Week in review: Cisco patches exploited email gateway 0-day, Revolut breach

Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news, articles, interviews and videos:

What we know about the Revolut data breach so far
Someone impersonating a government agency, using an email address on that agency’s domain, obtained sensitive customer records from Revolut. The bank confirmed the incident on Saturday, September 12.

DeepZero: Open-source hunting for vulnerable Windows drivers
DeepZero is an open-source engine that automates the search for exploitable Windows kernel drivers. You point it at a folder of binaries and it parses them, pulls them apart, scans them, throws most of them away, and asks a language model whether what survives can be attacked. Pipelines are written in YAML, the code is Python 3.11 and up.

What happens when AI agent governance is missing at scale
In this interview with Help Net Security, Gourab Basu, Global Head of Engineering at meshIQ, discusses governance in AI agent systems. He argues that instructions written into a prompt are not enough to control what an agent does, since agents can change their own path as they work. Real control means checking proposed actions before they reach production systems, such as pausing a large refund for human approval.

Self-improving AI should slow down, von der Leyen tells EU lawmakers
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants frontier AI development slowed, and said on Wednesday that she will invite the leading AI labs to discuss how the EU can support their own efforts to do that. In her State of the Union address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, she also committed the EU to joint work with Canada, the U.K. and other partners on evaluating and verifying advanced models, early warning and AI security.

AI is adding to the review load on open-source projects, many of them thinly funded
AI coding tools are making open source software harder to maintain and secure, according to six authors writing for the Association for Computing Machinery’s Technology Policy Council, among them Simson Garfinkel and Josiah Dykstra. The tools write code and find security flaws quickly. The maintainers who decide what enters a project’s official release still have to judge that output themselves.

The AI security question leaders should be asking instead
In this Help Net Security interview, Frederic Bull, Security Officer at Gremlin, talks about what AI means for security teams. The conversation covers why asking what data a model was trained on is only part of the picture, and why least privilege and access controls still matter for AI agents.

Cisco patches actively exploited email gateway zero-day (CVE-2026-76461)
Attackers have leveraged a zero-day SQL injection vulnerability (CVE-2026-76461) to compromise Cisco Secure Email Gateway appliances, Cisco confirmed on Monday. The vendor’s Product Security Incident Response Team became aware of active exploitation of this vulnerability in September 2025, and has shared indicators of compromise that organizations can look for to check whether they’ve been hit.

Acronis backup plugin flaw exploited in targeted attacks (CVE-2026-87886)
A Linux privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2026-87886) affecting Acronis’ backup extensions for cPanel, WebHost Manager (WHM), and Plesk, is being leveraged by attackers, the backup and recovery company warns.

Parallels Desktop flaw hands any local user root on a Mac (CVE-2026-90894)
A newly disclosed vulnerability in Parallels Desktop, tracked as CVE-2026-90894 and dubbed “ParaShells,” can allow any local user on a Mac to gain root privileges on the host system. The danger is highest on developer laptops, where a single poisoned Homebrew formula or malicious npm preinstall script can go from local user to full control, and on shared university and corporate machines that have many local accounts, JFrog vulnerability research team lead Yuval Moravchick noted.

Unauthenticated attackers are bypassing Cisco ISE’s management interface (CVE-2026-76460)
Two days after it warned customers about an actively exploited email gateway zero-day, Cisco confirmed one more flaw is being targeted: CVE-2026-76460, an authentication bypass bug in an API of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE). It checks connecting users’ identity, profiles devices and checks their security posture, grants users the right type of access, and logs it all.

CISA wants critical infrastructure orgs and smaller security teams to start using cyber decoys
Cyber deception has long been the domain of well-resourced security teams, but CISA’s latest guidance, titled “Using Cyber Decoys to Strengthen Detection and Response”, is an attempt to try and change that. The core problem CISA is attempting to address is that many organizations are incapable of detecting adversaries who use legitimate credentials, built-in administrative utilities, and living-off-the-land (LOTL) techniques.

The modern attack chain: Rethinking Google Workspace security in the age of AI
Over the past two months, Rajan Kapoor, VP of Security at Material Security, has written about the Vercel and Composio breaches separately. They show the same attack against different targets, with email not used as the entry point into the workspace.

