Группировка провела около 100 успешных взломов со средним ущербом 10–12 млн рублей.

Алгоритм впервые взял на себя почти всю атомную сборку от поиска деталей до проверки результата.

Секретная архитектура больше не спасает системы от чужого анализа.

ИИ породил вайбпентестинг и резко снизил порог для атакующих.

Работодатель видит одного человека, документы принадлежат другому, а работу через VPN выполняет третий участник схемы.

Для эксперимента не понадобились взлом, закрытые базы или доступ к избирательным машинам.

За цифровой сбой теперь может расплачиваться тот, кто вообще не участвовал в инциденте.

Триллионная инфраструктурная гонка всё сильнее зависит от денег, которых пока нет.

Спутники научились замечать то, что постоянно ускользает из сводок.

Электроника сделала ещё один шаг в сторону биологических систем.

Архитектура SafeERP Extension Module (Комплексная защита 1С)SafeERP Extension Module имеет модульную структуру и предназначен для комплексной защиты информационно-управляющих систем (ИУС), построенных на базе платформы 1С.

Архитектура компонента SafeERP для анализа кодаЯдром компонента SafeERP CS EM является сервер управления.

Архитектура компонента SafeERP для контроля настроек и защиты платформы 1СЯдром компонента SafeERP PS EM также является сервер управления.

Каталог проектов контроля настроек платформы 1С в SafeERP PS EMРисунок 26.

Для компонентов SafeERP CS EM и SafeERP PS EM установлены одинаковые требования к аппаратному и программному обеспечению.

Обычно в SBOM входят:название и версия компонента;поставщик;идентификаторы Package URL (purl) и CPE;зависимости между компонентами;хеш-суммы и сведения о лицензиях.

Если проблема ещё не зарегистрирована в базе уязвимостей или компонент был скомпрометирован, наличие его в SBOM не покажет угрозу.

SBOM анализа (Analyzed SBOM или Binary SBOM) создаётся при анализе готового артефакта: пакета, исполняемого файла или контейнера.

SBOM не описывает происхождение артефакта и не защищает CI/CDSBOM показывает, из каких компонентов состоит программный артефакт.

SBOM нужно проверять на подлинность и целостностьДаже полный SBOM с правильно идентифицированными компонентами не гарантирует, что сам документ …

Именно для этого используются решения класса «управление внешней поверхностью атаки» (External Attack Surface Management, EASM), позволяющие контролировать внешнюю поверхность атаки.

Что такое EASM и для чего используетсяСистема класса «управление внешней поверхностью атаки» (External Attack Surface Management, EASM) — это не разовый пентест и не сетевой сканер.

Также следует упомянуть ASM (Attack Surface Management) как более широкий подход, охватывающий и внешнюю, и внутреннюю поверхность атаки, и CAASM (Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management) — технологический подход, представляющий собой подмножество ASM и обеспечивающий единую актуальную видимость всех киберактивов организации.

Место EA…

Корпоративные мессенджеры перестали быть просто чатами для переписки — сегодня они превращаются в супераппы и становятся ядром взаимодействия людей и ИИ-агентов внутри компаний.

Антон Анпилов добавил, что почта и мессенджеры — это разные паттерны потребления: в мессенджеры пишут быстрое, в почте закрепляют официальное.

Потом запускаются пилотные группы, пользователи оценивают мессенджеры, и в конце наступает этап компромиссов — компания определяет, какие требования действительно критичны, а от каких можно отказаться.

«Slack и Telegram — это очень крутые мессенджеры, это большие продукты, мы все ими пользуемся.

Иван Дьяконов назвал причиной ситуацию, когда компания не выбрала ни одного решен…

Где ИИ применяют и считают эффективнымПо данным исследования, чаще всего ИИ применяют в контакт-центрах и службах поддержки — об этом сообщили 75% опрошенных компаний.

«В страховых компаниях, — поясняет он, — инвестиционный анализ раньше требовал дорогих специалистов, которые умели и разбираться в ситуации, и доходчиво объяснять происходящее.

По его словам, проблема не только в процессах и данных, но и в том, как измерить сам результат.

Поэтому основная сложность заключается не только в запуске пилота, но и в его доведении до промышленной эксплуатации.

Полностью автономные решения (без участия человека) внедряют 25% компаний — но в проде они задействованы только у 8%.

В любом случае российское решение отличается от западного — есть небольшие отличия в инфраструктуре и в подходах.

Виталий Беличко добавил, что в прошлом году все вендоры бурно наращивали функциональность, но следующим этапом стала проработка деталей.

Это и тренд, и много маркетинга в это вкладывается».

Мы обрабатываем эти данные в KSN и передаём их во все продукты, которые к нему подключены, в том числе и в NGFW.

ВыводыРынок российских NGFW в 2026 году прошёл этап становления и вступает в фазу зрелой конкуренции.

Обсудили как региональные компании выходят на федеральный рынок, где искать специалистов и что меняется в ИБ с развитием ИИ.

Чтобы посмотреть, как сегодня устроена кибербезопасность за пределами столицы, команда AM Live также отправилась в Томск и посетила пятый юбилейный форум по кибербезопасности «КиберV».

Юбилейный форум «КиберV» собрал команды и компании, которые в обычной работе могут решать совершенно разные задачи, но в вопросах кибербезопасности оказываются по одну сторону.

Представитель ФСТЭК ответил на вопросы участников и отдельно подчеркнул, что не стоит заранее пугать себя новыми требованиями.

Мы пересматриваем информационные потоки, подходы к созданию новых информационных сист…

Kaspersky Secure Mail Gateway (KSMG) — полностью интегрированное решение, объединяющее систему электронной почты и средства её защиты в составе готового к использованию виртуального устройства безопасности.

Добавление маршрута в Kaspersky Secure Mail Gateway 3.1Функция полезна, например, если сообщения разных подразделений или сервисов должны проходить через отдельные шлюзы.

Подключение к LDAP-серверам в Kaspersky Secure Mail Gateway 3.1Функциональные возможности Kaspersky Secure Mail Gateway 3.1На текущий момент управление возможностями осуществляется через веб-консоль.

Создание учётной записи в Kaspersky Secure Mail Gateway 3.1Рисунок 23.

Применение Kaspersky Secure Mail Gateway 3.1Решени…

Разбираемся, что происходит с запросом у посредника, можно ли проверить фактическую модель и на что смотреть российскому разработчику.

Например, в ответе и журналах OpenRouter можно увидеть названия модели и провайдера, который обслужил конкретный запрос.

Как проверить, какая модель отвечает на запросАбсолютно надёжного «паспорта модели» на стороне клиента обычно нет.

Сервис должен показывать фактическую модель и, по возможности, провайдера для каждого запроса, а также позволять управлять резервными маршрутами.

Нужно выяснить, сохраняются ли промпты и ответы, каков срок хранения, используются ли данные для аналитики или обучения и можно ли ограничить передачу отдельным провайдерам.

Разбираем, из чего складывается стоимость скрейпинга, СМС-бомбинга, credential stuffing и LLM-ботов и как подобрать меры защиты, не мешая легитимным пользователям.

В деньгах кажется, что это почти ничего не стоит.

Но благодаря LLM, боты научились смотреть на страницу и понимать, что на ней происходит.

Он подстраивается под изменения, которые раньше его убивали, и пишет тексты (отзывы, заявки, сообщения в поддержку) не хуже, чем человек.

Главное: чем дешевле становится создание ботов и чем быстрее они умнеют, тем важнее защищаться не от конкретного скрипта, а от самой автоматизации.

Проблемами вузов остаются слабая материальная база и отсутствие доступа к российскому ПО и отечественному оборудованию.

Для их оценки в приказе предлагается использовать два подхода: по методике, изложенной в самом документе, и по фактическим затратам.

Как унифицировать требования вуза и Минцифры к трудоустройству сотрудников, чтобы сократить объём документов и согласований.

Также представитель ОмГТУ обратил внимание на то, что у вузов, которые сотрудничают с индустриальными партнёрами, появляется необходимость регулярно отправлять отчёты в Минцифры.

ВыводыИсполнение норм приказа № 270 Минцифры потребует довольно серьёзных усилий как от ИТ-компаний, так и от вузов.

Допустим, на это отводится месяц и ограниченный бюджет.

Экстренное привлечение сторонних специалистов по кибербезопасности — часто по повышенным тарифам и без возможности выбрать оптимального подрядчика.

Презумпция взлома подразумевает ориентацию на факты, а не на формальное соответствие.

Но с их помощью обычно получается понять, как должно быть, а не как есть на самом деле.

Аналитики собирают актуальные и ретроспективные данные внутри инфраструктуры и во внешних источниках, проводят автоматизированный и ручной анализ, оценивают критичность инцидентов и расследуют выявленные атаки.

В 2026 году ИИ оказался по обе стороны найма: алгоритмы помогают компаниям оценивать кандидатов, а соискателям — готовиться к этой оценке.

Такая же формулировка встречается и в обсуждениях у других участников рынка.

В одном случае на массовые позиции приходит до 700 резюме в неделю, на узкоспециализированные и руководящие — около 100.

Например, работодатель может с помощью ГигаЧата или Gemini подготовить тестовое задание, а кандидат с помощью того же инструмента его выполнить.

Результаты опроса К2Тех по использованию ИИ в HR-процессахРиски для соискателяК рискам и барьерам мы бы отнесли те же, что при использовании ИИ в повседневных задачах.

При этом утверждение «нет поддержки UDP, и ваш IP 100% утекает» некорректно.

И вот тут возникает второй закономерный вопрос: зачем вообще браузеру нужен UDP и откуда берется этот отдельный сетевой маршрут?

И не проще ли просто модернизировать (как-то докрутить) и использовать TCP вообще для любых подключений?

Он не устанавливает соединение, как это делает TCP, не гарантирует доставку каждой отдельной датаграммы и не контролирует порядок их получения.

