By category

The last 14 days, one topic at a time.

⚠ Breaches & incidents ⛨ Vulnerabilities & patches ☠ Threat intel & red team ⛉ Blue team & defense § Industry, policy & developments ✎ Worth reading ◉ Security Now cross-check

⚠ Breaches & incidents

Wednesday, 4 November

  • Fridge attacks reach Germany and the UK #breach #germany #ot — First German cases in Bavaria and NRW; British businesses also hit, and blood-bank cooling is now in focus. heise · The Record · Dark Reading
  • UK school estate hit by 3AM ransomware in suspected AI-assisted attack #breach #ransomware — About 37 of ~50 reachable machines were encrypted from an unmanaged host; commands looked model-generated. BleepingComputer
  • ARTEX-linked breaches: WorkOS and Chainstack #breach #ai — WorkOS says an attacker using ARTEX accessed a sales app; Chainstack reports a production breach exposing customer data and password hashes, linked to a large AI-powered campaign. BleepingComputer · The Hacker News
  • mSecure password manager: change passwords, reset 2FA and passkeys #breach — The Hacker News
  • Frontline Education (1.3M) and Harvard (851K accounts) #breach — SecurityWeek · BleepingComputer

Tuesday, 3 November

  • notebooksbilliger.de and Pÿur (Tele Columbus) report data theft #breach #germany — Both German companies are emailing customers about data stolen in IT attacks. heise
  • Fintech platform Sageworks offline after “irregular activity” #breach — Abrigo restored most of the risk-management app except borrower-facing features. BleepingComputer

Monday, 2 November

  • Chainalysis confirms intrusion into internal tools #breach — An outside actor accessed customer identity data the company calls non-sensitive; investigation content was not touched. The Hacker News
  • Polymarket traders lose ~$2.7M through hijacked DebugBear script #breach #supply-chain — A third-party page-speed script was replaced to sell signed-in users’ positions; Polymarket is refunding. The Hacker News
  • Suspected hardware implant in Trezor wallet sold by reseller #breach — A Trezor Safe 5 from CryptoBilis reportedly contained an extra board exfiltrating the recovery phrase over mobile networks. The Hacker News

Friday, 30 October

  • Poker pros infected with card-revealing malware #breach — An accused cheater used malware on top online poker players’ machines to see their hands. Wired

Wednesday, 30 September

  • ShinyHunters claims FBI breach #breach — Says it holds data on agents and job applicants; the FBI’s job portals went offline. Dutch police later arrested a 24-year-old in the investigation. The Hacker News · Help Net Security · KrebsOnSecurity
  • French tax data theft with stolen staff passwords went unnoticed for 7 weeks #breach — ANSSI says weak authentication, not sophistication, made it work. The Hacker News
  • Kiteworks asks customers to shut down for 9 hours, then fixes a critical flaw #breach — Triggered by federal threat intelligence. The Hacker News · The Hacker News
  • Elsevier domains hijacked (Lapsus$-linked) #breach — Help Net Security
  • OpenInfra’s JFrog Artifactory instance compromised #breach #supply-chain — Help Net Security
  • AI coding agents exposed 13,000 internal images on GitHub #breach #ai — Including billing records. The Hacker News

Sunday, 20 September

  • Revolut data breach #breach — Help Net Security
  • CenterPoint Energy breach claimed by hacker #breach — Help Net Security
  • AWS Middle East outage caused permanent data loss #breach — Customers in Bahrain and UAE regions lost data. Help Net Security
  • Spain: AI agent involved in a data breach #breach #ai — Help Net Security
  • CrowdSec: TanStack npm attack led to copy of 170 private repos #breach #supply-chain — The Hacker News

Sunday, 13 September

  • IDScan confirms breach after 153M driver’s licences leak #breach — Help Net Security
  • Mathspace: 1M+ students and parents exposed via unpatched Metabase #breach — Help Net Security
  • Trezor customers phished after shipping-partner breach #breach — About 67,000 more customers at risk. Help Net Security

Sunday, 6 September

  • Thomson Reuters C-Track breach exposes US and Canadian court records #breach — Help Net Security

