal information of certain individuals.”

Major remote code execution flaw

Estée Lauder said the platform was used by the holding company “for HR management purposes.”

We don’t know exactly how many people are affected by this incident, but we do know that the attackers obtained full names, postal addresses, email addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers (SSN), passport numbers, financial account information (including bank account numbers), health information, and employment information.

This is more than enough data to run highly disruptive and damaging identity theft attacks, and Estée Lauder’s warning is of little help coming almost a year too late.

In early October 2025, cybercriminals started mailing executives at various American organizations, claiming to have stolen sensitive files from their Oracle E-Business Suite systems. At the time, both Oracle and the wider cybersecurity community were not certain if the breaches actually happened, or if this was just a bluff to get the victims to pay a ransom demand.

However, the claims were soon confirmed, since more than 100 organizations reported falling victim. In early October 2025, Oracle issued an emergency fix to patch CVE-2025-61882, a 9.8/10 (critical) pre-authentication remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Oracle EBS.

"This vulnerability is remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., it may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password," Oracle said in the advisory. "If successfully exploited, this vulnerability may result in remote code execution."

Via BleepingComputer

• WordPress patches two flaws: CVE‑2026‑60137 (SQL injection, medium severity) and CVE‑2026‑63030 (REST API batch‑route confusion, critical severity)
• When chained, the bugs enabled unauthenticated remote code execution, allowing full site takeover
• Admins should urgently upgrade to WordPress 6.9.5 or newer to protect against widespread active attacks

Millions of WordPress websites could be at serious risk, researchers are warning, due to two recently patched vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited in the wild.

WordPress developers released a patch for two vulnerabilities - an SQL injection bug tracked as CVE-2026-60137, and a REST API batch-route confusion bug, tracked as CVE-2026-63030.

The former is a medium-severity, 5.9/10 vulnerability affecting WordPress 6.8.x before 6.8.6, 6.9.x before 6.9.5, and 7.0.x before 7.0.2, while the latter is a critical-severity, 9.8/10 flaw affecting versions 6.9.x before 6.9.5 and 7.0.x before 7.0.2 of the world’s most popular website builder.

Exploitation underway

According to The Register, these bugs are not that dangerous when looked at separately, since they are rather difficult to exploit. However, when chained together, they allow unauthenticated threat actors to execute malicious code remotely, which means full website takeover.

Security researchers at Knott say threat actors picked up on the scent rather quickly.

The patch was released on Friday, but “by the early hours of Saturday morning, successful exploitation was already well underway, initially using public exploit code to exfiltrate hashed credentials, with remote code execution following once additional details were made public,” Knott said.

“From our vantage point across a global client base, we are seeing widespread impact of this vulnerability across organizations of every size and every vertical.”

It is worth mentioning that these vulnerabilities affect WordPress directly, instead of different plugins or themes. WordPress is by far the most popular website builder platform in the world, powering more than half of all websites in existence today.

To protect your assets, make sure to upgrade WordPress to version 6.9.5, since it contains fixes for both flaws.

• Pillar researchers demonstrated sandbox escapes in AI coding agents
• Exploits let attacker‑written configs run with trusted host privileges
• Agentic security needs its own threat model, researchers claim

AI coding agents can be tricked into turning on their operators and assisting attackers in compromising the underlying systems, experts have warned.

Cybersecurity researchers Pillar have examined different methods of achieving the same results, finding that over the course of a couple of months, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, and Antigravity were all able to reproduce sandbox escapes and boundary bypasses.

In theory, a threat actor could create a repository containing malicious content (for example, a README file, a dependency, or similar) and trick the developer into using it. The malicious instructions tell the agent to create or modify a project configuration file, but since everything happens inside the workspace, no alarms are triggered.

Fixing the problems

Then, a host component outside the sandbox (Git integration, an IDE extension, or local daemon) reads that modified configuration, executing attacker-written commands. Consequently, the code now runs with the privileges of the trusted host component, rather than the restricted AI agent. Voila - the original sandbox boundary is effectively bypassed.

Three of the four platforms mentioned in the report have fixed the disclosed issues, Pillar said.

Cursor patched multiple vulnerabilities in version 3.0.0, with one assigned CVE-2026-48124 and another tracked through a GitHub Security Advisory. Codex CLI fixed it in version 0.95.0 but stressed that it’s still awaiting a CVE. Gemini CLI was affected by the Docker daemon issue, which the report says has also been fixed through advisory GHSA-v4xv-rqh3-w9mc.

For Antigravity, Google acknowledged both reported sandbox bypasses as valid security findings but labeled them “Other valid security vulnerabilities” and downgraded their severity. Apparently - it considers exploitation rather difficult.

“When it comes to agents, the sandbox boundary that developers expect in coding tools -- one that keeps the agent inside the sandbox and the user outside -- breaks down,” Pillar concluded. “The boundary we kept finding was both messier and porous, because If an agent gets to write the future inputs of systems, it was never sandboxed in the first place.”

“This is why agentic security requires its own threat model.”

• Hugging Face discloses cyberattack where malicious code hidden in a dataset exploited flaws in its systems, enabling privilege escalation and credential theft
• The incident was unique in being orchestrated end‑to‑end by an autonomous AI agent, which launched thousands of short‑lived sandboxes and migrated C2 infrastructure across public services
• No customer data or public models were tampered with, but the attack highlights the emerging “agentic attacker” scenario long predicted by the industry

Hugging Face, one of the biggest platforms for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), disclosed recently suffering a cyberattack supercharged by an AI agent.

“This one was different from anything we had handled before in one important way: it was driven, end to end, by an autonomous AI agent system - and we detected and dissected it largely with AI of our own,” Hugging Face explained in its announcement, noting that the attackers hid malicious code inside a dataset, which they then uploaded to the platform.

When Hugging Face’s automated systems processed that dataset, they exploited two software flaws which allowed the attackers’ code to run on one of the company’s servers.

Orchestrated by an autonomous AI agent

This twist to the classic code injection attack allowed the attackers to expand their privileges and gain more control over the system, steal authentication credentials to access Hugging Face’s cloud infrastructure, and pivot to other internal systems.

But carrying the attack out mostly with an AI agent is what made this incident unique, Hugging Face explained.