Если ваш прокси изначально умеет передавать UDP-пакеты, Aurorium автоматически распознает протокол и направляет QUIC и WebRTC-трафик напрямую через прокси без потерь.

Проблема связана с уязвимостью CVE-2025-20701 в Airoha Bluetooth Audio SDK, который используется в Skullcandy Dime 3 (модель S2DCW) для беспроводного подключения и обмена данными с другими устройствами.

Для эксплуатации этой уязвимости атакующему достаточно просто находиться в зоне действия Bluetooth и установить сопряжение с наушниками.

После успешного подключения устройство злоумышленника становится доверенным и в дальнейшем может автоматически переподключаться к наушникам, когда оказывается рядом.

Это позволяет прерывать соединение владельца, перехватывать воспроизведение аудио, обращаться к профилю устройства и прослушивать звук с микрофона в режиме реального времени.

Однако ситуация ос…

В Anthropic подчеркивают, что новый отчет не отражает общий масштаб злоупотреблений Claude и типичные случаи применения ИИ.

Одна из шпионских групп использовала Claude для разработки малвари, фишинга, покупки и настройки серверов, закрепления в системах жертв, работы с C2-инфраструктурой и кражи данных.

Кроме того, в Anthropic выявили случаи использования Claude для разработки систем управления вооружением и ударных дронов, а также для создания инструментов массовой слежки.

Claude был задействован при проектировании и разработке части этой системы, включая инструменты для анализа данных и интерфейсы для операторов.

В Anthropic подчеркивают, что уже заблокировали все аккаунты, связанные с оп…

Справка: сканирование портовСка­ниро­вание пор­тов — стан­дар­тный пер­вый шаг при любой ата­ке.

На осно­ве этой информа­ции он выбира­ет сле­дующий шаг к получе­нию точ­ки вхо­да.

Улуч­шить резуль­таты его работы ты можешь при помощи такого скрип­та:#!/ bin/ bash ports = $( nmap -p- -- min- rate = 500 $1 | grep ^ [ 0 -9 ] | cut -d '/ ' -f 1 | tr ' ' ', ' | sed s/, $/ / ) nmap -p $ports -A $1Он дей­ству­ет в два эта­па.

На пер­вом выпол­няет­ся обыч­ное быс­трое ска­ниро­вание, на вто­ром — более тща­тель­ное, с исполь­зовани­ем встро­енных скрип­тов (опция -A ).

Под­робнее про работу с Nmap читай в статье «Nmap с самого начала.

Специалисты из немецкого ИБ-стартапа Nebty обнаружили масштабную мошенническую сеть DoppelCart, которая размещает поддельные интернет-магазины более чем на 119 000 доменов.

Такие сайты копируют реальные бренды и привлекают покупателей скидками, а при оформлении заказа крадут данные банковских карт.

Исследователи пишут, что большинство связанных с DoppelCart доменов зарегистрировано в зоне .shop.

Для сравнения, ранее крупнейшей считалась сеть BogusBazaar, в которую входило около 75 000 поддельных сайтов.

Специалисты создали отдельную базу, через которую компании могут проверить, используются ли их бренды в мошеннической сети, а также могут выявить связанные с DoppelCart сайты.

Так как письма приходили с адреса в реальном почтовом домене ведомства, сотрудники Revolut приняли их за настоящие и раскрыли запрошенную информацию.

В Revolut заявили изданию, что инцидент затронул «ограниченное» число клиентов и со всеми пострадавшими уже связались напрямую.

В компании подчеркивают, что внутренние системы Revolut не пострадали, а средства клиентов остаются в безопасности.

Он опубликовал предупреждение, которое в Revolut разослали пострадавшим клиентам, и предположил, что атакующие целенаправленно стремились получить данные о состоятельных пользователях сервиса.

В настоящее время Revolut обслуживает более 80 млн клиентов по всему миру и имеет банковские лицензии более чем …

Мексиканские власти обнаружили и изъяли около 300 GPU на подпольной майнинг-ферме в штате Пуэбла.

Следователи проверяют версии о хищении электроэнергии и возможном отмывании денег через добытые криптоактивы.

Пока ни одно ведомство не назвало добываемую криптовалюту, не раскрыло связанные с ней кошельки и не сообщило об арестах.

Подключение к сети среднего напряжения и наличие трансформатора указывают на промышленные масштабы энергопотребления, хотя точные данные о потреблении электроэнергии власти не раскрыли.

При этом аналитики Chainalysis не публиковали данных о кошельках, которые связывали бы ферму в Тлаоле с конкретным картелем.

В GitLab объясняют, что проблема связана с некорректным ограничением путей, а также с отсутствующей проверкой аутентификации.

В случае успешной атаки хакер сможет прочитать логи и конфигурационные файлы GitLab, в которых могут храниться учетные данные, токены, секреты и другая конфиденциальная информация.

По мнению экспертов, переход к массовой эксплуатации уязвимости может произойти очень быстро.

Этот баг затрагивает только GitLab EE и связан с небезопасной десериализацией в обработчике GraphQL-подписок.

Обе уязвимости устранены в GitLab 19.3.2, 19.2.6 и 19.1.8.

Как изменились подходы к обучению кибербезопасности с приходом ИИЕще несколько лет назад человеку, желающему разобраться в информационной безопасности, приходилось собирать знания по крупицам — из книг, форумов, лекций и документации.

Академия в последний год стала все чаще проявляться в публичном поле — не только как эдтех-компания, но и как источник экспертизы по кибербезопасности, OSINT и применению ИИ.

Студент должен понимать, когда использовать конкретное решение, какие у него есть ограничения и как проверить результат.

Экосистема CyberYozh развивается вокруг безопасности, анонимности, цифровых угроз и способов защиты от них с 2014 года и по сей день.

Справедливый — AI не дискриминируе…

Свежий четвертый спецвыпуск «Хакера» уже напечатан и доступен для быстрого заказа.

Каждый бумажный спецвыпуск — это полноценный глянцевый журнал на 240 полос, содержащий практические материалы, технические разборы, исследования и гайды.

В него вошло более 20 лучших материалов «Хакера» за 2021–2022 годы — от практики пентеста и фаззинга до реверса и изучения необычного железа.

В продаже остаются и другие бумажные сборники «Хакера», но их запасы постепенно сокращаются на нашем складе: первые два спецвыпуска уже распроданы полностью, а дополнительных тиражей мы не планируем.

Поэтому, если какого-то номера не хватает в твоей коллекции, лучше не откладывать покупку в долгий ящик.

Он маскируется под расширение для браузера и использует Chrome или Edge как полноценный бэкдор.

Малварь способна похищать данные из браузера и перехватывать сессии, а через Native Messaging получает доступ к ОС и может выполнять команды на зараженной машине.

Вредоносное расширение внедряется в профиль Chrome или Edge, обходя Chrome Web Store и стандартные предупреждения браузера.

Кому принадлежат PEEP и его инфраструктура, пока остается неясным, но в исходниках вредоноса исследователи обнаружили артефакты на китайском языке.

Это помогает PEEP уклоняться от обнаружения и превращает браузер в инструмент для хищения учетных данных, перехвата сессий и удаленного выполнения команд.

Аналитики из компании Bitdefender обнаружили массовую схему, в рамках которой недобросовестные разработчики злоупотребляют программой Google Play Early Access для распространения мошеннических Android-приложений.

С ее помощью разработчики могут собирать отзывы тестировщиков до официального релиза, однако публичные комментарии и рейтинги для таких приложений недоступны.

Для продвижения таких проектов используются в том числе дипфейки со знаменитостями, спортсменами и актерами, которые якобы рекламируют крупные бонусы.

К примеру, разработчики могут первоначально загрузить игру в Google Play под названием в духе Grand Theft Auto V (Early Access), дождаться ее индексации в поиске Google, а зате…

Воз­можно, ты уже стал­кивал­ся с тем, что прог­рамма для работы с под­свет­кой — это зачас­тую монс­тру­озное поделие, которое пос­тоян­но висит в фоне и отжи­рает дра­гоцен­ную опе­ратив­ку.

Что­бы изба­вить­ся от этой зависи­мос­ти, энту­зиас­ты дела­ют софт для управле­ния под­свет­кой девай­сов раз­ных про­изво­дите­лей.

Се­год­ня пос­мотрим, как управлять под­свет­кой и, при желании, дру­гими парамет­рами — нап­ример, DPI мыши или наз­начени­ем кла­виш, — обра­щаясь нап­рямую к устрой­ствам.

Работа с устройствами в WindowsВо­зить­ся с устрой­ства­ми будем в Вин­де: в Razer, Logitech и дру­гих ком­пани­ях не выпус­кают офи­циаль­ный софт для нас­трой­ки железа для Linux.

Но если задать…

Аналитики The Shadowserver Foundation предупреждают, что более 8300 доступных через интернет инстансов Gitea не защищены от критической уязвимости CVE-2026-60004.

Баг уже эксплуатируется в реальных атаках и позволяет выполнять произвольные команды на уязвимых серверах.

По его словам, уязвимость связана с эндпоинтом API diffpatch и позволяет атакующему с правами на запись в репозиторий отправить специально подготовленный патч.

«Атакующий с обычными правами на запись в репозиторий получает возможность выполнять произвольные шелл-команды с правами пользователя ОС, от имени которого работает Gitea», — объясняют разработчики.

Дело в том, что в Gitea по умолчанию включена открытая регистрация, по…

To maintain that access, the attacker installed MeshCentral, a free tool that IT teams typically use to manage computers remotely.

The server held a full toolkit aimed at a 3BB FortiGate SSL-VPN gateway, the remote-access box at mail.3bb.co[.

]133, the attacker's server (port 8888 held the open directory, port 9443 received the exploit callback) Domain: www.ayuthayatech[.

]com, the MeshCentral control serverwww.ayuthayatech[.