The world must establish red lines for autonomous AI weapons
AI is transforming warfare and international conflict. Autonomous weapon systems pose a genuine threat to civilians. The war in Ukraine has become a proving ground for weapons that can navigate, identify targets, resist electronic countermeasures, and pursue and engage targets autonomously without the need for human control.

A flat cybersecurity budget doesn’t have to mean weaker coverage
Cheri Hotman, Managing Partner of Hotman Group, works as a vCISO and vGRC leader. In this Help Net Security video, she talks about holding coverage steady when the CFO asks for a flat budget or a 12% cut.

Cybersecurity attention fades within months after a breach
Cybersecurity attention often rises after an incident, then recedes as organizations return to their existing priorities and practices, according to a new ManageEngine survey of 700 IT and cybersecurity leaders in the US and Canada.

Permify: Open-source authorization as a service
Permify is an open-source authorization service that answers access questions at run time: can user X view document Y, which posts can members of team Y edit. It keeps those rules in one place, apart from the application code that would otherwise carry them.

Debian 13.7 ships the fixes behind 92 security advisories, updates 106 packages
The Debian project shipped Debian 13.7 codenamed “trixie.” The project folded in 92 security advisories it had already published separately, added corrections to 106 source packages, and rebuilt the installer around both.

WhatsApp Restricted Chat locks a conversation to your primary phone
WhatsApp is building a per-chat setting that keeps a conversation on a single phone. The setting, called Restricted Chat, sits in the Android beta distributed through Google Play as version 2.26.36.5, and it stops the app from syncing a chosen conversation to linked devices. Switch it on and the chat stays on the primary mobile device, out of reach of WhatsApp Web and any secondary phone signed in to the same account.

ENISA launched the CRA Single Reporting Platform for actively exploited vulnerabilities
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.

Homebrew 7.0.0 is out, here’s what changed for security
Homebrew installs command-line software and desktop applications from the terminal on macOS and Linux, and Mac developers use it to set up their machines. On Sunday the project shipped version 7.0.0 and closed eight security advisories with it. The most serious of them let unsigned removal metadata for a cask, Homebrew’s recipe for installing a prebuilt application, execute commands with sudo. Homebrew deleted the vulnerable recovery code and the API accessors that reached it.

Most chief audit executives can’t tell you what AI is worth yet
Auditors are using AI in their daily work, and their departments have mostly left them to figure it out alone. 93% of audit leaders and auditors report some level of AI use, while 15% say their department has deployed formal use cases and runs them routinely in audits, according to Gartner.

Attackers hijack HBO Max’s Reddit account for 48-hour malvertising blitz
Attackers compromised the verified official HBO Max Reddit account, u/hbomax, and used its trusted advertising status to launch a ClickFix campaign targeting macOS and Windows devices with information-stealing malware. ClickFix has been rising in popularity among cybercriminals. It’s a social engineering technique that cons victims into running malicious commands on their own machine, usually by pretending the commands are needed to fix a problem or perform routine upkeep.

Uncensored AI sold on hacking forum as alternative to ChatGPT and Claude jailbreaks
A new AI subscription service called Luciferus is being marketed on a hacking forum as an alternative to jailbreaking ChatGPT or Claude, Sophos found. The Counter Threat Unit (CTU) spotted the advertisement on August 24 on the Exploit forum, posted by a persona going by “Optimus_Prime.” The account joined the forum on April 18 and has since published 21 posts. Its profile carries a “coding / coder” label.

Iranian hackers use CHOSEN BRICK data-stealing malware to spy on dissidents and journalists
Iranian state cyber actors are deploying malware called CHOSEN BRICK against individuals they see as a threat to the regime, reaching victims through social messaging apps and infecting their Windows devices, three Western intelligence agencies warned.

CenterPoint Energy confirms data breach following claims on hacking forum
CenterPoint Energy disclosed that an unauthorized third party got into customer data through one of its external systems, after online claims by a hacker that millions of records had been stolen from the company.

AWS’s new sign-up gives accounts spend caps, email invites, and agent-set permissions
New AWS customers can now sign up with a Google, GitHub, or Apple login, start with $100 in Free Tier credits, and build inside a “project” where AWS and coding agents set up permissions automatically. Paid projects get a monthly spend limit, starting at $20, and a project that reaches its limit is halted instead of running up more charges.