Instead of a human threat actor typing commands, Hugging Face believes the attack was orchestrated by an AI-powered autonomous agent which, entirely on its own, decided which systems to probe, which vulnerabilities to exploit, which credentials to steal, and how to move laterally throughout the compromised infrastructure.

“The campaign was run by an autonomous agent framework (appearing to be built on an agentic security-research harness - used LLM still not known) executing many thousands of individual actions across a swarm of short-lived sandboxes, with self-migrating command-and-control staged on public services,” Hugging Face explained. “This matches the "agentic attacker" scenario the industry has been forecasting.”

In other words, the agent kept launching thousands of temporary computing environments, making it extremely hard to stop the attack (since there isn’t a single machine to block). At the same time, the infrastructure controlling the malware kept moving, likely by using legitimate public cloud or online services. Therefore, when the defenders blocked one control server, the attacks would simply come from another.

Currently there is no evidence of tampering with customer data, public user-facing models, or Spaces.

• Ecopetrol confirms ransomware attempt in which attackers stole data from 3,300 user accounts but failed to deploy the encryptor due to security controls
• Stolen files were pseudonymous, with no user identities or credentials compromised; transactional systems and partner networks remained unaffected
• The company ousted the attackers, launched an investigation, and notified Colombian authorities; no ransom demand details or data leaks have surfaced so far

Latin American energy producer Ecopetrol has revealed it was victim of a ransomware attack, and while the threat actors managed to get away with sensitive data from thousands of user accounts, they were unable to deploy the encryptor and thus disrupt the company’s day-to-day operations.

In a statement shared with the public, Ecopetrol explained how an unidentified threat actor accessed their IT infrastructure and pulled data from 3,300 user accounts. The attacker then proceeded to install an encryptor but was stopped by the company’s security controls.

Despite failing to deploy the encryptor, the threat actor still reached out to the company demanding payment. We don’t know how much money they asked for, in exchange for not sharing the stolen files. The database has not yet leaked, it seems, and no one claimed responsibility for the intrusion. At the same time, Ecopetrol says the stolen files are pseudonymous, suggesting that they might not be particularly useful to the attackers:

Notifying the authorities

“The identity of the users of the 3,300 accounts that were illegally infiltrated was not affected, nor were the respective user access credentials captured,” the machine-translated announcement reads. “Ecopetrol S.A. confirms that no compromises have been identified in the transactional technological solutions of its digital ecosystem, those of its subsidiaries, or those of its network of commercial allies, financiers, providers, and clients.”

Ecopetrol said that it managed to oust the attackers and stop further data exfiltration. It also launched an internal investigation and notified relevant authorities, including the Colombian Attorney General’s Office, the Joint Cyber Command of the Military Forces, and others.

The investigation remains ongoing.

Ecopetrol is Colombia's state-controlled oil and gas giant. It runs production, refining, transportation, and exploration operations, and is present in multiple countries, including Chile, Peru, and Bolivia. Its annual revenue is around $30 billion.

Via Cybernews

• NordStellar reports 2,581 ransomware attacks in Q2 2026, with Qilin (299) and The Gentlemen (284) leading activity, far ahead of DragonForce (147)
• US SMBs were hit hardest, suffering 769 incidents; Canada (97), Germany (83), and the UK (74) followed, while attacks on billion‑dollar enterprises surged 74%
• Experts say rivalry between Qilin and The Gentlemen is driving the spike, with major corporate hits seen as reputation‑boosting trophies in the cybercriminal underground

Two ransomware gangs are battling for dominance, and US-based SMBs are the ones suffering most for it, experts have claimed.

Fresh data about the state of ransomware in 2026, compiled by security experts from NordStellar, shows two groups - Qilin and The Gentlemen - being by far the most active ones.

After analyzing more than 200 threat actor blogs, NordStellar concluded that there were 2,581 ransomware attacks in the second quarter of the year - and of that number, 299 belong to Qilin, the most active threat actor out there. Close second are The Gentlemen, with 284 attacks. The third most active group - DragonForce - doesn’t even come close with “just” 147 attacks.

SMBs and enterprises under assault

While it seems like a close race, it’s actually The Gentlemen who have been doing the heavy lifting between April and June 2026. This group experienced a 39% increase in attacks, while Qilin’s activity actually declined somewhat, compared to Q1.

In this morbid race to the bottom, the biggest victims are US-based small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). These companies, with up to 200 employees and revenues under $25 million, experienced 769 attacks in Q2 2026, followed by Canada (97), Germany (83), and the UK (74).

NordStellar also mentioned US enterprises, who are now increasingly being targeted. Attacks against organizations with revenues north of $1 billion surged by 74%, going from 23 incidents in Q1, to 40 in Q2.

“Ransomware actors historically target SMBs because these organizations often lack comprehensive defenses, which can increase the likelihood of a successful attack,” commented Vakaris Noreika, cybersecurity expert at NordStellar.

“This recent spike in enterprise targeting is unusual and may be a temporary fluctuation. This shift likely stems from the rivalry between dominant threat actors — a successful hit on a major corporation is a badge of honor that boosts a group’s reputation within the cybercriminal underground."

• Ernst & Young confirms breach via a third‑party IT service management platform, exposing client tax data between March 28 and April 12, 2026
• Attackers accessed documents tied to tax support tickets; exact scope and affected clients remain undisclosed, with no dark web leaks or group claims so far
• EY activated incident response, secured systems, and is offering 24 months of Experian identity monitoring to impacted customers

Ernst & Young (EY) has confirmed suffering a cyberattack in which it lost sensitive customer information, including tax data.

In a data breach notification letter sent to affected individuals, the firm said that on April 23, 2026, it spotted “anomalous activity” within a third-party platform its IT team uses. This is an IT service management platform that helps EY staff support the teams that perform tax-related work for clients. Therefore, the tickets submitted through this platform sometimes also contain documents with client tax information which may have been exposed in the incident.

EY then activated its incident response protocols, bringing in third-party cybersecurity experts, as well as notifying relevant authorities and affected clients.

Free identity theft protection

Further investigation determined that the unnamed threat actors broke in on March 28, 2026 and have, until April 12, been exfiltrating the files. EY did not say exactly which information was pulled, or how many clients were affected. We also don’t know if this only pertains to US clients, or overseas ones, as well. The attackers have, since then, been removed from EY’s virtual premises, and the systems have been secured, the company confirmed.