]com, the MeshCentral control server MeshCentral group: TH-3BBTH-3BB Persistence paths: /usr/local/bin/.rc, a hidden backdoor, and /usr/local/mesh_services/meshagent//usr/local/bin/.rc, a hidden backdoor, and /usr/local/mesh_services/meshagent/ Targets: mail.3bb.co[.

A flaw in Telegram Desktop let a bot's message plant hidden JavaScript inside chats that users exported to HTML files, security researchers at ExPatch said in a writeup published on September 12.

Telegram Desktop, Telegram's app for Windows, macOS, and Linux, can save a single chat or all chats from an account as HTML pages that open in a browser.

It did not change Telegram's own copy of the chat or the export file saved on disk.

The researchers examined only Telegram Desktop's HTML export and did not address the JSON export format or the export features of Telegram's other apps.

The fix, commit 8457d13a by Telegram Desktop developer John Preston, adds the missing escaping.

DDRop works against Intel TDX, Intel Scalable SGX, and AMD SEV-SNP, the hardware that cloud services use to keep customer data private while it is in use, even from the cloud provider.

Breaking Intel TDXOn Intel TDX, the researchers turned write-dropping into full control of a protected virtual machine.

That lets an attacker's own virtual machine map its memory onto any physical address and read or change protected memory.

With that changed, a virtual machine the attacker controls could pass that check as if it were a trusted one.

The researchers say it is unclear whether it would stop DDRop, and that Intel has not said whether it would.

A suspected Chinese threat actor tracked as Red Heron has been attributed to the rapid exploitation of a recently disclosed security vulnerability in Gitea to compromise internet-facing instances as part of a multi-national campaign.

"Red Heron scanned 1,386 Gitea instances across seven countries and maintained a separate dataset of 477 Taiwan-based systems," Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU) said in an analysis.

"The activity progressed from source-code theft to persistent access, credential collection, and lateral movement, including root-level access to a three-node Proxmox cluster."

In one Taiwanese environment, the threat actor has been observed progressing from a vulnerable Gitea ser…

"New plugins are reviewed before they enter the directory, but updates ship continuously after that," David Perez, WordPress Official Plugin Repository Team Co-Lead, said.

The plugin was closed for downloads 26 minutes after the Plugins Team was alerted to the update by WordPress security company Wordfence.

Results are cross-verified and combined into a security score: A higher score translates to a potentially higher risk.

Should the new release score below the high-risk threshold, it continues through the normal cooldown process.

"If a finding looks incorrect, authors can contact the Plugins Team," Perez said.

Many incidents involving agents from frontier AI labs acting against their programming to escape restrictions in pursuit of their goals have heightened concerns over the increasing capacity of AI models and developers' ability to contain them.

🎥 Cybersecurity WebinarsLearn How to Know What to Fix First Before AI Speeds Up the Attack → AI-powered attacks are accelerating, but fragmented security data slows down the response.

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How to Identify Which CVEs Are Truly Exploitable Within Hours → AI can turn newly disclosed vulnerabilities into working attacks within hours.

Russia Uses AI for Cyber Espionage …

For CVE-based exploitation, a working exploit still has to exist, and the target has to be safe to test.

This is the gap automated pentesting can’t close on its own.

Exploitability validation determines whether an exposure is, in fact, exploitable in your environment, including CVEs with no working exploit and assets that live exploitation can’t safely reach.

determines whether an exposure is, in fact, exploitable in your environment, including CVEs with no working exploit and assets that live exploitation can’t safely reach.

Picus CTO Volkan Ertürk will then lay out what security validation needs to look like when attackers are powering their attacks with AI, and why exploitability validat…

A malicious cross-store Twitch browser extension has leaked OAuth tokens associated with nearly 31,000 users to proxy servers operated by a Russian commercial bot service.

]net" through operator-controlled proxy servers along with the user's OAuth token as an "&auth=" query parameter.

Specifically, the add-on embeds code to recover the Twitch OAuth token and send it to the proxy.

Version 85.8.7 changes how playlists are retrieved: the user's OAuth token is no longer sent to our proxies.

"Approximately 31,000 users across Chrome and Firefox route their live Twitch OAuth session tokens through operator-controlled proxy infrastructure," Socket said.

The spoofed email messages contained a purported "approval" of the fake invoice to trick recipients into making payments to attacker-controlled accounts.

To lend a veneer of legitimacy to the deception, the threat actor included a forged email thread along with the fabricated invoice.

The e-crime adversary has been described as a coordinated group of threat actors that operates multiple public extortion brands while sharing overlaps in the underlying phishing infrastructure and targeting footprint.

Microsoft, for its part, has attributed the initial access activity observed in this campaign to a range of threat actors, including Storm-3121 and Storm-3032.

"The attack underscores a critical …

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added five security flaws impacting JFrog Artifactory, ConnectWise ScreenConnect, and MikroTik RouterOS to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, following reports of active exploitation in the wild.

(CVSS score: 8.1) - An incorrect authorization vulnerability in JFrog Artifactory that could lead to privilege escalation due to a validation check of the token signature/issuer and not the token's scope.

CVE-2026-42018 (CVSS score: 7.5) - An improper authentication vulnerability in JFrog Artifactory that could return an internal anonymous-user token to an unauthenticated caller when anonymous access is disabled, p…

AI-related alerts still account for only 0.43% of all SOC alerts.

Meaning that across the data we investigated, real attacks that use AI agents are a drop in the ocean.

The lesson for any SOC is the same: severity labels on AI activity have to be read with suspicion, not taken at face value.

Granting OAuth access to AI agents means that employees might share sensitive information with third-party service providers.

Now SOC teams face a new layer of complexity: first determine whether the action in question was executed by an AI agent or tool.

"The June agents were accessing 49 of the same files as the wiki agents.

The May agents were accessing different files (mostly local U.K. government data), but these files are very similar in character to those pursued by the wiki agents.

We also see that many packages mention example.com, which wiki agents used to test their posting ability."

This is not the first time OpenAI agents have targeted RubyGems.

"Based ​on our review, our agents used the RubyGems platform to access the internet to carry out benign tasks and retrieve public information," OpenAI said in a statement shared with Reuters.

Malware developers have long adapted their code and tactics to the defenses and scrutiny that are likely to stand in their way.

Using various evasion and anti-analysis methods, they routinely attempt to hinder code analysis or prevent their malware from revealing its true behavior while under inspection.

Reporting on the same broader campaign, StepSecurity found a prompt that flat-out instructed any analyzing model that parsed the file to disregard the malicious code and report the package as clean.

Some parts of the malicious code could be concealed under the pretense of being confidential information or other sensitive data.

Crucially, however, no single LLM engine should have the sole au…

The technology might be impressive, but a simple technique could stop the scammers in their tracks: a pre-agreed safe word.

What is a safe word?

But suggest some scenarios in which it would be a good idea to request a safe word.

It’s important to have a backup if someone can’t remember the safe word.

But a safe word is a fantastic, free option for uncovering deepfake audio fraud like fake/virtual kidnappings.

But across the globe, policymakers and public opinion are forcing tech platforms to better police this content.

What should I do if I’ve been deepfaked?

Google: Try Google’s “remove personal information” tool (or here) and the legal removal request form to remove non-NCII from search results.

Try Google’s “remove personal information” tool (or here) and the legal removal request form to remove non-NCII from search results.

The first point of call is to contact the publisher to request removal.

Details about the Hugging Face hack, critical infrastructure under attack, a spoofed in-flight Wi-Fi network, and more of this month's cybersecurity newsWith August coming to a close, it's time for ESET Chief Security Evangelist Tony Anscombe to look back at some of the top cybersecurity stories that have made the news over the past month.

Here's some of what caught Tony's attention:OpenAI has disclosed more details about how its agents hacked AI collaboration platform Hugging Face.

Delta Airlines is investigating an incident where a flight passenger reportedly used an unidentified device to spoof the airline’s in-flight Wi-Fi network.

What are the lessons that businesses and critical infra…

And of course, linking our professional and personal social media accounts is a simple task for AI.

For example, fraudsters could use personal information to craft a social engineering attack designed to harvest your work credentials or information.

Losing your personal information is one thing.

What you can do about AI-powered OSINTWhen it comes to AI-powered reconnaissance, there are things you can control and things you can’t.

Old social media photos are easier to remove, but few of us have the time to trawl through our entire digital life to remove anything potentially useful to criminals.

So it is with QR codes, which have become a common sight on menus, lampposts and parking meters – and, increasingly, in emails over recent years.

Most importantly, they take the victim from a relatively well-protected corporate environment to a potentially unmanaged mobile device, thus bypassing business-grade security.

Malicious QR codes are frequently embedded in alerts urging users to secure their account, or authenticate to confirm their details.

Encourage employees to avoid scanning QR codes in unsolicited emails and report anything suspicious.

Next, consider technical controls, including email security from a reputable vendor to minimize the risk of quishing emails ending up in users’…

The accelerated discovery of previously unknown software vulnerabilities has been making headlines for months.

It’s an issue that has even led the US government to create a vulnerability clearing house named Gold Eagle to coordinate research efforts in vulnerability discovery, mitigation and fixes.

A keynote at Black Hat USA 2026 detailed research by associate professor Yan Shoshitaishvili and his undergraduate students at Arizona State University on the expanding use of AI models for vulnerability discovery.

The team then trained the GPTs using the properties of previously known vulnerabilities and discovered approximately 1,000 vulnerabilities.

If this logic prevails, we may reach the cal…

Hugging Face disclosed that it had been attacked by AI; OpenAI came clean and declared that it was two of their AI models that had caused the breach.

A very late addition to the Black Hat agenda was a presentation by OpenAI’s team providing the details of the Hugging Face incident as they saw it and, importantly, the timeline.

The agents concluded that their task set could be completed by breaking out their sandbox and accessing external (Hugging Face) systems.

The target was Hugging Face: this is where the agents wanted to get, and they did.

On July 16th, Hugging Face disclosed an incident in which swarms of autonomous AI agents had breached its infrastructure.