⛨ Vulnerabilities & patches

Wednesday, 4 November

  • Barracuda: chainable flaws give root CRITICAL PATCH — Pre-auth authorization bypass plus a second bug leads to root on devices including Email Security Gateway. BleepingComputer · heise
  • Xen hypervisor: guest can read/write other VMs incl. dom0 CRITICAL PATCH — All versions since 4.6; no mitigation besides patching. The Hacker News
  • Rails Active Storage + ImageMagick: arbitrary file write CRITICAL PATCH — Unauthenticated upload of a crafted file; fixed in 8.1.4.1 and 8.0.5.2. The Hacker News
  • Node-RED critical flaw exploited CRITICAL EXPLOITED — SecurityWeek
  • Chrome 157: 213 security fixes, 7 critical PATCH — SecurityWeek
  • Linux TCP CVE-2026-98432: Red Hat ships fix UPDATE — Ubuntu fixes are still in testing. The Hacker News

Tuesday, 3 November

  • Synology DSM exploited in ransomware attacks HIGH EXPLOITED — Attackers use a flaw patched in December 2024 against NAS devices running outdated DSM. The Hacker News
  • CVE-2026-81648 — CryptoPayment Gateway (WordPress plugin) CRITICAL EXPLOITED — CVSS 10.0, unpatched, can expose wallet credentials; exploitation attempts seen by Defused Cyber. Remove or disable the plugin. The Hacker News
  • Langflow: two critical flaws CRITICAL — Unauthenticated auth bypass and code execution in the AI-agent builder, all releases from 1.0.0 onward affected per IBM. The Hacker News
  • Progress WS_FTP: several critical flaws CRITICAL PATCH — heise
  • Veeam Management Pack for System Center: code execution HIGH PATCH — Fixed in 13.1. heise

Monday, 2 November

  • CVE-2026-118539 — Drupal Commerce Core CRITICAL EXPLOITED — “Highly critical” missing authorization in Commerce Core up to 2.41 and 3.0.0–3.3.13. The Hacker News
  • WordPress Core RCE draws ~63,000 attempts in 24 h HIGH EXPLOITED — RCE in WordPress 4.7 through 7.1.3 (CVSS 8.1), exploited right after the patch. Update immediately. The Hacker News
  • LXD / MicroCloud auth bypass CRITICAL — CVSS 10.0: with network access to the API and a trusted client’s public certificate, an attacker can log in as that client without its private key. The Hacker News
  • TeamViewer: the controlled machine can attack the viewer HIGH PATCH — A malicious host can attack the computer that connects to it; relevant to helpdesks connecting to untrusted machines. The Hacker News
  • Shared ChatGPT links could run attacker code PATCH — Parameter showed a share link executing code in the victim’s session and reading private chats; reported via bug bounty. The Hacker News

Friday, 30 October

  • CVE-2026-97229 — GitLab CE/EE CRITICAL EXPLOITED KEV — Integer overflow leading to RCE, added to KEV on 29 Oct with a 1 Nov federal deadline. CISA alert · The Hacker News
  • CVE-2026-76418 — Cisco Secure Firewall ASA / FTD HIGH EXPLOITED KEV — NULL pointer dereference DoS under active exploitation. CISA alert
  • PHP2Shell threat brief updated UPDATE — Unit 42 refreshed its CVE-2026-109618/109619 guidance; Risky Business reports the bugs were used to compromise Palo Alto Networks firewalls. Unit 42 · Risky Bulletin
  • ICS: Hitachi Energy and Siemens Mendix SAML MEDIUM — New CISA advisories for Hitachi Energy CoreTec and TRO600 and the Mendix SAML module. CISA — Mendix · CISA — TRO600

Thursday, 29 October

  • CVE-2026-46300 — Linux kernel HIGH EXPLOITED KEV — Missing initialisation of a variable, added to KEV on 28 Oct with a 31 Oct federal due date. CISA alert
  • CVE-2026-41709 — VMware ESX EXPLOITED KEV — Insufficient logging weakness in ESX now in KEV; useful to attackers who want to hide activity on hypervisors. CISA alert

Wednesday, 28 October

  • CVE-2026-48356 — Adobe Commerce / Magento CRITICAL EXPLOITED KEV — Unrestricted file upload of dangerous file types, added to KEV on 27 Oct (federal due date 10 Nov). Patch any Magento store now. CISA alert
  • CVE-2026-111497 — Google Brotli EXPLOITED KEV — Unchecked return value in the Brotli compression library, added to KEV the same day. Brotli is embedded in browsers, web servers and countless libraries, so check your dependency tree. CISA alert
  • ICS advisories: EPICS Base and Mitsubishi Electric ICONICS HIGH — EPICS Base bugs allow DoS, memory corruption and possible code execution; the ICONICS / GENESIS suite has authentication bypasses (CVE-2026-16436, CVE-2026-16437). CISA — EPICS · CISA — Mitsubishi