So far, no hacking groups claimed responsibility for this attack, and the data is yet to surface anywhere on the dark web. EY’s customers should be on the lookout for unsolicited emails, especially those claiming to be from the professional services giant.

To help them stay secure, EY is offering 24 months of free identity monitoring and restoration services through Experian.

Ernst & Young is one of the "Big Four" largest professional services and accounting networks in the world. It is headquartered in London, but operates as a global network of independent members spanning more than 150 countries and employing more than 400,000 people. The company’s core business includes assurance, tax, consulting, and M&A strategy.

Via BleepingComputer

• Anthropic’s Claude extension flaws allow fake clicks to launch sensitive AI workflows
• Researchers found vulnerable handlers unchanged across eight extension updates
• Synthetic clicks bypassed checks designed to confirm real user actions

Security researchers at Manifold Security have claimed Anthropic's Claude for Chrome browser extension contains two unpatched vulnerabilities in version 1.0.80, released July 7, 2026.

According to Manifold Security, it first reported both vulnerabilities to Anthropic through the company's bug bounty program on May 21, 2026, and received acknowledgment the following day.

The first flaw lets any browser extension trigger nine predefined Claude workflows by simulating a synthetic user click on claude.ai.

Nine workflows and one missing check

Researcher Ax Sharma found that the extension never verified whether a click event carried the Event.isTrusted property before acting on it.

Under default settings, the vulnerability received a CVSS score of 7.7 High, increasing to 9.6 Critical when users enabled automatic execution because Claude could perform actions without approval.

The nine hardcoded tasks include reading Gmail, opening Google Docs, checking Google Calendar, and modifying Salesforce leads without asking.

Because the browser marks synthetic clicks as untrusted, the extension should have rejected them but instead executed the workflow anyway.

Manifold Security confirmed on July 7 2026 that both vulnerabilities still work against version 1.0.80, months after first reporting them to Anthropic.

Anthropic released eight separate versions between 1.0.73 and 1.0.80 without altering the specific handlers’ researchers had already flagged as vulnerable.

The company closed the synthetic-click report, saying an existing internal report already tracked the broader trust-boundary issue researchers had described in detail.

However, Sharma believes the fix required only one additional line of code to verify the click event's isTrusted property before allowing the workflow to continue.

A second, structural weakness

A second flaw involves a side-panel URL parameter called skipPermissions, which can activate a privileged mode without any consent prompt.

When the parameter is set to true, the panel begins skipping permission checks entirely, allowing Claude to act without asking the user first.

Manifold notes that only Anthropic's own scheduled-task feature is supposed to construct this kind of privileged URL internally right now.

The panel, however, honours that parameter regardless of which script or page actually constructed the originating URL string in practice.

One example task lets Claude read a user's Gmail inbox, identify promotional messages, and automatically click the unsubscribe links inside them.

Manifold warns that "the bypass is still six lines of JavaScript," months after researchers first flagged the underlying issue to Anthropic.

Anthropic classified this second finding as informational, arguing that the parameter is only ever constructed by its own internal systems.

Manifold said the content-script and side-panel code linked to both vulnerabilities remained byte-identical across the eight subsequent extension releases examined after the original report.

The flaws were also reproduced across Claude's Opus, Sonnet, and Fable side-panel model selections, indicating that the issue affected the extension's security design rather than the underlying artificial intelligence models.

The report also connected the findings with OWASP concerns involving LLM01: Prompt Injection and LLM06: Excessive Agency risks in AI applications.

The researchers noted that abuse involving AI tools may remain difficult to detect because normal browser activity and network connections can appear unchanged while unauthorized AI actions occur.

• Group‑IB uncovers ClickLock, a new macOS‑focused infostealer using aggressive social engineering by spamming password prompts and terminating key apps every 210ms until victims comply
• Once credentials are obtained, it exfiltrates browser data, crypto wallets, password manager entries, FTP configs, and device info via Telegram Bot API
• Active since May 2026, spotted in 33 countries (mostly Europe), distributed via ClickFix campaigns, and initially undetected by security vendors until recently

Security researchers from Group-IB have uncovered a new infostealer targeting primarily macOS users in Europe.

Dubbed ClickLock, it is more of an annoying social engineering mechanism rather than a full-blown malware variant, constantly popping up a login prompt on the victim’s device, until they finally comply and share the credentials.

Every 210 milliseconds it terminates key apps on the device (Finder, Dock, TErminal, etc.), essentially making it useless. At the same time, it keeps prompting a password dialog on the screen, making sure the victim can do nothing but provide the credentials.

Targeting Europeans

The loop is set to continue for more than three straight days, or until the victim folds.

After getting the keys to the kingdom, the malware gets to work and starts exfiltrating valuable information.

This includes data from key browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and others), saved logins, cookies, autofill data, and other browser information, data linked to cryptocurrency wallets and extensions, encrypted wallet vault material that can be cracked off-site, data from password managers, cached cryptocurrency addresses across EVM, Bitcoin, Solana, TRON, TON, and Stacks, shell histories, FileZilla FTP configuration and recent-server data, and basic device information.Everything is then packaged into a .ZIP archive and exfiltrated via a Telegram Bot API.

Group-IB says the campaign has been active since at least May 2026, so it’s been active for a few months now. A researcher submitted a variant to VirusTotal in early June, but it remained undetected by all security vendors until recently, Group-IB says.

So far, it has been spotted in 33 countries, more than half of which are in Europe, it was also added. The malware is most likely being distributed via a ClickFix social engineering campaign, and has not been tied to any particular threat actor.

• Kaspersky uncovers GoSerpent, a long‑running campaign on Southeast Asian government systems using a backdoor, RAT (Stowaway), and exfiltration tool (TmcLoader)
• Attackers showed extreme patience, waiting weeks before deploying secondary tools to evade detection and outlast log retention policies
• Attribution remains uncertain, but overlaps with past TetrisPhantom operations; defenders are urged to review shared IoCs to detect compromise

Security researchers Kaspersky discovered a five-year-old piece of malware that’s been hiding on government computers in the Southeast Asian region, harvesting secrets and other actionable intelligence.