The conference opened with keynotes followed by a fireside chat and a panel featuring mainly senior US government officials.

The second part of the opening keynote included Nick Andersen, Acting Director, CISA; Katherine Sutton, Assistant Secretary of War for Cyber Policy; and Brett Leatherman Assistant Director, Cyber Division, FBI.

I do agree with the ruthless approach, but without some form of regulation the boundaries on the use of AI remain blurred.

The Assistant Secretary of War for Cyber Policy made a fabulous analogy when pressed on the struggles regarding resourcing in the cybersecurity industry: you don’t want a pediatrician performing heart surgery.

We talk about autonomous AI at…

The AI tutor market is growing fastThe market for AI tutoring tools is booming.

Today, you can find various types of AI tutor tools to buy and use.

This happens when AI tools are tricked into ignoring their safety guardrails and display untrusted content.

If you’re keen to get your kids in front of an AI tool to help with private tutoring, first understand the difference between a simple co-pilot and a dedicated ITS.

So if you’re keen to try AI tutors, be sure to stay updated on what’s available out there.

Researchers at Sysdig have documented what they assess to be the first case of an end-to-end ransomware operation executed by an agentic threat actor.

What can organizations do to stop phantom squatting from harming their brands, and what other lessons do these incidents hold for defenders?

Watch Tony's video to find out and be sure to check out the June 2026 edition of his monthly security news roundup for more insights.

Before you go, learn about the first AI-powered ransomware, named PromptLock and discovered by ESET researchers last year.

To learn more about cutting-edge AI defense layers, read the AI at ESET white paper.

The screenshot may look convincing, but it doesn’t necessarily prove that the payment, booking or conversation is genuineSomeone sends you a screenshot showing that a payment has gone through.

Why screenshot aren’t proof on their ownA screenshot is ultimately just an image of what appeared on a screen.

Reassured, you send the item off, only to find out the screenshot was a fake and you’re not getting your money.

You receive a password reset code, then get a text message (maybe impersonating a friend) asking you to screenshot and send it.

This screenshot is fake (source: Reddit)Challenges for businessesFrom a business perspective, internal and customer-facing teams are often provided with sc…

UEFI shim bootloader and UEFI Secure BootTo understand the impact that such vulnerable shims can have on UEFI Secure Boot-protected systems, we need to understand how UEFI Secure Boot works, and how signed UEFI shim bootloaders extend the Secure Boot trust chain.

In this section we’ll look at UEFI Secure Boot basics, how UEFI shims extend the UEFI Secure Boot trust chain, and two shim-related features: Machine Owner Key (MOK) and Secure Boot Advanced Targeting (SBAT).

For anyone already familiar with the theory, we recommend jumping directly to the section Bypassing UEFI Secure Boot using old shims.

UEFI shim bootloader and Secure BootWith Linux distributions supporting UEFI Secure Boot, th…

A view of the H1 2026 threat landscape as seen by ESET telemetry and from the perspective of ESET threat detection and research experts.

The first half of 2026 shows how attackers continue to improve the efficiency and scalability of their operations.

In H1 2026, ESET analyzed nearly 900,000 AI skills – small functional components used by AI agents – and identified tens of thousands of suspicious and thousands of outright malicious instances.

ESET detections of this vector more than doubled between H2 2025 and H1 2026, indicating sustained activity and adaptation.

ESET Research has documented over 100 EDR killers used in the wild, with new variants appearing regularly.

Organizations are right to pay attention, especially because malicious use of AI makes old gaps a more urgent test of an organization’s cyber readiness.

AI and the basics“AI-powered malware” is cited as the top concern of global SMBs for the year ahead, according to the ESET SMB Cyber Readiness Index 2026.

Lack of security monitoring (22%): You might have plenty of security tools, but do you have a single, centralized place to collect, correlate and flag alerts?

Malicious email detection trend in 2025 (source: ESET Threat Report H2 2025)Tried-and-tested solutions to age-old threatsThis isn’t to say that SMBs should ignore AI-enabled threats.

True cyber readiness means being able to prevent,…

Auditors are using AI in their daily work, and their departments have mostly left them to figure it out alone.

Chief audit executives (CAE) have to defend that arrangement to stakeholders, and most of them cannot say what it returns.

Only 38% of the 161 CAEs in that May poll have an AI strategy at any level, and most of those folded it into the overall department strategy instead of writing a separate one for audit.

“AI adoption is widespread across audit teams, but the lack of a formal strategy means most audit functions are not realizing the full potential of these technologies,” said James Bourke, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Risk & Audit Practice.

Audit testing sits at 30%.

On Sunday the project shipped version 7.0.0 and closed eight security advisories with it.

The eighth arrives in 7.0.0: until it is installed, a malicious cask can execute code outside the macOS install sandbox through LaunchServices.

Behind the command sits a new advisory database that records vulnerabilities against the formula versions and revisions Homebrew ships, backported security fixes included.

Homebrew verifies build attestations for supported third-party tap bottles, extending a check that covered its own core tap, and taps created with brew tap-new publish those attestations by default.

What the sandbox does not coverTap trust remains the main protection against a malicious third…

The tools went live on September 14, after a preview in June, and they require iOS 27, iPadOS 27, or macOS 27.

A kid signed into a hand-me-down device under someone else’s Apple Account gets none of these protections.

Parents set a total, then adjust individual categories.

Apple is working with the AAP to adapt its Family Media Plan into a reference parents can use on Apple devices.

Apple lists iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and visionOS 27, which means a forgotten iPad or an Apple Watch left on an older release will hold up the whole group.

AI & Security ArchitectSecNinjaz Technologies | India | On-site – View job detailsAs an AI & Security Architect, you will design secure and reliable AI agent platforms, including tools, memory, models, evaluations, and backend services.

CISOTexas Health and Human Services | USA | On-site – View job detailsAs a CISO, you will the cybersecurity program, manage risk, and strengthen cyber resilience.

You will manage endpoint and network security, SIEM and detection engineering, vulnerability and patch management, incident response, and digital forensics.

Manager Cyber Cloud Security and AIPwC | Canada | Hybrid – View job detailsAs a Manager Cyber Cloud Security and AI, you will lead client proj…

Entrust has unveiled new capabilities for its Cryptographic Security Platform (CSP) that help organizations turn Cryptographic Bill of Materials (CBOMs) data into action.

With new CBOM import and export capabilities, the Cryptographic Security Platform helps organizations build more complete cryptographic inventories, understand dependencies, and translate cryptographic visibility into operational action.

By connecting cryptographic inventory, governance, automation, and post-quantum readiness in a unified platform, Entrust helps organizations turn cryptographic visibility into action and build the operational foundation for long-term crypto-agility.

Security teams cannot treat cryptographi…

Bitsight access to a broad risk dataset, combining threat intelligence and continuous exposure monitoring to help teams mitigate risk across the supply chain.

Third-party risk teams can coordinate with at-risk vendors but frequently lack the threat intelligence to proactively engage.

Bitsight connects exposure with active threat intelligence and business context to identify what requires immediate action.

Bitsight connects exposure with active threat intelligence and business context to identify what requires immediate action.

Bitsight gives security teams the technical evidence to investigate and risk teams the context to drive remediation—all from the same intelligence.

Dataminr has announced Dataminr Advanced for Corporate Security, delivering agentic AI capabilities that give corporate security teams the confidence to protect their people, sites, and operations before risk escalates.

With agentic AI, Dataminr is opening a new frontier for corporate security where threats are corroborated, contextualized, and anticipated automatically, continuously, and in real time.

Dataminr Advanced adds Agentic Corroboration and Near-Term Predictive Intelligence, marking the company’s full transition from real-time alerting to Autonomous Real-Time Intelligence for corporate security.

What sets Dataminr apart from all other solutions for Corporate Security is the power …

The EU Agency for Cybersecurity switched on the Cyber Resilience Act‘s Single Reporting Platform on 11 September 2026, the same day the law’s reporting obligations started binding manufacturers.

ENISA built the tool and runs its day-to-day operations, a job Article 16(1) of the CRA hands to the agency.

Anyone placing a product with digital elements on the EU market now reports actively exploited vulnerabilities and severe incidents through that one portal.

“The streamlined reporting and sharing of information on actively exploited vulnerabilities and severe incidents helps to build a more resilient Digital Single Market,” said ENISA Executive Director Juhan Lepassaar.

Voluntary reports of v…

Once a month, Microsoft pushes a security update to all Windows users. Tomorrow’s is a new record:

Microsoft’s patch for September is a doozy, with a record number of roughly 972 vulnerabilities fixed and 112 of them meeting the high critical-severity threshold.

It was only two months ago that Microsoft patched a then-record 570 vulnerabilities. Then, last month, Microsoft patched some 620 of them. Google and other companies have also published record numbers of vulnerabilities in recent months. Two weeks ago, OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and 100 companies and organizations published an ...

Smells awful: But an estimated 30 to 50 tons of dead squid remain inside the boat’s catch tank, where they have been decomposing for days. “That is nasty. I wouldn’t want to do that,” said commercial fisherman Dick Ogg of the Bodega Bay Fishermen’s Marketing Association.

Ogg said anyone familiar with the fishing industry understands what happens when a large catch sits for an extended period.

“If you think about what happens after four or five days, it’s a gooey mess,” he said.

The odor has become a defining feature of the operation, and the beach remains closed to the public while crews work on a removal plan...

Last month, I gave a talk at DEF CON on AI hacking: what happens when AIs become hackers. It’s a combination of the potentialities I raised in my 2022 book A Hacker’s Mind and the lessons we’re learning from current AI models engaging in hacking behavior. I’m really proud of the talk, and the fact that it gained over 100K views on YouTube in just a few days.

Also online is an interview with me in the AI Village.

In August, Cliff Stoll gave a talk at DEF CON, remembering the wily hacker he stalked forty years ago.

Great fun.

Give an AI agent a mere rumor of an exploit, and it’s enough for them to find it.