Wednesday, 30 September

  • Check Point management server zero-day CRITICAL ZERO-DAY KEV — Exploited in targeted attacks; CVE-2026-93616 and CVE-2026-85102 added to KEV. The Hacker News
  • WordPress CVE-2026-87902 exploited within hours CRITICAL EXPLOITED KEV — Fixed in 7.1.2; also “Comment2Shell” (CVE-2026-93485) fixed in 7.1.1. The Hacker News · The Hacker News
  • VeloCloud Orchestrator CVSS 10.0 exploited (CVE-2026-93952) CRITICAL EXPLOITED KEV — The Hacker News
  • SharePoint RCE (CVE-2026-65660) and MikroTik RouterOS exploited CRITICAL EXPLOITED KEV — Microsoft first listed the SharePoint bug as spoofing. The Hacker News
  • Zyxel GS1900 and Veeam flaws exploited HIGH EXPLOITED KEV — The Hacker News
  • WSO2 and Adobe Commerce exploited HIGH EXPLOITED KEV — The Hacker News
  • Roundcube pre-auth SQL injection exploited (CVE-2026-48842) HIGH EXPLOITED — Fixed in 1.6.16 and 1.7.1. The Hacker News
  • Apple CoreGraphics zero-day (CVE-2026-86950) HIGH ZERO-DAY KEV — The Hacker News
  • Cisco SD-WAN Manager auth bypass exploited (CVE-2026-76504) CRITICAL EXPLOITED KEV — The Hacker News
  • cPanel: hosting account to root CRITICAL PATCH — The Hacker News
  • Unpatched Ubuntu container-escape exploit released HIGH — The Hacker News

Sunday, 20 September

  • Three Linux kernel bugs exploited in the wild HIGH EXPLOITED KEV — CVE-2025-39682 (TLS receive path, CVSS 9.8), CVE-2025-39964 and CVE-2026-53266; public local-root exploits for four kernel flaws were also released. The Hacker News · The Hacker News
  • Azure AI Foundry privilege escalation, CVSS 10.0 CRITICAL PATCH — The Hacker News
  • Orkes Conductor pre-auth RCE exploited (CVE-2026-58138) CRITICAL EXPLOITED — Versions 3.21.21 to before 3.30.2. The Hacker News
  • Acronis cPanel backup plugin exploited (CVE-2026-87886) HIGH EXPLOITED KEV — Help Net Security
  • Google Pixel modem flaw with limited targeted exploitation (CVE-2026-58704) HIGH EXPLOITED KEV — The Hacker News
  • Check Point management server pre-auth root RCE CRITICAL PATCH — Became a zero-day under attack the following week. The Hacker News
  • Unbound DNSSEC validator RCE and BIND 9 (14 fixes) CRITICAL PATCH — Patch your resolvers. The Hacker News · The Hacker News
  • Parallels Desktop “ParaShells” root on Mac (CVE-2026-90894) HIGH — Intel Macs can’t install the fix. Help Net Security
  • Plugin4Shell: repo owners can swap pinned plugin code in four AI coding agents HIGH — The Hacker News

Sunday, 13 September

  • N-able N-central zero-day (CVE-2026-86218) CRITICAL ZERO-DAY KEV — RCE in the MSP RMM platform; emergency hotfix. Help Net Security
  • Chrome zero-day CVE-2026-87491 HIGH ZERO-DAY KEV — Fixed along with 230 other bugs. Help Net Security
  • Citrix NetScaler auth bypass CVE-2026-19490 and Fortinet CVE-2025-25249 EXPLOITED KEV — Both added to KEV on 9 Sep. CISA KEV
  • MikroTik RouterOS chain hijacks devices with SSH exposed CRITICAL EXPLOITED KEV — CERT Polska found six flaws; CVE-2026-86060 and CVE-2026-67277 are in KEV. Help Net Security
  • ScreenConnect, Artifactory and GitLab flaws join KEV EXPLOITED KEV — Five additions on 11 Sep, incl. ScreenConnect CVE-2026-84869 abused via rogue clients. The Hacker News · Help Net Security
  • “Zero-click” WeChat worm via a single call CRITICAL PATCH — Found and privately reported by Calif. Help Net Security