The company analyzed a campaign called GoSerpent, which comprises of a backdoor of the same name, a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) called Stowaway, and a two-stage data exfiltration tool called TmcLoader.

The backdoor was first used in 2021, it was said, meaning it was successfully hiding for half a decade. This was achieved, among other things, with plenty of patience and careful planning.

TetrisPhantom

“What stands out about GoSerpent is the deliberate dwell time,” Noushin Shabab, Lead Security Researcher in Kaspersky GReAT, explained.

“Usually, attackers want to move quickly once they get a foothold, but this group drops the initial backdoor and waits. They let the dust settle for weeks before deploying their secondary exfiltration tools like TmcLoader. That kind of patience is a calculated move designed to outlast standard log retention policies and automated security sweeps, making it incredibly difficult for defenders to connect the initial infection to the eventual data theft."

The researchers could not conclusively attribute this campaign to any particular threat actor but did say that it has a lot in common with older campaigns conducted by the TetrisPhantom actor, including victimology, technical capabilities, and operational methods.

Kaspersky analyzed TetrisPhantom back in 2023, when it saw the group compromising secure USB drives used to provide encryption for safe data storage. This campaign also targeted government entities in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC) but, at the time, it was a newly discovered threat actor with no overlap with other known groups.

• The US Treasury sanctioned First VPN Service for aiding ransomware gangs
• Complying with the sanctions, the .ME registry wrongly suspended Telegram's entire t.me domain
• The domain was restored roughly 19 hours later after Telegram CEO Pavel Durov flagged the issue online

If you clicked a Telegram link on Monday and stared at a blank screen, you weren't alone. Every shortlink starting with 't.me' suddenly vanished from the global internet, breaking group invites, profile shares, and channel links for roughly a billion users worldwide.

But the outage wasn't caused by a technical glitch or a targeted cyberattack. Instead, it was the unintended collateral damage of a US government crackdown on a cybercriminal proxy network.

On July 13, the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the administrators of a rogue proxy network called First VPN Service (1VPNS), aiming to cut off infrastructure used by ransomware operators.

While anyone shopping for the best VPN expects privacy, First VPN actively courted cybercriminals with promises of total anonymity, leading European law enforcement to pull the plug on the service earlier in May.

As part of the new sanctions, the US Treasury published a list of web addresses associated with the VPN. Buried in that list was a link to First VPN's public Telegram support channel: t.me/FirstVPNService.

A sledgehammer to crack a nut

Because top-level domains operate under strict international compliance rules, domain registrars must act quickly when sanctioned entities use their infrastructure.

Identity Digital, the company managing the technical backend for the .me domain, confirmed that the t.me domain had been blocked at the request of OFAC.

However, because a domain registry cannot selectively disable a specific webpage or channel path — like a single Telegram group — the Montenegro-based registry Domain.Me applied a "serverHold" status to Telegram's entire t.me domain.

This sweeping action effectively erased the domain from the global Domain Name System (DNS). The core Telegram app continued to function, and the older telegram.me domain remained active, but the shortlinks the messaging platform is built upon went entirely dark.

The swift resolution

The sudden shutdown prompted immediate action from Telegram's leadership.

Unaware of the backend domain hold, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov took to X to publicly ask the registrar for an explanation: "Hey @domainME, t.me links stopped working. Can you look into it?"

Once the sanctions issue was identified, Telegram scrubbed the offending channels from its platform. The registry operator subsequently verified the compliance and brought the domain back online.

"On 13 July, 1VPNS was included as a sanctioned entity by the US Department of the Treasury. A Telegram channel using the t.me domain was among 1VPNS identified infrastructure. Accordingly, the t.me domain was suspended," domain.Me confirmed in a statement following the outage.

The registrar clarified that normal service resumed roughly a day later, after Telegram provided confirmation that it had removed its links and affiliations with 1VPNS. "We appreciate Telegram's prompt cooperation in resolving this matter," domain.Me added.

While the outage is now resolved, the incident highlights a glaring vulnerability in the modern web, where a single URL swept up in a government sanctions list can inadvertently silence an essential communication channel for millions.

• 1Password unveils Claude partnership, letting Anthropic’s AI authenticate on users’ behalf via zero‑exposure architecture
• Users approve each login with biometrics
• New Agentic Mode in the browser extension locks down the interface when AI agents take over

Top password manager company 1Password has launched a new tool that allows artificial intelligence assistant Claude to authenticate on behalf of their user, and thus complete assignments that were previously impossible without major security tradeoffs.

1Password for Claude is built on “zero-exposure architecture” - so in practice, it means Claude can essentially ask 1Password to complete the sign-in process, but it will never see the credentials, and they will never be loaded into its memory.

In turn, 1Password will notify the user, and will request biometric approval before proceeding. Once granted, it will autofill the credentials and check to see if they were exposed on the page or not. If submission fails, it will clear the filled values and report back.

Agentic Mode

"We need a new security model that is purpose-built for agents, not just humans,” said Nancy Wang, CTO of 1Password. “The answer isn't handing agents your secrets. It is to let a user give an agent permission to use a credential without letting the agent see it. Claude knows it used your login; it does not need the password or one-time code in its context. That distinction is where trust in agents starts and the foundation we're building with Anthropic."

To further strengthen its security posture, 1Password also announced Agentic Mode, a new feature in the browser extension that gives users visibility and control over browser-based AI agents. When a compatible AI agent takes over, the 1Password extension automatically locks down and hides the interface. The agent can only use the logins and OTPs explicitly approved for the current task.

Even if the integration is not set up, and even if 1Password is not required for the current agentic task, Agentic Mode works, the company stressed. Other agents, besides Claude, are supported, as well.

Currently a major debate is ongoing, about how much permissions AI agents should receive, and under what rules. We’ve already seen horror stories of AI agents deleting people’s entire email inboxes, or otherwise ruining days of hard work. Whether or not this picks up or most people remain skeptical about giving AI access to certain services, remains to be seen.

• Coca‑Cola confirmed a ransomware attack on its dairy subsidiary Fairlife, forcing suspension of US production operations while Canada sites remain unaffected
• Incident response protocols were activated, with third‑party experts and authorities engaged; product quality and safety were not impacted
• Analysts warn the financial impact could be significant given Fairlife’s importance, with losses compounding the longer production remains offline

Coca Cola was forced to shut down parts of its operations to tackle an ongoing ransomware infection.