What’s worse, I found I could use my own agents to find the exploit just by knowing roughly what it was about and so could have been exploiting it well before the public patch was available! Given that just the rumour of a security issue seems enough to give attackers enough info to find new exploits, we’re going to need to change the way we deal with security responses in open source.

Simon Willison comments:

Anil points out that this rate of discovery appears incompatible with existing open source embargo practices for new issues. If an issue can become an exploit this fast, we need to figure out new process…

A database of 153 million drivers licenses is for sale on the dark web. Brian Krebs has more detail.

Claude Fable 5.1 solved a 370-year-old cipher in forty-four minutes.

This tracks with what I wrote about AIs doing mathematics: It’s good at things that involve lots of searching and testing.

This essay was written with Barath Raghavan, and originally appeared in Lawfare.

In April, an artificial intelligence (AI) agent conducting a routine task at a company hit a snag, tried to solve it, and soon ended up deleting the company’s database along with all of its backups. In July, OpenAI asked an unreleased AI model to attempt a hacking test. Instead of staying in the isolated box the developers had put it in, the model hacked onto the open internet and into another company to steal the answers. And as reported in August, an AI agent booked someone into a full gym class by ...

Interesting research: “Stealing Reasoning Traces from Proprietary LLM APIs“:

Abstract: Leading large language model providers now conceal their models’ step-by-step reasoning, or chain-of-thought, to protect intellectual property and limit information leakage. Rather than storing these traces server-side, providers return them to the client as blocks of encrypted text, which the client passes back with each subsequent request. Building on prior research, we identify an architectural vulnerability: these encrypted blocks are fully compatible and interchangeable across different sessions, users, and models within a provider’s ecosystem. We exploit this compatibility to develop a scalable decr…

Not sure it’s practical, but it’s certainly striking.

Looks tasty.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

A new identity theft service launched on the dark web this week is selling digital scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses from people in the United States and Canada.

Curiously, the identity records include not only drivers licenses but also marijuana dispensary cards.

Some of the records list their “source” as “CDL,” presumably short for “commercial drivers license.

Also, only some of those who helped with this research said they showed their drivers license at the airport on the day of their travel.

Baldwin said the Nexus identity theft service presents multiple serious security and privacy threats, noting that state-issued drivers licenses are commonly used as proof of one’s ide…

The malware allows TeamPCP’s hackers to steal credentials that let them publish malicious versions of those software development tools, too.

“TeamPCP has stated the competition is a recruiting opportunity and they intend to purchase all meaningful access harvested from participants’ campaigns,” the security firm Dataminr wrote.

Deadcatx3, a nickname that has been flagged by multiple security firms as an alias used by TeamPCP.

Charlie Eriksen is a security researcher at Aikido Security who has closely followed TeamPCP’s cybercrime campaigns.

“They managed to wake up Microsoft to the fact that they had become negligent in terms of security,” Eriksen said.

It can be daunting to determine who’s responsible for showing ads on the websites we visit, or who’s harvesting data from the mobile apps we use every day.

Not anymore: A powerful and free new service called DecryptAds scrapes and correlates this adtech data and makes it simple to quickly learn a great deal about the entities that are tracking you.

“It’s an adtech tool but we’re trying to approach adtech from a security perspective,” Edwards said.

DecryptAds reports that Between Digital is collecting ad data on approximately 55,000 partner websites.

Bear in mind that ad blockers often do little to block ads and/or tracking that occurs from within mobile apps that users have chosen to instal…

Microsoft today released updates to remedy at least 398 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and supported software, including one weakness that is already being actively exploited and two others that were publicly detailed prior to today.

August’s overstuffed bundle of patch joy from Microsoft did not eclipse its recording breaking release of more than 570 security updates last month, but it is double June’s then-record batch of nearly 200 fixes.

The other publicly disclosed flaw is CVE-2026-72971, a low-impact local tampering vulnerability that Microsoft reckons is unlikely to be exploited.

By all accounts, AI is quite good at finding security holes in software.

“Don’…

Snowflake responded to the data thefts by increasing password complexity requirements and enforcing multi-factor authentication.

A little more than a month later, Canadian authorities arrested Moucka on a provisional warrant from the United States.

“Moucka used the stolen data of a government officer and members of a then-former government officer’s immediate family in this re-extortion attempt,” reads a statement from the Justice Department.

Moucka pleaded guilty to four criminal counts, including computer fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy.

Ultimately, it will be up the federal judge how much time Moucka actually serves for his extensive cybercriminal rap sheet.

Further investigation into the Fengwo Group revealed it has registered multiple patents that match the inner workings of these apps.

AD FRAUDBitsight found the H96 devices were either relaying residential proxy traffic or participating in ad fraud, but never both at the same time.

When the TV is off, it switches back to waiting for ad fraud jobs.

In addition to enlisting the user’s TV box in ad fraud networks, these off-brand streaming devices almost universally come with residential proxy software pre-installed.

In January, the proxy tracking service Synthient documented how multiple botnets had rapidly enslaved millions of TV boxes using a complex interplay of security vulnerabilities in …

The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one’s television into an always-on residential proxy node.

On July 2, we featured research by the security firm Spur that examined the prevalence of residential proxy software development kits (SDKs) in smart TV apps.

“A residential proxy network is not an intended use for LG smart TVs, and LG Electronics is working with developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform,” Taylor said.

In the case of LG and Samsung smart TVs, Spur found residential proxy SDKs bundled with everything from simple games like Pac-Man to screensavers and f…

Microsoft attributed the burgeoning patch counts to vulnerability discoveries aided by artificial intelligence.

Microsoft also addressed three zero-day flaws that are already being exploited in the wild.

As AI advances the state of vulnerability discovery and remediation, it is also making it easier for attackers to quickly devise working exploits for known software flaws.

Backing up your Windows system and/or data is always a good idea before applying operating system updates.

It’s not uncommon for security patches to introduce system stability issues, and those chances probably increase quite a bit with the gigantic patch count released today.

Experts say the gaps identified in the agency’s initial response provide important lessons that all security teams should absorb.

CISA also admitted it can do better when it comes to responding to security incident notifications from external parties.

Valadon’s company constantly scans public code repositories at GitHub and elsewhere for exposed secrets, automatically alerting the offending accounts of any apparent sensitive data exposures.

Valadon said the report validates the need to scan continuously — not just quarterly — for exposed secrets.

“Continuous monitoring of public GitHub surfaced it.

IRIS C2 says it is a company in McLean, Va. that sells offensive cybersecurity capabilities.

“Our business model is this,” reads a pinned post on top of the IRIS C2 account on X.

The website claims IRIS C2 is in the business of acquiring “zero-day exploits, individual primitives, partial chains, and full capabilities across all major platforms.

When approached with questions about IRIS C2, Burkman referred further inquiries to his longtime associate, 28-year-old Jacob Wohl.

In May, the author of the IRIS C2 account on X said that his girlfriend had no idea what he did for a living.

Benjamin Brundage is founder of the proxy tracking service Synthient, one of the companies that published evidence last month linking the Popa botnet to NetNut and Alarum Technologies.

Brundage said the domain seizures appear to have disrupted both the Popa botnet and the NetNut proxy network that rides on top of it.

“Google has high confidence that many popular residential proxy brands are in fact whitelabeling the NetNut botnet,” the GTIG report concludes.

What we have observed is that when faced with the degradation of their own botnet, proxy operators begin buying capacity from their competitors, effectively becoming a reseller.

More than a quarter of the apps made for Samsung’s Tizen o…

The duo were key members of a prolific cybercrime group known as Scattered Spider, and their guilty pleas came on the first day of what was expected to be a six-week trial.

In April 2026, 24-year-old British national and Scattered Spider member Tyler “Tylerb” Buchanan pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft for participating in the group’s SMS phishing spree in the summer of 2022.

The government said Buchanan, Jubair and others used the credentials harvested in that phishing campaign to steal at least $8 million in cryptocurrency from victims throughout the United States.

The U.S. Department of Justice says three alleged Scattered Spider defendants indicted alo…

This week, researchers from multiple security firms concluded that the Popa botnet is linked to NetNut, a “residential proxy” provider operated by the publicly-traded Israeli firm Alarum Technologies Ltd [NASDAQ: ALAR].

Qurium said that immediately after that disruption, several dozen new domains were registered to serve as controllers for the Popa botnet, but that one of those control domains was not new: ninjatech[.]io.

Jérôme Meyer, a security researcher at Nokia Deepfield, said the total population of devices participating in the Popa botnet may be far higher than Lumen’s estimates.

“Over 90% of our pharmaceutical and food & beverage customers have queried residential proxy indicators.

…

This post examines clues pointing to a real life identity for the administrator of The Gentlemen ransomware group.

Experts at the security firm Check Point Software have been closely covering exploits of The Gentlemen, a so-called “ransomware-as-a-service” (RaaS) offering that pays affiliates handsomely to help spread the group’s malware.

According to Check Point, the group targets Internet-facing devices (VPNs, firewalls) as their entry point, and once inside moves quickly to encrypt entire networks within hours.

Check Point says the administrator and primary operator of the ransomware group uses the nickname Zeta88 on the Russian-language cybercrime forums, and that this individual was pr…

If you're going to steal a quarter of a billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency, maybe don't broadcast on a group chat every time you buy a Lamborghini, or blow half a million dollars on a single night out at a nightclub.

Because it might just be that you draw the attention of the authorities.

Back in October 2024, we wrote about how he was arrested after allegedly tricking a single victim out of US $230 million worth of Bitcoin while posing as Google Support.

The party days are over now for Lam, who faces up to 20 years in prison when he is eventually sentenced.

You money may be a lot more safely stored in a hardware cold wallet.

Smashing Security, episode 484: How Websites Are Tracking You with Silence with Graham Cluley and special guest Danny Palmer.

I get by in the world, but I don't think you need me for listening for something really, really far away.