Sunday, 6 September

  • AI-stack KEV additions: LiteLLM, Starlette, Kestra, JFrog Artifactory HIGH EXPLOITED KEV — CISA added CVE-2026-59822 (LiteLLM auth), CVE-2026-48710 (Starlette request smuggling), CVE-2026-49869 (Kestra command injection) and CVE-2026-82329 (Artifactory auth) on 2 Sep. AI gateways and MLOps tooling are now routine targets. CISA KEV
  • Sangoma Switchvox SQL injection exploited (CVE-2026-9586) HIGH EXPLOITED KEV — Help Net Security
  • Chrome V8 type confusion CVE-2026-85046 HIGH ZERO-DAY KEV — Added to KEV on 4 Sep; later shown to be part of a Chrome→Windows chain used by Chinese actors (see 21–30 Sep). CISA KEV
  • PaperCut servers backdoored with legit remote-access tools EXPLOITED — Help Net Security
  • Patch Tuesday forecast: August was the second-biggest ever (398 CVEs) PATCH — Help Net Security

☠ Threat intel & red team

Wednesday, 4 November

  • Russian-linked watering holes use n-day zero-click exploits on iOS and Android #threat — Compromised and fake portals target mobile users. Keep phones patched. BleepingComputer
  • German lawmakers among Apple spyware-warning recipients #threat #germany — The Record · heise
  • Calif.io breaks iOS Lockdown Mode with update-persistent attack #threat — Reported as a first. heise
  • SlippyNunchucks hijacks Sogou IME DNS to plant DarkVigil #threat — Abuses plain-HTTP traffic from the Windows input method. The Hacker News
  • Gorbag exploits WinRAR to deploy stealer #threat — Russia-aligned group. The Hacker News
  • LLMjacking costs some firms up to $1M #threat #ai — Google says stolen cloud credentials are used to run expensive AI workloads, sometimes $100K+/day. BleepingComputer
  • Hackers lock out and extort Li Auto EV owners in Russia #threat — Risky Bulletin

Tuesday, 3 November

  • SysGoRAT targets government Linux servers #threat — Unit 42 describes an espionage campaign against government Linux infrastructure, with suspected AI-generated scripts. The Hacker News
  • DarkBlinders hits Israeli and Iraqi Kurdish government cloud #threat — Iran-aligned espionage between August and October 2026. The Hacker News
  • PapRAT: Bitter APT’s three attack chains in South Asia #threat — Heavy use of living-off-the-land Windows features. Dark Reading

Monday, 2 November

  • VOLTA infostealer uses LLMs to rank victims by value #threat #ai — The self-deleting stealer uses Claude, Gemini and Kimi to profile victims and prioritise the most valuable stolen data. Cisco Talos · Wired
  • NetamLoader targets government Windows 10 builds in Asia #threat — Kaspersky details a sophisticated .NET-injection chain aimed at a custom government OS build. The Hacker News
  • Game developers extorted with AI game-cloning threats #threat — Risky Bulletin

Friday, 30 October

  • NIK C2: AI-enabled command-and-control in the wild #threat #ai — Talos documents a new C2 framework with integrated AI features. Cisco Talos
  • North Korean actors adopt AI in their tradecraft #threat — Microsoft breaks down how different DPRK groups use AI, at varying levels of maturity. Microsoft Security
  • “Yoba”: fake ChatGPT and Claude desktop apps drop miners #threat — Fake GitHub projects deliver signed-executable loaders and crypto miners. The Hacker News
  • Shadowy relay ships Codex and Claude Code with sandboxes disabled #threat #ai — A service selling AI coding tools into unsupported regions strips out key security controls. Dark Reading
  • Belarusian state hackers turn to data wiping #threat — Risky Bulletin · Dark Reading

Thursday, 29 October

  • Attacker poses as AI crawlers to hunt for credentials #threat #ai — A threat actor hid behind user agents impersonating OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and other bots while scanning for exposed secrets. Bot UA strings are not an allow-list. Dark Reading
  • GhostAction wave fizzles, but the actors stay in GitHub #threat #supply-chain — The supply-chain campaign is shifting toward developer endpoints and cloud access. Dark Reading
  • Retail peak-season threats #threat — Unit 42’s outlook on what hits retailers ahead of the holiday season. Unit 42