In an 8-K form recently filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company said the attackers struck Fairlife, its dairy company.

“On July 16, 2026, The Coca-Cola Company announced that fairlife, a dairy company owned by the company, identified unauthorized access by a third party to a portion of its systems, including its production-related systems, in connection with a ransomware event,” the filing reads.

Compounding impact

Coca Cola then explained that it kicked off its incident response and business continuity protocols, bringing in third-party cybersecurity experts to help investigate the attack and assess the damages. It also notified relevant authorities.

However, the production in the US has been affected, since parts of the operation had to be suspended: “Product quality and safety have not been impacted. However, as a result of the incident, production operations at fairlife in the United States are temporarily suspended. fairlife’s Canada production operations are not currently impacted,” Coca Cola explained.

It said it was now working to bring the systems back up, and that it has “not yet determined whether the incident is reasonably likely to materially affect the company.”

In a statement shared with TechRadar Pro, Cybersecurity Researcher and Advanced Services Lead at Arcova, Joseph Perry, stressed that the material impact is likely to be great. How great - depends on how fast Coca Cola moves.

“Fairlife is not a minor business buried inside Coca-Cola’s portfolio. Coca-Cola generated nearly $48 billion in net revenue last year and made a $6.1 billion contingent payment tied to its acquisition of fairlife, which provides important context for the value of the operation now sitting idle,” Perry explains.

“With production suspended across fairlife’s US facilities, every hour can compound the financial impact through lost output, delayed shipments, recovery costs, inventory exposure and potential disruption for retailers. Coca-Cola has not yet quantified the loss, but the longer production remains offline, the more quickly a cyber incident becomes a material business event.”

Via BleepingComputer

• Two UK men sentenced to 5 years and 6 months for the 2024 cyberattack on Transport for London, linked to the Scattered Spider group
• Police seized devices showing evidence of the TfL breach; Flowers was also mid‑attack on US healthcare firms SSM Health and Sutter Health at the time of arrest
• TfL reported $39M in damages; the NCA says the sentencing effectively dismantled Scattered Spider, with Microsoft confirming the arrests degraded the group’s operations

Two young men, one aged 20 and the other 18, have been sentenced to five years and six months in prison for their involvement in the cyberattack on Transport for London (TfL) in 2024.

Thalha Jubair, from East London, and Owen Flowers, from Walsall, West Midlands were arrested in 2025 under the suspicion that they were the leading members of Scattered Spider - an infamous hacking collective known for breaching dozens of companies. Initial reports from different cybersecurity organizations claimed the group consisted mostly of teenagers whose native language was English.

During the arrest, the police seized different types of electronic equipment from the suspects, including laptops, PCs, smartphones, hard drives, removable storage, and more. On one of the computers, law enforcement found screenshots and videos showing the intrusion into TfL’s systems.

Millions in damages

To make matters even worse, Flowers was in the middle of breaking into US healthcare companies SSM Health Care Corporation and Sutter Health when he was arrested: According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), these two were already “infiltrated and damaged”.

The attack on TfL was one of the more disruptive incidents that year, and one which caused a lot of financial damage, too. According to a report TfL shared with the City of London Police (CoLP), it suffered around $39 million in loss and recovery costs.

Both Jubair and Flowers initially pleaded not guilty and changed their pleas to guilty on the day they were due to stand trial, it was said. Now, they are both sentenced to more than five years in jail. The NCA says these arrests and sentencing effectively dismantled the notorious hacking collective.

“Although other cybercriminals may continue to use the damaged Scattered Spider brand, the NCA’s action against Jubair and Flowers effectively halted the group’s criminal activity,” the NCA said in its report.

“Independent assessment supports this, with Microsoft confirming that the arrests materially degraded the group's ability to continue conducting cybercriminal operations.”

• Researcher “Chaotic Eclipse” releases new Windows 11 zero‑day dubbed LegacyHive, a local privilege escalation bug targeting user registry hives
• Exploit could let attackers elevate low‑privileged accounts, but requires prior device access; no CVE or full PoC was published
• Experts caution that skilled actors could weaponize it quickly, urging intelligence teams to prepare mitigations despite lower perceived impact than earlier releases

Chaotic Eclipse, the infamous security researcher with a Microsoft grudge, did as they previously promised and released yet another zero-day vulnerability for fully patched Windows 11 devices.

However, other researchers don’t see it as dangerous as some of their previous releases.

Chaotic Eclipse disclosed a zero-day called LegacyHive, which is a local privilege escalation (LPE) bug targeting Windows’ user hives.

Escalating privileges

A few months ago, a hacker/researcher with the alias Chaotic Eclipse started publishing functioning exploits for fully patched Windows 11 systems, all with PoCs, claiming that Microsoft acted against them in ill faith and argued that the company does not treat researchers with the respect they deserve.

They released a total of seven exploits, some more damning than others, and promised to release a “bone-shattering” one on July 14 2026. In the meantime, Microsoft first criticized the researcher for not “responsibly” disclosing the flaws, and at one point even threatening possible legal action. However, it did not sue the researcher and later backed away from the threat entirely, partly as a result of strong public backlash.

In Windows, user hives are registry files that store configuration settings specific to an individual user account. These include desktop preferences, user-specific application settings, network drive mappings, user-specific security and privacy settings, and more.

With LegacyHive, threat actors could, in theory, gain privileged read-write access targeting other users’ hives. Or, in other words, they could turn low-privileged accounts into high-privileged ones. However, they would first need to have any access to the device, which is one of the reasons why some security researchers don’t see it as disastrous as Chaotic Eclipse’s previous work.

What also makes LegacyHive different from some other releases is that this one was not released with a CVE identifier or a fully functioning Proof of Concept (PoC).

Still, security experts are urging intelligence teams to work fast, because skilled threat actors can fill the gaps with relative ease, and turn LegacyHive into a potent weapon.