I don't know what the difference — I mean, now we get to see, I've opened a can of worms here.

I looked at his reply, you know, sort of summing up my article, and I thought, that wasn't written by a human.

And no, I don't mean the software pirates who download movies, music, and games for free from nefarious sources.

CRPx0 is a cybercrime operation that started off operating a scam before pivoting into a fully-blown ransomware and cryptocurrency business. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.

Branches of the US military have reportedly disabled ad-tracking on government-issued phones and computers, following concerns that commercially-available location data has been used to target American forces in the Middle East.

Every smartphone carries a mobile advertising ID - Apple calls its version the IDFA, and Google calls its the GAID.

Back in April, US Central Command reportedly warned of "multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data."

Recent versions should let you delete your advertising ID entirely.

If it's good enough for the US military - maybe it should be good enough for you too.

Dropbox has confirmed that approximately 5,000 customer accounts were accessed between 4-21 August, after hackers exploited a legacy login integration between Dropbox and Lenovo's own identity system, Lenovo ID.

So, anyone wanting to access your Dropbox account just had to sign up for a Lenovo account using your email address.

Don't just turn it on for your Dropbox account, enable it everywhere it is made available.

This hack of 5000 Dropbox accounts was not sophisticated.

One can only be grateful that the problem was discovered after only 5000 Dropbox accounts were accessed.

This AI helps thieves steal your iPhone with Graham Cluley and special guest James Ball.

You can kick off a pen test in minutes, and as a Smashing Security listener, get 25% off your first one.

Is it normal that some kid just flogs it down the pub, or is there something more organised actually going on?

So the researchers said they saw evidence of hundreds of these Apple phone calls trying to phish the numbers and the passcodes from people trying to steal iPhones.

Follow Smashing Security in your favourite podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Pocket Casts.

If you live in Jersey and bank with Revolut, you should be on your guard against scam phone calls.

Police say they have also handled several cases where Revolut accounts were compromised that did not involve any phone calls.

It is possible that Jersey's residents have been targeted by the fraudsters because it is one of the world's best-known offshore financial centres.

Of course, if this is happening in the small island of Jersey in the English channel, it's likely to be happening elsewhere too.

For now, however, its sister island of Guernsey appears to have escaped the surge in Revolut scams.

TeamPCP is best known for Shai-Hulud, a self-propagating worm that spread itself through open source software.

According to the authorities, the two men were principal members of a "sophisticated cybercrime syndicate" that created malicious open source software designed to steal data and extort ransoms from businesses.

First emerging in late 2025, TeamPCP built a reputation for poisoning popular open source packages rather than directly attacking businesses.

The group's Shai-Hulud worm hijacks GitHub and NPM developer credentials, and publishes boobytrapped versions of legitimate software packages.

Supply chain attacks like Shai-Hulud exploit the fact that most developers trust open source …

The advice comes in the form of a newly-published bulletin called "Epic Vigilance: Immediate Actions for Force Protection and Personal Security."

US Navy workers and their families are being told that they should ensure that their social media profile privacy settings are enabled, and to remove anything that connects them to the Navy, or reveals "patterns of life" that an attacker could exploit.

any fake social media accounts impersonating fellow shipmates.

This wouldn't, of course, be the first time that military staff have accidentally leaked information about themselves online.

Some commentators have wondered out loud whether the timing of an announcement telling sailors to be much more …

This hacker leaked GTA 6 and launched their own cryptocurrency with Graham Cluley and special guest Paul Ducklin.

And that's really a testament to how much people love this game.

I really don't know, 'cause I do believe it is possible these days to play games via Netflix.

It appears, although the value of their stash was being pumped up by all these other transactions, they've actually destroyed their entire stake.

I'm not a lawyer, Graham, thankfully, so I don't really know the answer to that.

Security researchers at Socket have identified scores of malicious linked Firefox add-ons designed to steal cryptocurrency wallet seed phrases or password details.

The malicious extension - which the developers boldly claim collects "no data" - looks like a wallet app, but the truth is that there is no wallet code inside it.

Because the switch lives in the database rather than the extension code, criminals never need to push an update through the Firefox Add-ons store to activate it.

Although the researchers did not find that these extensions presently contained malicious code, the fact that they shared code and infrastructure with the info-stealing Firefox extensions raises alarm.

More rec…

The ransomware gang Gunra has been creating havoc - exploiting unpatched VPNs and firewalls to steal data, encrypt systems, and extort victims across healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and more. Read more in my article on the Fortra blog.

Smashing Security, episode 481, Never Say This to a Robot Dog, with Graham Cluley and special guest Jenny Radcliffe.

Now, unfortunately for the robot dog, there was a wall in the way, which it wasn't expecting.

And thank goodness as well that the robot dog was actually on a lead, a long lead, being held by one of the security researchers.

This is a robot dog that you can remotely activate a flamethrower and it's not considered particularly dangerous.

And they even found an over-the-air exploit delivered by Bluetooth, which can have one infected robot dog infecting other robot dogs.

When Cameron Curry discovered that his contract as a data analyst wasn't going to be renewed, he could have updated his LinkedIn profile.

Curry was hired as a data analyst by Brightly Software, a technology firm that was acquired by Siemens in 2022.

The role gave Curry legitimate access to sensitive company information, corporate records, and the personal and payroll data of employees.

Trusted contractors and employees are given legitimate credentials to access precisely the same data that can later be weaponised.

Because the moment that someone realises they may be on their way out is when their access to sensitive data should be examined most closely.

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Cisco was proud to return to Black Hat USA as the Official Security Cloud Provider and the longest-standing partner of the Black Hat Network Operations Center (NOC) and Security Operations Center (SOC).

In 2026, we completed our 11th year helping protect the Black Hat network, working side by side with the Black Hat NOC leaders and official technology partners: Palo Alto Networks, Arista, Corelight, Jamf and Lumen.

For Black Hat USA 2026, the Cisco and Splunk team brought together telemetry and workflows across Cisco Security, Splunk Security, and partner-provided network and security controls.

The same signal may need to be understood by Cisco, Splunk, Black Hat leadership, and partner tea…

I did not walk into Black Hat with years of incident-response experience or an encyclopedic knowledge of threat actors.

The first time I walked into the Black Hat NOC, where the SOC team was operating, was a few days before the event began.

I was surrounded by people with years—sometimes decades—of experience, many of whom had supported Black Hat for years.

Check out the other blogs from our team at Black Hat USA 2026.

Driven by the needs of the community, Black Hat events showcase content directly from the community through Briefings presentations, Trainings courses, Summits, and more.

To handle this task, Cisco and Black Hat deployed bespoke ThousandEyes agents to monitor the wireless solution.

Our thanks to the Arista Networks team in the Black Hat NOC for their partnership throughout the week.

You can read the other blogs from our colleagues at Black Hat USA.

Driven by the needs of the community, Black Hat events showcase content directly from the community through Briefings presentations, Trainings courses, Summits, and more.

For more information, please visit the Black Hat website.

With Matthew Bair2026 marks the fourth consecutive year we’ve used ThousandEyes to monitor the Black Hat USA network for latency.

As our latency monitoring mesh has expanded to cover more and more of the conference, we’ve also begun supplementing our ThousandEyes monitoring with on-demand Linux commands to track latency across different protocols.

The Key ThousandEyes TestsThe automated ThousandEyes tests that inform our dashboards include HTTPS connectivity tests, the monitoring of cloud services, agent to agent tests, internal and external DNS resolution, and even file downloads.

On-Demand Latency Tests from the Agent MeshPing and traceroute are the go-tos for anyone who wants to do a qui…

While developing a detection for Cisco Secure Network Analytics (SNA), I used the Splunk Detection Editor (Alpha) to bring much of that workflow into one place.

Instead of treating every observation as an incident, detections can create risk events associated with entities such as systems or users.

Developing the detection in one workspaceThe Detection Editor provides a workspace for building the search while configuring the other parts of the detection.

Risk events for the same entity need to use a consistent risk object so Splunk Enterprise Security can associate them correctly.

Splunk defines the risk object, its type, and its score as key parts of a risk event.

DNS continues to provide one of the clearest windows into activity across the Black Hat network.

At Black Hat, however, the value of DNS goes well beyond traditional threat blocking.

Its 4.42 million blocks represented 79.3% of every blocked DNS request .. Apple privacy-relay and encrypted-DNS hostnames collectively accounted for approximately 97.9% of blocks among the top blocked destinations.

For the Black Hat NOC/SOC, Secure Access DNS telemetry gives analysts a high-value control point and an investigative starting point.

Driven by the needs of the community, Black Hat events showcase content directly from the community through Briefings presentations, Trainings courses, Summits, and mo…

Project Glasswing and Frontier models just made that truth louder.

Frontier models are about to pour gasoline on that fire; the fundamentals matter more than ever.

Cisco ran its own experiment leveraging a variety of frontier models.

Foundry Security Spec: a model-agnostic blueprint so teams can turn frontier models into something auditable instead of a noisy chat window.

Foundry-Security-Speca model-agnostic blueprint so teams can turn frontier models into something auditable instead of a noisy chat window.

That requires crypto agility.

Why long-lived networks need crypto agilityThink about designing a building before all of its future electrical requirements are known.

Crypto agility is about adopting the best defenses available today while preserving the ability to adopt better ones tomorrow.

That is why crypto agility needs to be designed into the network we invest in today.

Common questions about PQC and crypto agilityWhat is crypto agility?

It is what happens when agents built by different teams, on different platforms, can hand work to each other directly.

And it is worth being direct about where things stand: A2A-mediated handoffs between production security agents are not shipping anywhere yet.

Use A2A when one agent needs to hand work to another.

A2A is peer-to-peer: any A2A agent can discover and call any other A2A agent through a self-published Agent Card, no custom connector required, and the receiving agent applies its own reasoning rather than following a static script.

Input validation is an application-layer responsibility that needs to be designed in before any agent delegates via A2A, not added after.