Spain reports first data breach involving autonomous AI agent
Spain’s data protection authority (AEPD) has reported its first data breach blamed on an AI agent acting on its own, after the system reportedly logged into a company’s network, found a way to alter personal records, and pulled invoice data.

Scammers leave AI fingerprints all over fake antivirus renewal page
AI appears to be helping scammers with little web development skill build convincing fake antivirus-renewal pages, Malwarebytes found. The researchers came across a scam page impersonating Avast, aimed at users in Belgium, that was more polished than most sites of its kind. The page told visitors their Avast Premium Security subscription had renewed for €129.99, covered five devices, and would renew again in February.

FBI takes down one of the longest-running DDoS-for-hire services
The FBI has seized the domains behind NightmareStresser, a DDoS-for-hire service officials call one of the longest running “booter” operations in existence. These attacks are called booting because they result in the dropping of the targeted computer from the internet.

Iranian strikes on AWS facilities left customer data beyond recovery in Bahrain, UAE
Six months after Iranian drone strikes tore through its Middle East infrastructure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has acknowledged the permanent loss of customer data in Bahrain and the UAE. In two updates posted September 15, AWS said it can no longer recover customer data and resources stored in its Middle East (Bahrain) region, known as me-south-1, or in one availability zone of its Middle East (UAE) region, known as me-central-1.

Abandoned IoT apps keep sending sensitive data to broken servers
Millions of people still run smart home and IoT companion apps, the apps used to control devices like smart plugs, cameras, and thermostats, that stopped receiving updates years ago. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst analyzed 61,500 abandoned Android IoT apps and found that nearly three in four contained software dependencies associated with documented vulnerabilities.

Zero-click RCE vulnerability hit four major AI coding agents, two remain unpatched
Four major AI coding agents, Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot and Gemini CLI, all share the same zero-click RCE vulnerability, one that could give an attacker the same reach into a company’s systems and data as the employee running the agent, according to AIR.

Bots with good manners are better at fooling people on social media
Most people can’t tell a bot from a human online, and the bots most likely to fool them are the polite ones, according to a new Surfshark study. The company analyzed 1,722 participants worldwide, testing their ability to separate human comments from AI-generated ones in a social media setting. Overall, people caught just 40% of the bots placed in front of them.

AWS puts AI vulnerability detection to the test, and false positives pile up
AWS’ Deception Benchmark measures how well AI models distinguish genuine security vulnerabilities from code that looks risky but is safe. AWS is making it publicly available so researchers can use the dataset and evaluation process without repeating the cost of generating and refining the samples.

Certificate failures can cost firms over $250,000
The move toward 47-day public TLS certificates by 2029 will increase the certificate management workload for enterprises, according to DigiCert’s Certificate Management Outlook. Organizations will need to renew certificates more than eight times as often as under the previous certificate lifecycle and conduct 40 times as many domain validations.

Turn it off and on again, but for critical infrastructure
Researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology built a container replica of a segmented industrial network, attacked it repeatedly across 14 days of running time, and used the captured traffic to train a defense agent that decides on its own when to intervene.

Apple parental controls in iOS 27 let kids ask before opening new websites
Apple has overhauled the child-safety tools that ship across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. One idea runs through the redesign. Give a child a device that does very little, then open it up as they’re ready. The tools went live on September 14, after a preview in June, and they require iOS 27, iPadOS 27, or macOS 27.

Your employees are already using AI tools you never approved
Seventy-four percent of respondents report departmental or scaled AI adoption at their organizations, including within individual teams or departments, across business functions, and as part of processes and operations, according to the latest OneTrust 2026 AI-Ready Governance Report. The remaining respondents are planning, evaluating, or experimenting with AI, while 1% report no AI use.

Product showcase: mSecure makes one vault do more than remember passwords
mSecure is a password manager and data vault for storing credentials and other sensitive information. It is available for iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows, with data synchronization across supported devices.

Microsoft sets security and safety rules for its AI models
Microsoft AI has published the first draft of its Humanist AI Code of Conduct, a training manual outlining how it develops AI models and intends them to behave during deployment. The draft is open for public consultation for six weeks. The company plans to review the feedback, revise the document, and publish an updated version later this year. That version is expected to guide model development from 2027 onward.