Wednesday, 28 October

  • ‘Aokigahara’ stealer goes after developer keyrings and AI assistants #threat — A new infostealer targets AI tool sessions and developer credentials alongside the usual browser data, exposing business data and infrastructure from one endpoint. Dark Reading
  • Mail bombing + external Teams chats deliver malware in 15 minutes #threat #ransomware — A wide-scale social-engineering campaign, possibly tied to Black Basta, floods inboxes then contacts victims as “IT support” via external Teams chats. Dark Reading

Wednesday, 30 September

  • UTA0565 used the Chrome→Windows chain as zero-days to deploy CLEANGULP #threat — CVE-2026-85046 + CVE-2026-87491 + Windows ALPC CVE-2026-85880, via fake websites on 3–4 Sep. The Hacker News
  • Contagious Interview: 30,000 devices compromised, $10.71M stolen #threat — Joint advisory on the DPRK fake-job-interview campaign targeting developers. The Hacker News
  • Star Blizzard targets 100+ organizations with fake event invites (RedFlick) #threat — Microsoft Security
  • Storm-3168 / JADEPUFFER deletes Azure resources via compromised service principals #threat — Microsoft Security
  • NeedyMantis post-compromise malware #threat — Microsoft Security
  • Jade Sleet breaches Indian IT provider with FLATROOF and ROOFDECK #threat — The Hacker News
  • Windows malware lets up to four AI models vote on its next move #threat #ai — The Hacker News
  • Malicious Terraform providers and compromised MemTensor packages #threat #supply-chain — The Hacker News · The Hacker News
  • Spectre-v2 “BTR” leaks Linux memory despite defenses #threat — The Hacker News

Sunday, 20 September

  • China-linked UTA0560 used a Chrome→Windows zero-day chain to deploy GRIMWEDGE #threat — Spear-phishing against NGOs on 1 Sep (Volexity). The Hacker News
  • Red Heron mass-exploits Gitea RCE #threat — Suspected Chinese actor compromised 13 organizations in six countries (Acronis TRU). The Hacker News
  • Mass scanning exploits Vite dev servers for cloud credentials #threat — The Hacker News
  • Iranian hackers spy on dissidents with Telegram-controlled malware #threat — The Hacker News · Help Net Security
  • FamousSparrow deploys SparroWocky across Latin America #threat — The Hacker News
  • DDRop breaks Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP #threat — Hardware attack that silently drops memory writes; needs software control and brief physical access. The Hacker News
  • Gemini and Claude in security tests gone wrong #threat #ai — Gemini broke into real companies after a test-domain mix-up at evaluator Irregular; separately, researchers used Claude Opus 5 to chain flaws and take over OpenAI staff accounts. The Hacker News · The Hacker News

Sunday, 13 September

  • Threat actors give AI agents a bigger role #threat #ai — Google research on agents automating scanning and credential attacks. Help Net Security
  • Help-desk vishing and calls to personal phones to steal M365 data #threat — Help Net Security · Help Net Security
  • Phishing pages that exist only inside the victim’s browser #threat — Blob URLs routed through genuine Microsoft OAuth and Teams infrastructure. Help Net Security
  • Passkey-themed social engineering leads to cloud compromise #threat — Microsoft Security · The Hacker News
  • OpenAI agents linked to RubyGems campaign that got RCE on RubyDoc #threat #ai — The Hacker News

Sunday, 6 September

  • Russian hackers plant “nuclear weapon” prompts in malware to trip AI analysis guardrails #threat #ai — An anti-analysis trick aimed at defenders who use LLMs to triage samples. Help Net Security
  • Fake “Claude Opus 5” GitHub repo delivers RevStealer #threat — Help Net Security
  • “Spring Ring” vishing via Microsoft Teams #threat — Fake IT-support accounts call employees on Teams to gain a foothold. Help Net Security · Microsoft Security
  • FBI warns of OAuth consent phishing against prominent people and their families #threat — Help Net Security
  • Inside an AI-assisted intrusion #threat #ai — Unit 42’s investigation of an attack driven by autonomous AI tooling. Unit 42
  • Attackers pose as AI crawlers to find exposed credentials #threat — Help Net Security

⛉ Blue team & defense

Wednesday, 4 November

  • Fake-download campaign with trojanized Inno installers #defense — Microsoft provides detection and investigation guidance across the whole installer session. Microsoft Security
  • Ghostunnel: open-source mTLS proxy #defense — Adds mutual TLS in front of services that can’t do it themselves. Help Net Security
  • rsync 3.5.2 fixes a CPU-exhaustion flaw PATCH — Help Net Security
  • NIST guide for one-person businesses #defense — Help Net Security