Via The Register

• Russian hacker “bandcampro” used Google’s Gemini CLI to control an eight‑device botnet at a dental clinic
• The attacker tricked the AI by posing as a pen tester, directing it to migrate C2 infrastructure, troubleshoot connectivity, and prepare payload bundles
• The AI assisted with daily operations like password guessing and WordPress access, highlighting risks of misuse when threat actors co‑opt AI tools

A Russian hacker and his AI companion were able to successfully control a miniature, eight-system botnet, with the hacker giving instructions in conversational language, and the AI doing his bidding, experts have found.

Analyzing 200 session logs obtained from the Russian-speaking threat actor known as “bandcampro”, cybersecurity researchers Trend Micro saw the hacker use Google’s Gemini CLI, an open source AI command-line tool that lets developers interact with Google's Gemini AI models directly from a terminal.

Scouring through a month’s worth of session logs (between April 21 and May 19 2026), the researchers discovered that the attacker tricked the AI by telling it they were an “authorized pen tester”. While the AI mostly complied with their nefarious overlord, they refused the orders on at least one occasion.

Gone in six minutes

Trend Micro found the hacker controlled eight devices belonging to a dental clinic and sought to access their access their OpenDental database.

Using the AI, bandcampro did a number of things, starting with migrating the botnet to a new C2 infrastructure. He gave the AI a skill file with the full architecture description, standard operating procedures, infection one-liner, persistence commands, and troubleshooting steps.

He then told it to “study the C2 migration”, which had the AI process the guide and prepare all the code and necessary steps. It took the tool around six minutes to get the job done.

"The AI read the migration guide, then prepared a migration bundle, a small archive of server code, payloads, and the skill file. It then unpacked the bundle, launched the C&C server on a VPS, and brought up the Cloudflare tunnel," Trend Micro says.

Bandcampro then used the AI to troubleshoot connectivity issues, as well as for various daily operations, such as guessing passwords, generating plausible variants of existing passwords for WordPress portals, and more.

Via BleepingComputer

• TriWest Healthcare confirmed an April 16 breach in which an attacker accessed and downloaded sensitive data tied to 12,000 TRICARE beneficiaries
• Stolen information includes names, DoD Benefits numbers, ZIP codes, authorization request types, and in some cases SSNs, addresses, and dates of birth
• TriWest says it acted immediately to contain the intrusion and notify affected individuals; no group has claimed responsibility and stolen data has not surfaced online

US healthcare services company TriWest Healthcare networks recently suffered a cyberattack in which it lost sensitive customer data belonging to thousands of its clients’ users.

TriWest is a private company that manages government healthcare programs, primarily on behalf of the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). One of its clients is TRICARE, a DoD healthcare program for active-duty service members, National Guard and Reserve members, military retirees, and their families.

According to Cybernews, TriWest recently started notifying TRICARE customers that an “unauthorized person” accessed its network on April 16 and “downloaded some TriWest information.” Citing data provided to the California State Attorney General’s Office, the publication says 12,000 TRICARE beneficiaries were recently notified of the breach.

Sounding the alarm

In a statement shared with Military Times, TriWest explained what it did the moment it spotted the intrusion: “With regard to timing, as soon as the incident was discovered, TriWest took immediate action to prevent any further unauthorized activity and worked diligently with the government to notify affected individuals, consistent with applicable law and notification timelines,” TriWest officials said.

The details about the incident, the nature of the attack, or the identity of the attackers, were not disclosed. We do know that the miscreants walked away with people’s names, DoD Benefits numbers, ZIP codes, types of authorization requests and, in some cases, Social Security numbers (SSN), postal addresses, and dates of birth.

At press time, the TriWest website, as well as the company’s newsroom, were offline. It is unclear if there is any connection to the data breach. So far, no threat actors claimed responsibility for the attack, and the data is yet to surface on the dark web.

In the meantime, TRICARE beneficiaries are warned to be wary of incoming emails, especially those claiming to come from the program or the company.

Via Cybernews

• Zoom patches critical improper input validation flaw in multiple Windows clients and SDKs that allowed remote account takeover
• Additional high‑severity bugs fixed include CVE‑2026‑53410 (TOCTOU race condition), CVE‑2026‑53409 (privilege management flaw), and CVE‑2026‑53411 (input validation issue)
• All vulnerabilities were found internally, with no evidence of exploitation; users are urged to update Zoom Workplace and related products to the latest versions

Zoom has patched a critical-level vulnerability in multiple products that allowed threat actors to take over people’s accounts remotely.

In a security advisory, Zoom said it fixed an Improper Input Validation bug plaguing Zoom Desktop Client for Windows (before version 7.0.0), Zoom VDI Client for Windows (before versions 7.0.10, 6.6.15, and 6.5.18), and Zoom Meeting SDK for Windows (before version 7.0.0). It did not go into more details on how the flaw works.

The bug is now tracked as CVE-2026-53412, and was given a severity score of 9.8/10 (critical). To fix it, users are advised to update their software to the newest version.

More vulnerabilities

While certainly the most dangerous one, this is not the only bug Zoom recently addressed. The company also fixed a handful of less severe vulnerabilities, including a time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition bug affecting Zoom Workplace for Windows before 7.0.5, Zoom Workplace VDI Client and VDI Plugin before 6.5.17/6.6.14, Zoom Rooms for Windows before 7.0.5, and Remote Control for Zoom Contact Center before 7.0.0. This bug is tracked as CVE-2026-53410 and was given a “high” severity score of 7/10.

Other notable mentions include CVE-2026-53409 (a high-severity improper privilege management flaw in Zoom Rooms for Windows before version 7.1.0), and

CVE-2026-53411 (a high-severity improper input validation flaw affecting the Zoom Workplace VDI Plugin for Windows before version 6.6.14).

Zoom found all of these vulnerabilities in-house and says there is no evidence that any of these were abused in real-life attacks in the past.

Zoom Workplace (the company’s all-in-one collaboration platform) offers video meetings, team chat, phone, email, calendar, scheduling, whiteboards, and other productivity tools. It is an evolution of the original Zoom Meetings app which now competes with platforms such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

Via BleepingComputer

• Nichirei Co confirms cyberattack disrupting refrigerated warehouse and frozen food logistics, impacting customers including KFC Japan
• KFC warned of delivery delays leading to possible menu restrictions, shortened hours, or temporary suspension of online orders
• No data leaks or attacker claims have surfaced; disruptions suggest ransomware, but both companies expect operations to normalize by week’s end

Nichirei Co, a large Japanese company which produces frozen and processed foods, and operates cold-chain logistics to distribute them across the country, has confirmed it suffered a cyberattack which affected some of its customers, including KFC.