MSPs say nearly half their customers rely on them for CISO services
MSPs estimate that 46% of their customers, on average, look to them to act as CISOs, according to Sophos. Most of those providers do that job without the full set of compliance services, and many spread the work across several tools.

NIST and CISA finalize playbook to stop token theft and forgery
NIST and CISA have finalized guidelines to help federal agencies and cloud service providers (CSPs) protect identity and access tokens from forgery, theft, and misuse. The guidance, Protecting Tokens and Assertions from Forgery, Theft, and Misuse (NIST IR 8587), explains how agencies and cloud providers can strengthen key management, token verification, and token lifecycle controls. It also covers how identity providers and authorization servers should be designed and managed.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/09/16/google-mandiant-enterprise-ai-security-risks-report/
Mandiant’s latest AI Risk and Resilience report, which draws on observations from Mandiant and Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), warns that a poisoned data source, model dependency, or extension hook can turn a trusted agent into a channel for internal reconnaissance, lateral movement, or autonomous escape from a sandbox.

GNOME 51 adds passkey logins, offline maps and drawn PDF signatures
GNOME 51, the new version of the Linux desktop, came out on September 16 under the codename A Coruña. The release adds offline maps and live transit information to Maps, new login options at the login screen, hand-drawn signatures in the Papers document viewer, and smoother animations when the system is under load. Fedora 45 and Ubuntu 26.10 will ship it.

Fake AI trading agent steals crypto wallet passwords
Attackers built a website for a fake AI crypto trading agent and used it to install Needle Stealer, malware that replaces a victim’s browser wallet with a copy that sends the wallet password to the attacker. HP caught the campaign between April and June 2026.

Google’s new agent security system detects tool misuse, loops and rogue behavior
Google’s Agent Anomaly Detection is a reasoning-based oversight and audit layer for autonomous agents deployed on Agent Runtime in the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and built with the Agent Development Kit (ADK) for Python 1.2 or later. Google recommends ADK 2.1.0 or later. It is available in Private Preview.

A fake ChatGPT billing email is after your OpenAI password
A fake ChatGPT billing email is steering users to a copy of the OpenAI login page that keeps whatever username and password they type. Josh Varden of Cofense’s Phishing Defense Center traced the email’s payment button through a Google redirect to the attacker’s page.

Most WordPress pros still lack a breach recovery plan
Melapress, a maker of WordPress security plugins, surveyed 319 WordPress professionals and found that most had dealt with at least one known security incident. The respondents build and run WordPress sites for a living: agency staff, developers, designers, site owners and administrators.

98% of fraudulent hires have company credentials by the time they’re caught
A 90-day period between hiring and onboarding is creating a blind spot in enterprise identity security, according to HYPR’s State of HR Identity Fraud Detection report.

Hardcoded MCP credentials found in public GitHub files
Hardcoded API keys, access tokens and other credentials used by AI coding tools have been found in publicly accessible MCP configuration files on GitHub, according to research from Hush Security’s The State of MCP Configuration: The Identity Security Gaps report.

Android apps can now check security patches down to individual device components
New AndroidX Security State libraries provide a more granular way to determine how securely patched an Android device is. The stable Security State v1.1.0 and Security State Provider v1.0.0 libraries allow developers to check the security status of individual device components and determine whether security updates are ready to be downloaded and installed on a specific device.

eBook: Identity-First Threat Intelligence
Download the e-book to learn how infostealers are changing credential theft, how password reuse creates enterprise risk, where IAM and Active Directory controls can fall short, and how Enzoic uses credential intelligence to detect exposed and compromised credentials.

Download: The IT leader’s guide to AI code sprawl
Employees across the business are using AI tools to create apps, agents, and automations, often outside established IT processes. That can leave IT and security teams with code they don’t know exists and risks they can’t easily assess. This Tines guide looks at the practical impact of AI code sprawl, how to assess your organization’s exposure, and how IT can put appropriate controls in place without preventing teams from building.

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: September 15, 2026
We’ve scoured the market to bring you a selection of roles that span various skill levels within the cybersecurity field. Check out this weekly selection of cybersecurity jobs available right now.

New infosec products of the week: September 18, 2026
Here’s a look at the most interesting products from the past week, featuring releases from Akuity, Bitsight, Cohesity, Dataminr, Nozomi Networks, and Tuskira.