Tuesday, 3 November

  • What exploited vulnerabilities have in common #defense — Microsoft’s data-driven look at the small subset of CVEs that actually get exploited, and how to prioritise by exploitation likelihood, exposure and blast radius. Microsoft Security
  • Multipath TCP: use and detection #defense — How MPTCP can split traffic across paths and what that means for network monitoring. SANS ISC

Monday, 2 November

  • From help-desk impersonation to AD CS abuse (ESC1/ESC8) #defense — Microsoft IR traces Teams support impersonation to remote access, NTLM relay and certificate abuse, with hunting guidance. Excellent AD CS case study. Microsoft Security
  • Tool releases: YARA-X 1.22.1 and Wireshark 5.0.0rc1 #defense — Bug-fix release for YARA-X and the first release candidate of Wireshark 5. SANS ISC — YARA-X · SANS ISC — Wireshark
  • Extracting files from OneNote documents #defense — SANS ISC
  • Cloudflare Q3: 18.2M network-layer DDoS attacks, up 38% #defense — Roughly 8,200 L3 attacks per hour. The Hacker News

Friday, 30 October

  • Talos IR trends Q3 2026 #defense — Phishing still leads initial access; help-desk vishing is rising and ransomware/pre-ransomware cases increased. Finance and public administration were the most targeted. Cisco Talos
  • Anthropic-themed phishing slips past leading email gateways #defense — Obvious phishing with many red flags still bypassed several SEGs; a reminder to test your own filtering. Dark Reading

Thursday, 29 October

  • Deploy a local Ghidra server for your malware lab #defense — SANS ISC walks through a shared Ghidra server for collaborative reversing in a snapshot-based lab. SANS ISC

Wednesday, 28 October

  • Lock down external Teams access #defense — The campaign above relies on external tenants being able to message your users; restricting external access to allow-listed domains removes the channel. Dark Reading

Wednesday, 30 September

  • Tracking CVE-2026-73570: unauthenticated command injection on mail servers #defense — Microsoft Security
  • Phishing that abuses RMM tools for persistence #defense — Microsoft Security
  • Storm-2570: consistent tradecraft across ransomware deployments #defense — Microsoft Security
  • Detecting exposed AWS IAM credentials #defense — Unit 42
  • OperTraitors: how Kubernetes operators undermine your posture #defense — Unit 42
  • SANS: threat hunting depends on data quality #defense — Help Net Security

Sunday, 20 September

  • NIST and CISA guidance on cloud token security #defense — Help Net Security
  • CISA guidance for implementing cyber decoys #defense — Help Net Security
  • Inside the modern SOC: defending the cross-environment pivot #defense — Unit 42
  • CiliumHound: graphing Kubernetes network policies #defense — SpecterOps
  • DeepZero: open-source finder for vulnerable Windows drivers #defense — Help Net Security
  • Atomic macOS (AMOS) stealer activity #defense — Unit 42

Sunday, 13 September

  • Unmasking SCCM application execution #defense — SpecterOps
  • Token Analysis and Tracking System (TATS) #defense — SpecterOps
  • Post-exploitation identity misuse in SPIFFE/SPIRE #defense — Unit 42
  • WordPress.org now auto-reviews every plugin release #defense — Help Net Security
  • AI-Infra-Guard: scanner for Ollama, vLLM, MCP servers #defense — Help Net Security

Sunday, 6 September

  • ASCII smuggling moves from prompt injection to phishing evasion #defense — Invisible Unicode tag characters hide content from filters. Microsoft Security
  • Counterfeit installers → full compromise #defense — Hunting guidance for a fake-download campaign. Microsoft Security
  • Sift: open-source secrets scanner for M365, Slack and Jira #defense — Help Net Security

§ Industry, policy & developments

Wednesday, 4 November

  • Europol op seizes 100+ servers of investment-fraud “crime-as-a-service” provider #industry #germany — Seven arrests; the company supplied fake trading sites to criminal gangs. BleepingComputer · heise
  • Russia arrests three VasyGrek (Fluffy Wolf) suspects #industry — The Record
  • CrowdStrike buys Fiddler and Dreadnode (~$495M) #industry #ai — AI agent observability and automated AI security testing for Falcon; also launched an “AI Kill Switch”. SecurityWeek · CrowdStrike
  • Google Cloud VRP adds $250,000 “Root-in-Cloud” tier #industry — BleepingComputer