The company confirmed the news in a notice stating, “Today, Nichirei Co experienced a system failure caused by unauthorized access."

Nichirei said that it is currently investigating the incident, but that there is no evidence of personal or customer data leaking outside the company. However, due to the nature of the incident (which hasn’t been explained in detail), multiple operations have been affected, including refrigerated warehouse inbound/outbound operations, and frozen food shipping services.

No claims yet

These disruptions affected, among others, KFC - one of the largest fast food chains in the world. In a separate announcement, KFC said that a system failure at Nichirei Logistics Group, which happened on July 13, affected the company’s logistics and delivery sites. “From Tuesday, July 14, 2026, food delivery to KFC stores is expected to be affected,” it said.

“As a result, each store may suspend operations depending on some products going out of stock, menu restrictions, shortened business hours, or ingredient stock availability. Additionally, online orders from the official app and website have also been temporarily suspended.”

The nature of the attack, or the identity of the attackers, were not disclosed. Since Nichirei had to shut down some of its services, it could mean this was a ransomware attack and that some company data was stolen after all. The Register reports that KFC Japan hasn’t posted information about store closures and continues to promote summer menu items.

At press time, no threat actors claimed responsibility for the attacks, and no Nichirei/KFC data surfaced on the dark web. The companies expect to resume normal operations by the end of the week.

Via The Register

Geopolitical tensions are mounting, and nation states are employing new types of strategies to gain intelligence. A recent Five Eyes warning, for example, accused Chinese military intelligence officers of using professional networking sites and online job platforms to target individuals of interest.

In this specific case, the agents pose as recruiters advertising seemingly legitimate work to build relationships and, ultimately, get their hands on non-public information. Popular sites like LinkedIn, Indeed and Upwork have all seen this new type of attack take place.

At the same time, a parallel threat sees operatives applying for jobs within trusted organizations with access to intelligence, creating insider threats that experts warn AI might be mostly responsible for.

Generative AI, for example, can create documents, write applications and even supply live answers during real-time remote interviews, meaning that a small group of fake applicants can extend their reach much more quickly.

Rather than attacking existing workers, nation states are creating their own job candidates

Once inside an organization and with access to company tools like PCs, emails and other internal systems, nation state spies can then move laterally to acquire the information they sought.

Security experts at Exabeam warn that, because this technique is still evolving, it might not always be so easy to spot. Additionally, motives can differ, with Chinese intelligence operations typically seeking military, political or economic information. North Korean agents, on the other hand, tend to be tied to stealing money, which could also come with the side effect of data and intelligence theft.

Exabeam even observed this type of attack first-hand, when a North Korean-affiliated applicant used a false identity to apply for a job at the company. After passing technical tests, a video interview and other standard checks, the suspect’s laptop was quickly flagged for unusual activity.

In the following Q&A with AI Strategy and Security Research VP Steve Povolny, I discuss these new types of attacks, who’s responsible for stamping them out and what we can do to prevent similar incidents from happening more commonly.

• The Five Eyes alliance recently warned that foreign intelligence groups are using job platforms to recruit insiders. How significant is this threat, and what is driving its growth?

This is among the most serious access-driven threats facing cleared workers, and it keeps growing because the economics now favor the attacker.

Foreign intelligence services no longer need handlers and dead drops when they can post a job ad on LinkedIn or Upwork and let candidates self-select based on the access listed in their own resumes. Generative AI lets them run thousands of these conversations at once, drafting outreach and scoring which applicants sit closest to sensitive information without a trained officer.

The Five Eyes alert describes a scaled, automated funnel, and that scale is what makes it dangerous.

• A parallel risk runs alongside that warning: adversaries who secure employment directly rather than recruiting an existing employee. Which scenario presents the greater defensive challenge, and why?

The infiltration model gives defenders less to work with, which makes it the harder problem. When an adversary recruits someone already on staff, most of the suspicious behavior happens outside the company on platforms the employer never sees, yet the insider remains a known person with a verified identity and a real history.

When the adversary becomes the employee, the company has onboarded a fabricated person and handed them a laptop and standing network access on day one. No behavioral baseline exists, since everything that account does counts as a first. The deception also clears the controls most organizations trust, so the failure lands before any security tool gets a vote.

• Exabeam identified a North Korea-affiliated individual who gained employment at the company. How did the operative clear Exabeam's hiring process, and what first signaled that something was wrong?

He cleared it by performing well on the parts we test and forging the parts we verify. Applying under the alias Trevor Rothluebber, he aced the technical interview and take-home assessment, passed the video interview and cleared our standard pre-employment process including the background check and I-9 validation.

Our hiring team flagged a suspicion that he leaned on generative AI for live help during the video call, the first soft signal. The hard signal arrived the moment he logged into his corporate account. Our threat intelligence feed matched his username to activity previously associated with North Korean operatives and rated it high risk, and that single match reframed how the team read everything that followed.

Simultaneously, Exabeam’s platform detected a number of anomalies inconsistent with a brand new employee’s first day, and escalating in severity within hours. Incident response quietly isolated and reimaged his laptop before any real damage could be done.

• The candidate completed applications, interviews and assigned work without raising alarm. In retrospect, what indicators were present, and why did standard screening miss them?

The indicators existed, but they lived in places our screening was never built to read. The driver's license he submitted was either AI-generated or very badly manually modified, and the tell was physical. The image had unique aberrations, such as the ears in the photo which had an unnatural and pixelated modification an artifact that image generators still produce, and a reviewer skims past.

The live AI assistance during the interview was another, since his answers carried a fluency that did not match the natural hesitation you expect when someone reasons through an unfamiliar problem. Standard screening missed all of it because background checks and identity validation confirm whether documents are internally consistent and whether a record exists, and they never ask whether the human attached to those documents is real.

Further fabrication of documents such as I-9 were missed by a 3rd party identity verification company, and validation of (fake) job references was not properly identified.

• How did AI contribute to the deception? What did the fraudulent documentation involve, and what capabilities does AI introduce that traditional forgery methods lack?