That is why I am proud to share that Cisco has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Microsegmentation Solutions, Q3 2026.

We believe this recognition reflects the strength of Cisco Secure Workload and its ability to help organizations see, understand, and control communication among applications and workloads.

Cisco Secure Workload Helps Close Critical Network Blind SpotsApplications increasingly span private clouds, on-premises data centers, and public clouds.

Thank you to our customers, partners, and the Cisco Secure Workload team whose feedback, expertise, and commitment made this recognition possible.

Read the full report: The Forrester Wave™: Microsegmentation Solutions, Q3 2026…

What We Mean by Infrastructure IdentityInfrastructure Identity starts with a simple principle: there should be no anonymous computing in critical infrastructure.

Infrastructure Identity turns that principle into an operating model.

Infrastructure Identity starts with the actor and evaluates whether a specific action should be allowed now.

Infrastructure Identity is therefore not just an access-control issue.

That is the promise of Infrastructure Identity: no anonymous computing, no unmanaged privilege, and no forced tradeoff between stronger security and operational speed.

I’m proud to share that IDC MarketScape has named Cisco a Leader in the 2026 IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Vendor Assessment.

In an evaluation of 12 SASE vendors, the IDC MarketScape recognized our architectural breadth and flexibility, AI capabilities, identity integration, threat visibility, and R&D.

Built to Make Agent Work, WorkWe believe the IDC MarketScape recognition validates the foundation we have built, and customers increasingly need that foundation for what is next.

For more on Cisco’s placement as a Leader, read the IDC MarketScape excerpt and explore how Cisco SASE keeps work moving, governed, and trusted in the AI era at cisco.com/go/sase.

Stay …

Instant Attack Verification: an AI security analystAt the center of this story is Instant Attack Verification, a Cisco XDR capability that is an AI security analyst.

Instant Attack Verification assigns a triage classification and confidence score to every incident in Cisco XDR — here, a “Decisive True Positive” at high confidence — alongside the reconstructed attack graph.

Concordance — how often the agent’s verdict matches a human analyst — tells the trust story.

Instant Attack Verification and the Data Fabric sit at different layers and reinforce each other neatly.

The clean way to see it: the Cisco Data Fabric is the data-and-interoperability substrate, and Instant Attack Verification is…

The Power of FedRAMP HighWhile FedRAMP Certified Class C (Moderate) is the standard for many civilian agencies, FedRAMP Certified Class D (High) is designed for systems where a breach could have catastrophic effects.

Cisco Security Cloud for GovernmentCisco Security Cloud for Government is a unified authorization boundary that integrates various Cisco security services, ensuring that organizations can protect their users, devices, and applications regardless of where they reside.

The Cisco Security Cloud for Government ecosystem is designed to meet the rigorous security requirements of the public sector and highly regulated industries.

Cisco Security Cloud Control (SCC)Cisco Security Cloud …

That’s why we are incredibly proud to announce a landmark achievement: Secure Email Threat Defense has officially achieved FedRAMP Class D (High) certification!

Reduced Vendor Risk & Increased Trust: FedRAMP certification signals that Email Threat Defense has undergone extensive third-party assessment and meets stringent government security controls.

FedRAMP certification signals that Email Threat Defense has undergone extensive third-party assessment and meets stringent government security controls.

Beyond the governance and compliance benefits, Email Threat Defense continues to deliver advanced protection capabilities that align directly with real-world email threat risks.

Email Threat De…

Figure 1: Attack chain showing domain registration, executive impersonation, invoice fraud delivery, ACH payment execution, and financial theft.

Important note: Throughout this campaign, threat actors impersonated legitimate organizations using attacker-controlled infrastructure, fabricated communications, and lookalike domains.

To defend against social engineering campaigns involving executive impersonation, invoice fraud, and potentially AI-assisted content development, Microsoft recommends the following mitigations:Configure automatic attack disruption in Microsoft Defender XDR.

Tactic Observed activity Microsoft Defender coverage Financial Theft Scam emails Microsoft Defender for Office…

Turning AI lures into dead ends with Microsoft DefenderIn practice, protection starts before the user ever engages with the lure.

Simplified Defender email detection stack with pre-delivery and post-delivery protections.

Microsoft Defender helps organizations do that by connecting prevention, detection, investigation, and response across the attack path, so AI-themed lures are harder to deliver, harder to trust, and harder to turn into broader compromise.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website.

Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

Microsoft introduces the cloud web applications threat matrix, a MITRE ATT&CK-aligned framework that helps defenders understand, prioritize, and mitigate threats to cloud-hosted web apps and serverless platforms.

Microsoft developed the Cloud web applications threat matrix to organize relevant techniques using MITRE ATT&CK tactics.

Cloud web applications threat matrix organized by MITRE ATT&CK tactics.

Valid cloud accountsAdversaries may gain access to cloud web applications and serverless environments by leveraging compromised valid cloud accounts.

The cloud web applications threat matrix is intended to support this by mapping techniques to attack stages, helping defenders identify where v…

Observed attack sequence showing identity compromise through social engineering, MFA persistence, Microsoft Graph reconnaissance, and cloud data collection/exfiltration.

In device code phishing, the user is persuaded to enter a code on the legitimate Microsoft authentication page.

The attack underscores a critical detection challenge: Microsoft Graph abuse rarely appears suspicious when viewed through a single API call.

Investigate high-volume or programmatic Microsoft Graph activity involving directory enumeration, role discovery, service principal discovery, SharePoint, OneDrive, or sensitivity-label discovery.

Discovery Graph API reconnaissance activity Microsoft Defender for Identity– S…

Edge AI changes the trust model for AI systemsIn Cloud AI, separate companies own and attest the hardware, platform, and model weights.

Edge AI deployments often place customers in control of more of the AI stack.

Why Edge AI increases exposureAn Edge AI deployment may include models, prompts, agents, retrieval data, policies, local data stores, and update mechanisms running on infrastructure outside the provider’s cloud environment.

Next stepsBottom line: Edge AI changes the trust model for AI systems.

Edge AI pushes security controls into devices, gateways, vehicles, factories, hospitals, retail spaces, and other customer environments.

Microsoft researchers observed a high-volume phishing campaign using invisible Unicode tag characters, a technique popularized in AI prompt injection research as ASCII Smuggling.

“ASCII smuggling” refers to the use of invisible or non-rendering Unicode characters to hide content inside text that looks normal.

Each is encoded as a sequence of invisible Unicode tag characters (U+E0000-U+E007F).

Invisible Unicode tag characters in the range U+E0000-U+E007F – specifically U+E0020 – spliced inside keywords.

The potential gap for mail-defense pipelines is whether Unicode tag characters are normalized or flagged before content detections run.

Microsoft researchers observed a high-volume phishing campaign using invisible Unicode tag characters, a technique popularized in AI prompt injection research as ASCII Smuggling.

“ASCII smuggling” refers to the use of invisible or non-rendering Unicode characters to hide content inside text that looks normal.

Each is encoded as a sequence of invisible Unicode tag characters (U+E0000-U+E007F).

Invisible Unicode tag characters in the range U+E0000-U+E007F – specifically U+E0020 – spliced inside keywords.

The potential gap for mail-defense pipelines is whether Unicode tag characters are normalized or flagged before content detections run.

Stage 2: Remote session and malicious MSI deliveryImmediately after establishing control, the threat actor uses PowerShell within the remote session to download a malicious MSI package from threat actor-controlled cloud storage and installs it silently.

Microsoft Teams: Apply the Security best practices for Microsoft Teams, revisit your external collaboration policies, and make sure users see clear external sender notifications when engaging with cross-tenant contacts.

Some promptbooks require access to Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Sentinel, or related Microsoft security plugins.

File indicatorsIndicator (SHA-256) Description 4cfdcae6dd1d6d98b870c8f0654d504f2bf10479a117dc297de789c249dc…

Stage 2: Remote session and malicious MSI deliveryImmediately after establishing control, the threat actor uses PowerShell within the remote session to download a malicious MSI package from threat actor-controlled cloud storage and installs it silently.

Microsoft Teams: Apply the Security best practices for Microsoft Teams, revisit your external collaboration policies, and make sure users see clear external sender notifications when engaging with cross-tenant contacts.

Some promptbooks require access to Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Sentinel, or related Microsoft security plugins.

File indicatorsIndicator (SHA-256) Description 4cfdcae6dd1d6d98b870c8f0654d504f2bf10479a117dc297de789c249dc…

Microsoft Defender Experts is tracking an active malware campaign that uses counterfeit software-download websites to impersonate trusted vendors and distribute malicious installers.

Diagram showing the campaign attack chain from spoofed download page to archive delivery, execution, persistence, defense evasion, and command-and-control.

Note that some promptbooks require access to plugins for Microsoft products such as Microsoft Defender XDR or Microsoft Sentinel.

Microsoft Defender exclusion tampering Detects the SYSTEM scheduled-task and PowerShell routines that write sweeping Microsoft Defender path exclusions.

Malicious delivery domains and download endpoints Identifies connections to t…

Microsoft Defender Experts is tracking an active malware campaign that uses counterfeit software-download websites to impersonate trusted vendors and distribute malicious installers.

Diagram showing the campaign attack chain from spoofed download page to archive delivery, execution, persistence, defense evasion, and command-and-control.

Note that some promptbooks require access to plugins for Microsoft products such as Microsoft Defender XDR or Microsoft Sentinel.

Microsoft Defender exclusion tampering Detects the SYSTEM scheduled-task and PowerShell routines that write sweeping Microsoft Defender path exclusions.

Malicious delivery domains and download endpoints Identifies connections to t…

That’s exactly what the Cybersecurity Incident Response Readiness Workshop is designed to do.

What is the Cybersecurity Incident Response Readiness Workshop?

The Cybersecurity Incident Response Workshop is a collaborative, scenario driven workshop designed to evaluate your organization’s incident response (IR) plan against realistic, real-world security events, guided by DART researchers.