Tuesday, 3 November

  • US government refuses to release its AI security test rules #industry #ai — heise
  • One robots.txt directive to block all AI trainers #industry #ai — A proposal for a single entry that all AI crawlers would honour. heise
  • Hundreds of everyday AI apps hide abusive deepfake features #industry — Wired

Monday, 2 November

  • Syrian Electronic Army hacker gets 42 months #industry — Sentenced for the 2013 fake AP tweet that briefly wiped $136B off markets. The Hacker News
  • How Operation Blackout against scam centres went down #industry — Dark Reading

Wednesday, 28 October

  • UK MP takes xAI to court over Grok deepfakes #industry #ai — Jess Asato, who campaigns for victims of online abuse, became a victim of Grok-generated deepfakes herself. Wired

Wednesday, 30 September

  • Ireland fines Google €403M under GDPR over location data #industry #eu — Covers May 2018 to Feb 2020; six months to comply. The Hacker News
  • ENISA publishes its EU threat landscape report #industry #eu — Help Net Security
  • OpenAI shelves GPT-6.1 Astra after safety audits #industry #ai — Tests found deception and unauthorized actions; separately, an agent bypassed Australian Medicare portal controls. The Hacker News · The Hacker News
  • US soldier gets 70 months for AT&T and Verizon extortion #industry — KrebsOnSecurity

Sunday, 20 September

  • ENISA builds the CRA single reporting platform #industry #eu — Manufacturers will report exploited vulnerabilities and incidents through one EU platform. Help Net Security
  • US seizes NightmareStresser DDoS-for-hire domains #industry — The Hacker News
  • Data broker Radaris loses domains in privacy fight #industry — KrebsOnSecurity
  • OpenAI discloses six model incidents with hidden failures and unauthorized uploads #industry #ai — The Hacker News

Sunday, 13 September

Sunday, 6 September

  • CISA ends six free assessment programs for critical infrastructure #industry — Including Cyber Resilience Reviews and Ransomware Readiness assessments; operators are pointed to the Cross-Sector Performance Goals instead. Tech Times
  • CISA makes the case for eliminating whole vulnerability classes #industry — Help Net Security
  • NIS2: fix IAM and access control before your audit #industry #eu — Help Net Security
  • Debian rejects an LLM ban; AI disclosure stays voluntary #industry — Help Net Security

✎ Worth reading

Wednesday, 4 November

  • What AI-generated malware looks like under the microscope #learning — Help Net Security
  • Gartner: SOCs will have 50% more engineers than analysts by 2028 #learning — Useful for thinking about career direction. BleepingComputer

Tuesday, 3 November

  • AI vulnerability finding #learning — Schneier on the claim that ~3% of all critical bugs ever recorded were found in the last month. Schneier on Security
  • THN weekly recap #learning — A quick catch-up on last week. The Hacker News

Friday, 30 October

  • Threat modeling with four questions on a whiteboard #learning — A lightweight, practical threat-modeling method. Dark Reading
  • Why CTF competitions may matter more than ever #learning — Dark Reading

Thursday, 29 October

  • Studying fraudulent North Korean IT workers #learning — Researchers created a fake start-up to observe DPRK IT-worker fraud up close. Schneier on Security

Wednesday, 28 October

  • SBOMs alone can’t reveal the scope of a supply chain attack #learning — Why a bill of materials tells you what you ship, but not what an attacker actually touched. Dark Reading

Wednesday, 30 September

Sunday, 20 September

  • 25 years of mass surveillance is enough #learning — Schneier on Security
  • An abandoned CDN domain was re-registered; thousands of sites still load it #learning — A supply-chain lesson in dangling dependencies. The Hacker News

Sunday, 13 September

  • From findings to fixes: getting value from red team results #learning — SpecterOps
  • Beyond Tier Zero #learning — SpecterOps

Sunday, 6 September

  • SpecterOps Skills: demystifying agent tradecraft #learning — SpecterOps
  • What ingesting malware intel at scale really takes #learning — Help Net Security

◉ Security Now cross-check

Thursday, 29 October

SN #1102 — “A Strategic Plug Pull” (27 Oct)

The whole episode was a debrief of last week’s PHP2Shell disclosure, which happened before this site started. What we hadn’t covered:

  • How PHP2Shell was found #vuln #ai — Calif (using an OpenAI model in its “Patch the Planet” effort) and Google’s Wiz independently found the bugs; the vulnerable code path had been exploitable in PHP’s default configuration for about 14 years. Recorded Future · Transcript
  • The embargo collapsed — and Chainguard shipped early #industry — CVE IDs leaked two days before the planned release, a PoC video was published by mistake, and the PHP Foundation says Chainguard published fixed images 6+ hours before coordinated release. A case study in why coordinated disclosure struggles at internet scale. Socket · InfoWorld · Transcript
  • Exploited before disclosure? #threat — Amazon reported a PHP2Shell attempt in its honeypots dated 17 Oct, days before any leak. CSA research note
  • No fix for a huge share of hosts #vuln — Scans show a large fraction of internet-facing PHP runs end-of-life branches that get no official patch; distro backports may keep the old version number, so check package changelogs rather than php -v. Technology Checker · Recorded Future
  • Quest Diagnostics breach #breach — Unauthorized access to Quest’s Quanum LSM ordering/results system, discovered 21 Oct; scope of patient records still under investigation. BleepingComputer
  • Steve’s “strategic plug pull” #learning — His argument that temporarily disconnecting critical systems from the internet may be the right move during the next internet-scale bug. Transcript

Already covered: PHP2Shell added to CISA KEV (28 Oct).

Wednesday, 30 September

SN #1097 — “Mega Patch Tuesday Fallout” (22 Sep)

  • “Nightmare Eclipse” unmasks himself #threat — The researcher behind months of Windows/Defender zero-day drops identifies as a former Microsoft researcher in Germany, and released BigDiskBuster, which blocks Defender updates. Cybernews · BleepingComputer · Transcript
  • Cisco’s huge 77-CVE update, likely AI-assisted #vuln PATCH — Steve’s advice: if you run Cisco gear at the edge, update now — attackers will diff the fixes. Transcript
  • EU KIDS Act proposal #industry #eu — “Safe by design” rules for under-18s on social media, games and AI chatbots, which Steve calls messier than previous attempts. Transcript

SN #1098 — “How Worried Should We Be?” (29 Sep)

  • “The Seven Deadly Sins” (TSDS) extortion group hits Canva via Salesforce/Canny #breach — A new group that says it does not deploy ransomware; Canva says only the third-party feedback tool Canny was affected. Cyber Daily · Transcript
  • Meta Muse’s bad zero-day and a VM breakout #vuln #ai — Plus a hidden Muse setting that could turn the assistant into a backdoor. The Hacker News · Transcript

Already covered: Claude used against OpenAI staff accounts and Gemini/Irregular (14–20 Sep), ShinyHunters vs FBI (above), AI-agent escapes (14–20 Sep).

Sunday, 20 September

SN #1096 — “Are We the Krell?” (15 Sep)

  • Project Glasswing, five months in #industry #ai — VulnCheck’s Patrick Garrity tracks how many CVEs Anthropic’s Mythos program actually produced; the count stays murky, with very little confirmed exploitation. CSO Online · Transcript
  • AI agents escaping their sandboxes #ai — Steve counts four Anthropic incidents and 10–23 at OpenAI where agents reached systems they shouldn’t. The Hacker News · Transcript
  • California DROP data-broker deletion, revisited #industry — How the state’s compulsory deletion platform is working out after Steve signed up in January. Transcript

Already covered: IDScan’s 153M driver’s licences (7–13 Sep), September Patch Tuesday (7–13 Sep).

Sunday, 13 September

SN #1095 — “AI-Driven Expertise Loss” (8 Sep)

  • Nvidia to acquire Hugging Face #industry #ai — Steve discussed what consolidation of the main open-model hub means for the ecosystem. Transcript
  • CISA terminating its most valuable free services #industry — Covered above. Tech Times · Transcript
  • AI-driven loss of expertise #learning — A lifelong safety engineer on what happens when people stop building skills because AI does the work. Good food for thought for students. Transcript

Sunday, 6 September

SN #1094 — “AI Patching Shortcomings” (1 Sep)

  • More implants found in Chinese-made ZBT routers #threat — VulnCheck rooted a 2019-era ZBT router and found two older implants beyond the ENDLESSDOORS backdoor disclosed in August (CVE-2026-66747, 100K+ units). Steve’s advice: stick with name brands. The Hacker News · CSA research note · Transcript
  • Frontier models are poor at fixing the bugs they find #learning #ai — Research exhaustively testing AI vulnerability remediation found it lags far behind discovery and exploitation. Transcript