AI showed up at nearly every stage. The fraudulent documentation centered on a forged driver's license we believe was generated rather than physically produced, paired with a stolen identity that gave the paperwork a real history to rest on.

During the interview the candidate appeared to have run an AI copilot feeding him answers in real time, and many of these tools now stay invisible to everyone else on the call even while the candidate shares a screen. What AI adds over traditional forgery is volume and believability together. A skilled forger could always produce one convincing passport, but the craft capped how many operations could run at once.

Generative tools remove that ceiling, so a single actor can fabricate convincing documents and coach themselves through a live technical interview across dozens of applications at once, and the forgery stopped being the bottleneck it used to be.

• The Five Eyes warning focused on China, while the Exabeam case involved North Korea. Do these actors share tactics and objectives, or do they represent distinct operational models that overlap on method?

They overlap heavily on method while running on different motives, which defenders should sit with. The Chinese operation the Five Eyes described aims at intelligence collection, pulling government and military insight out of people who already hold access.

The North Korean program that hit us and so many others in this industry is funded differently, since much of its purpose is revenue for a sanctioned regime, with intrusion and theft riding alongside the paycheck. The objectives diverge, yet the tradecraft has converged on one toolkit of fabricated identities, AI-assisted documents, manufactured professional histories and the patient relationship-building that lets an operative stay quiet.

When two adversaries with separate goals reach the same playbook, that tells you the playbook works and other actors are already watching.

• Conventional insider threat programs are built to detect employees who become compromised over time. How should organizations identify a candidate who was an adversary from the point of hire?

Our mindset must shift toward treating the moment of hire as the start of the highest-risk window rather than the end of vetting. Traditional insider programs watch for drift, the employee who gradually turns after a financial shock or a grievance, so they depend on a baseline built over months.

A candidate who was hostile from day one never produces that baseline, which forces you to scrutinize the earliest behavior most closely. In our case, the catch came from putting new accounts under enhanced monitoring and letting an AI agent correlate scattered signals that no single alert would have justified escalating.

The working principle is to give hiring workflows and new-hire activity the same suspicion you already apply to production access.

• Where should accountability for this threat reside within an organization? Is it a security function, an HR function, or a gap that persists because ownership is unclear?

Accountability most often lives in the gap right now, and that gap is exactly why the threat works. Hiring sits with HR and talent acquisition, who are measured on filling roles quickly and are not equipped to run identity verification at an intelligence-grade level.

Detection sits with security, which usually gains no visibility into a candidate until that person already holds a badge and a laptop, and the adversary exploits the seam between the two.

The workable answer is shared ownership with a clean handoff, where security sets the identity and behavioral standards hiring must meet and stays involved through the first weeks of employment rather than inheriting the problem once onboarding closes.

• Many mid-sized companies lack dedicated threat intelligence resources. What practical measures can such organizations implement to reduce their exposure?

Useful defense does not require a dedicated threat intelligence team. The interview itself is the cheapest control available, and small changes make it far more revealing.

Underspecifying a problem on purpose shows whether a candidate asks clarifying questions like a real engineer or simply produces a confident answer and switching the problem partway through tests whether they adapt or whether something is feeding them responses.

Asking for an external webcam that shows the workspace instead of a shared screen removes one of the easiest hiding spots for an interview copilot. Beyond hiring, the highest-leverage move is placing every new employee on a watchlist for closer monitoring through their first weeks, which costs configuration time rather than budget.

Even a basic, low-cost threat intelligence feed would have surfaced the username match that broke our case open.

• What is the most contested prediction on this issue, one that many security leaders would currently dispute?

My contested prediction is that within a couple of years the verified human interview, run live and in person for any role with meaningful access, returns as a security requirement. Many security leaders will fight that because it breaks the remote-first hiring model they spent years optimizing.

The objection I expect is that it does not scale and shrinks the talent pool, and those concerns are legitimate. My counter is that the economics have already flipped for high-access roles, since the cost of onboarding a single fabricated adversary now dwarfs the friction of one in-person verification step.

The deeper claim underneath it is that remote identity verification as we practice it today is no longer reliable for sensitive positions, and AI is what made it unreliable. Most security leaders are not ready to say that out loud yet.

• Group‑IB warns of scams exploiting Celine Dion’s concert comeback, with fraudsters selling duplicate Ticketmaster tickets and spoofing sites like AXS and Paris La Défense Arena
• Scammers embed themselves in Facebook fan groups and marketplaces, even using voice messages to build trust and make fake offers seem legitimate
• Fans are advised to only buy from official distributors, verify tickets in person if using resellers, and contact banks to dispute charges if scammed

Celine Dion is back, and hackers are already trying to exploit the fact for their own financial gain, experts have warned.

A report from security researchers Group-IB has claimed there are numerous scam campaigns all across the internet and social media, looking to exploit gullible fans and steal their money.

Its aptly named “The Scam Will Go On” report said it saw scammers lurking in Facebook Groups, Facebook Marketplace, and other fan-centric spaces, offering concert tickets for sale. The tickets themselves, hosted on Ticketmaster, are valid. However, the scammers only have a few tickets which can be redeemed by the first person who reaches the venue. Everyone else will be denied entry, since their tickets will already have been used.

How to avoid getting scammed

But that’s not the only scam. Some people don’t want to pay an unknown third person via wire, and would prefer to purchase the tickets directly from a service.

For those people, the scammers created entire websites, spoofing ticketing distributors such as AXS and Ticketmaster. Group-IB also saw fake websites spoofing Celine Dion and Paris La Défense Arena, the stadium where the concert will take place.

“We see that such an event generates excitement and provides scammers with another opportunity to make a fortune at the expense of unsuspecting fans,” Group-IB warned.

“Scammers are using increasingly sophisticated techniques, such as embedding themselves into social networking fan groups and speaking directly to their victims via voice messages to make the interaction more personal and gain their victims’ trust more easily. Furthermore, official ticketing platforms are being misused to make scams seem legitimate.”

The researchers recommend fans only visit official websites and those of official distributors, and if they absolutely must buy from a reseller, to make sure they’re purchasing a physical ticket, in person. Those that fell for the scam should call their bank and lodge an objection on their credit card.