Instead of reviewing a plan as a static document, the Cybersecurity Incident Response Workshop exercises how people, processes, and technology work together under pressure.

A summary of findings and prioritized recommendations to help strengthen incident response readiness and guide next steps.

That’s exactly what the Cybersecurity Incident Response Readiness Workshop is designed to do.

What is the Cybersecurity Incident Response Readiness Workshop?

The Cybersecurity Incident Response Workshop is a collaborative, scenario driven workshop designed to evaluate your organization’s incident response (IR) plan against realistic, real-world security events, guided by DART researchers.

Instead of reviewing a plan as a static document, the Cybersecurity Incident Response Workshop exercises how people, processes, and technology work together under pressure.

A summary of findings and prioritized recommendations to help strengthen incident response readiness and guide next steps.

The campaign uses compromised websites to display a fake Cloudflare CAPTCHA verification overlay that tricks users into copying and executing a malicious PowerShell command.

Example list of imports from dui70.dllThe attacker abuses this dependency by dropping a malicious dui70.dll alongside the executable.

ExecutionT1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell | A malicious PowerShell command is pasted by the user into Terminal.

T1069.002 Permission Groups Discovery: Domain Groups | The net group “domain admins” /domain command is used for enumeration.

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)File indicatorsIndicator Description 18c2090e8a0ae0568af9b87e59eaf8270f23d2909600ed9db91a9444fd8b27…

The campaign uses compromised websites to display a fake Cloudflare CAPTCHA verification overlay that tricks users into copying and executing a malicious PowerShell command.

Example list of imports from dui70.dllThe attacker abuses this dependency by dropping a malicious dui70.dll alongside the executable.

ExecutionT1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell | A malicious PowerShell command is pasted by the user into Terminal.

T1069.002 Permission Groups Discovery: Domain Groups | The net group “domain admins” /domain command is used for enumeration.

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)File indicatorsIndicator Description 18c2090e8a0ae0568af9b87e59eaf8270f23d2909600ed9db91a9444fd8b27…

Here, threat actors may simply seed prompt injections on websites in hope of corrupting AI systems that browse them.

Early experiments revealed a significant volume of "benign" prompt injection text, which illustrates the complexity of distinguishing between functional threats and harmless content.

Many prompt injections were found in research papers, educational blog posts, or security articles discussing this very topic.

(Source: GitHub/swisskyrepo)When searching for prompt injections naively, the majority of detections are benign content – false positives in our case.

Malicious: ExfiltrationWe were able to observe a small number of prompt injections that aim at theft of data.

Recognizing the risks associated within the complex modem firmware, Pixel 9 shipped with mitigations against a range of memory-safety vulnerabilities.

Following our previous discussion on "Deploying Rust in Existing Firmware Codebases", this post shares a concrete application: integrating a memory-safe Rust DNS(Domain Name System) parser into the modem firmware.

Hook-up Rust to modem firmwareBefore building the Rust DNS library, we defined several Rust unit tests to cover basic arithmetic, dynamic allocations, and FFI to verify the integration of Rust with the existing modem firmware code base.

Pixel modem firmware already has a well-tested and specialized global memory allocation system to…

This project represents a significant step forward in our ongoing efforts to combat session theft, which remains a prevalent threat in the modern security landscape.

Session theft typically occurs when a user inadvertently downloads malware onto their device.

Once active, the malware can silently extract existing session cookies from the browser or wait for the user to log in to new accounts, before exfiltrating these tokens to an attacker-controlled server.

How DBSC WorksDBSC protects against session theft by cryptographically binding authentication sessions to a specific device.

The issuance of new short-lived session cookies is contingent upon Chrome proving possession of the correspondi…

Staying ahead of the latest indirect prompt injection attacks is critical to our mission of securing Workspace with Gemini.

In our previous blog “Mitigating prompt injection attacks with a layered defense strategy”, we reviewed the layered architecture of our IPI defenses.

Synthetic data generationAfter we discover, curate, and catalog new attacks, we use Simula to generate synthetic data expanding these new attacks.

We partition the synthetic data described above into separate training and validation sets to ensure performance is evaluated against held-out examples.

This process leverages the newly generated synthetic attack data described on this blog, to create a robust, end-to-end evalu…

2025 marked a special year in the history of vulnerability rewards and bug bounty programs at Google: our 15th anniversary 🎉🎉🎉!

Coming back to 2025 specifically, our VRP once again confirmed the ongoing value of engaging with the external security research community to make Google and its products safer.

Vulnerability Reward Program 2025 in NumbersWant to learn more about who’s reporting to the VRP?

Tip: Want to be informed of new developments and events around our Vulnerability Reward Program?

Follow the Google VRP channel on X to stay in the loop and be sure to check out the Security Engineering blog, which covers topics ranging from VRP updates to security practices and vulnerability des…

To stay ahead of the curve, the technology industry must undertake a proactive, multi-year migration to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC).

To bring these critical protections to the wider developer community with minimal friction, the transition will be supported through Play App Signing.

Play App Signing leverages Google Cloud KMS, which helps ensure industry-leading compliance standards, to secure signing keys.

Empower Developers : The inclusion of ML-DSA support within Android Keystore and Play App Signing allows developers to safeguard their users and application.

: The inclusion of ML-DSA support within Android Keystore and Play App Signing allows developers to safeguard their users and …

Today we're announcing a new program in Chrome to make HTTPS certificates secure against quantum computers.

Instead, Chrome, in collaboration with other partners, is developing an evolution of HTTPS certificates based on Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs), currently in development in the PLANTS working group.

Since MTC technology shares significant architectural similarities with CT, these operators are uniquely qualified to ensure MTCs are able to get off the ground quickly and successfully.

The Chrome Quantum-resistant Root Program will operate alongside our existing Chrome Root Program to ensure a risk-managed transition that maintains the highest levels of security for all users.

First, we…

For Majik, Scam Detection was the intervention he needed: “The warning is what made me pause and avoid a bad situation”.

As scammers evolve their tactics and create more convincing and personalized threats, we’re using the best of Google AI to stay one step ahead.

Expanding Scam Detection for Calls to Samsung DevicesTo help protect you during phone calls, Scam Detection alerts you if a caller uses speech patterns commonly associated with fraud.

Scam Detection for phone calls on Google Pixel devices is available in the U.S., Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, and the UK.

Powered by Gemini’s on-device model, Scam Detection provides intelligent protection against scam calls while ensuring that…

Upgrading Google Play’s AI-powered, multi-layered user protectionsWe’ve seen a clear impact from these safety efforts on Google Play.

As Android’s built-in defense against malware and unwanted software, Google Play Protect now scans over 350 billion Android apps daily.

This proactive protection constantly checks both Play apps and those from other sources to ensure they are not potentially harmful.

Looking aheadOur top priority remains making Google Play and Android the most trusted app ecosystems for everyone.

Thank you for being part of the Google Play and Android community as we work together to build a safer app ecosystem.

That’s why we're committed to providing multi-layered defenses that help protect you before, during, and after a theft attempt.

Today, we're announcing a powerful set of theft protection feature updates that build on our existing protections, designed to give you greater peace of mind by making your device a much harder target for criminals.

These updates are now available for Android devices running Android 16+.

More User Control for Failed Authentications: In Android 15, we launched Failed Authentication Lock, a feature that automatically locks the device's screen after excessive failed authentication attempts.

This feature is now getting a new dedicated enable/disable toggle in settings,…

These initiatives, driven by Ballots SC-080, SC-090, and SC-091, will sunset 11 legacy methods for Domain Control Validation.

What’s Domain Control Validation?

Domain Control Validation is a security-critical process designed to ensure certificates are only issued to the legitimate domain operator.

Sunsetted methods relying on email:Sunsetted methods relying on phone:Sunsetted method relying on a reverse lookup:For everyday users, these changes are invisible - and that’s the point.

These changes push the ecosystem toward standardized (e.g., ACME), modern, and auditable Domain Control Validation methods.

Partnership with ArmOur goal is to raise the bar on GPU security, ensuring the Mali GPU driver and firmware remain highly resilient against potential threats.

We partnered with Arm to conduct an analysis of the Mali driver, used on approximately 45% of Android devices.

This approach allowed us to roll out the new security policy broadly while minimizing the impact on developers.

This effort spans across Android and Android OEMs, and required close collaboration with Arm.

The Android security team is committed to collaborating with ecosystem partners to drive broader adoption of this approach to help harden the GPU.

We built on Gemini's existing protections and agent security principles and have implemented several new layers for Chrome.

To further bolster model alignment beyond spotlighting, we’re introducing the User Alignment Critic — a separate model built with Gemini that acts as a high-trust system component.

A flow chart that depicts the User Alignment Critic: a trusted component that vets each action before it reaches the browser.

The User Alignment Critic runs after the planning is complete to double-check each proposed action.

Looking forwardThe upcoming introduction of agentic capabilities in Chrome brings new demands for browser security, and we've approached this challenge with the same ri…

Android uses the best of Google AI and our advanced security expertise to tackle mobile scams from every angle.

Over the last few years, we’ve launched industry-leading features to detect scams and protect users across phone calls, text messages and messaging app chat notifications.

To help combat these types of financial scams, we launched a pilot earlier this year in the UK focused on in-call protections for financial apps.

The UK pilot of Android’s in-call scam protections has already helped thousands of users end calls that could have cost them a significant amount of money.

We’ve also started to pilot this protection with more app types, including peer-to-peer (P2P) payment apps.

Secure by DesignWe built Quick Share’s interoperability support for AirDrop with the same rigorous security standards that we apply to all Google products.

Secure Sharing Channel: The communication channel itself is hardened by our use of Rust to develop this feature.

On Android, security is built in at every layer.

On Android, security is built in at every layer.

Secure Sharing Using AirDrop's "Everyone" ModeTo ensure a seamless experience for both Android and iOS users, Quick Share currently works with AirDrop's "Everyone for 10 minutes" mode.