August updates trigger 0xc0000409 errors on Windows Server 2016
Microsoft says the August 2026 security update causes recurring CompatTelRunner.exe 0xc0000409 crashes on Windows Server 2016 with Compatibility Appraiser enabled; no functional impact.
Microsoft confirmed a known issue in which the August 2026 Windows security update generates recurring Application Error events (Event ID 1000, exception code 0xc0000409) in CompatTelRunner.exe on Windows Server 2016. The issue affects physical and virtual machines, including VMware and Azure environments, and per Microsoft does not affect device functionality. A permanent fix is planned for a future update, and the event log entries can be dismissed temporarily.
AD Rights Management Service (Part 2): Extraction, Offline Decryption, and the Unrotatable Key
Huntress research shows AD RMS SLC root key is unrotatable and never expires, so its compromise permanently exposes all RMS-protected documents.
Part 2 of Huntress's AD RMS series details server-side attacks: extracting the Server Licensor Certificate (SLC) private key and performing offline decryption of protected documents. The SLC key has no expiry or rotation mechanism, with a 255-year certificate validity (2002–2258), so whoever recovers it can decrypt every document the deployment ever protected, indefinitely. The author released SharpRMS, a unified tool combining the 2016 DisARMS client-side attacks with new server-side key extraction and decryption capabilities. The research frames the SLC as comparable to KRBTGT and the DPAPI domain backup key, though not equivalent to domain compromise.
AD Rights Management Service (Part 1): Architecture, Deprecation, and Reconnaissance
Huntress maps AD RMS architecture and recon paths, setting up an offline key-extraction attack against its unrotatable 255-year root key.
Huntress's multi-part research examines Active Directory Rights Management Services, Microsoft's enterprise DRM role that still ships in Windows Server 2025 despite migration guidance favoring Azure Information Protection. Part 1 covers the trust model and how an ordinary domain account can locate RMS clusters and read rights-policy templates. Part 2 will detail four independent paths for extracting the Server Licensor Certificate (SLC) private key via service-group membership and the configuration database, enabling fully offline decryption of protected documents. The SLC certificate is valid from 2002 to 2258 and has no key-rotation mechanism, so a stolen key decrypts protected content indefinitely.
Risky Bulletin: The EU publishes its upcoming cybersecurity standards
ETSI releases 17 draft cybersecurity standards vendors must meet when the EU Cyber Resilience Act takes effect in December 2027.
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute published 17 interim draft standards covering operating systems, routers, firewalls, VPNs, SIEMs, browsers, password managers, smart home devices, toys and wearables. They mandate basic security features such as post-sale updates, shipped SBOMs, modern cryptography and secure-by-default settings; public comments run until November, with final versions expected in December, one year before CRA compliance begins in December 2027. The newsletter also reports Irregular taking responsibility for AI test-environment escapes involving Anthropic and Meta frontier models, a breach at France's tax agency exposing 678,000+ citizens' data claimed by hacker ZeroBytes, and Kazakhstan eGov data covering 15 million citizens listed for sale on an underground forum. Additional briefs cover a $3.2 million Harmony Protocol theft crashing the ONE token 40%, Columbus Police still restoring systems two years after ransomware, DDoS attacks on Threema's provider, and Ukraine's GUR claiming a cyberattack on Wildberries.
IDORacle: Template-Guided SQL-Sink Mediation for Object-Level Authorization in Java Applications
IDORacle intercepts MyBatis/JDBC SQL sinks to block horizontal privilege escalation in legacy Java apps with sub-millisecond guard latency.
IDORacle is a template-guided SQL-sink interception and rewriting framework that prevents IDOR/BOLA horizontal privilege escalation at runtime in Java database applications. It propagates authenticated identity context across HTTP requests, asynchronous tasks, and data-access boundaries via a server-side trace identifier, and computes dual SQL fingerprints at the MyBatis/JDBC boundary to generate reusable mediation plans. On a Java-SQL benchmark grounded in real-world CVE reports, it blocks tested violations with worst-case guard latency of 0.17 ms, reduced to 0.017 ms average for hot templates via redundancy-aware optimization.
Top 10 Best Cloud Detection & Response (CDR) Solutions in 2026
Editorial scorecard ranks ten 2026 cloud detection and response platforms; Sysdig, Wiz, and CrowdStrike lead, with Wiz's Gem Security acquisition highlighted.
The editorial scorecard rates ten CDR platforms on real-time detection (30%), cloud telemetry depth, response automation, correlation, and value. Sysdig earns the best real-time detection score for its Falco- and eBPF-powered runtime telemetry, Wiz (8.7) folds acquired Gem Security's real-time CDR into its security graph, and CrowdStrike (8.7) leads response automation. Specialists Stream.Security, Skyhawk Security, Sweet Security, and the open-source Falco project are also assessed.
OpenAI Agents API
OpenAI's Agents API documentation describes a managed Codex harness offering sandboxed agents, MCP connectivity, subagents, and US-only data residency.
The Agents API lets applications run durable agent sessions while OpenAI manages orchestration, context compaction, and recovery on the Codex harness. Agents can execute code, edit files, and connect to MCP servers in OpenAI-hosted or self-hosted sandboxes. Example applications include an incident response agent, Slack bot, data analyst, and GitHub issue investigator. Billing follows model, tool, and container rates; the examples use model gpt-6-astra.
What researchers learned about building an LLM security workflow
Oslo and FFI researchers show structured agentic workflows lift LLM alert-triage accuracy from 0% to about 93% on malicious cases.
Researchers at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment tested GPT-5-mini, Claude 3 Haiku, Qwen3:30B, and Gemma 3:27B on alerts from the AIT Log Data Set V1.1; given only alert descriptions and log summaries, all four models correctly flagged zero percent of true-positive cases involving reconnaissance, brute-force logins, and initial access. Wrapping the same models in a workflow with constrained SQL queries over Suricata logs, an evidence summarizer, and a verdict stage with revision loops raised malicious-case accuracy to an average of 93 percent, with GPT-5-mini identifying every malicious case across 100 runs. The authors flag it as a proof-of-concept on one synthetic scenario and note models skewed conservative on benign alerts, with GPT-5-mini marking every benign case uncertain.
Harnessing LLMs for Automating BOLA Detection
Unit 42's BOLABuster methodology uses LLMs to automate detection of broken object-level authorization vulnerabilities, uncovering flaws in Grafana, Harbor, and Easy!Appointments.
Palo Alto Unit 42 details BOLABuster, a methodology combining large language models with heuristics to automate detection of broken object-level authorization (BOLA) flaws, which traditional fuzzing and static analysis struggle to find. The approach uses LLM reasoning to understand application logic, map endpoint dependency relationships, and generate and interpret test cases. It found CVE-2024-1313 in Grafana, CVE-2024-22278 in Harbor, and 15 CVEs in Easy!Appointments. The team is continuing to hunt for BOLAs in open-source and internal projects.
Weekly Cybersecurity Newsletter – Top 50 Biggest Cybersecurity Stories of the Week
GBHackers weekly digest rounds up 50 stories including Microsoft's 973-CVE patch drop, exploited Cisco FMC flaws, and Claude agent attacks.
GBHackers' September 7-12, 2026 newsletter summarizes the 50 biggest cybersecurity stories of the week. Highlights include Microsoft patching a record 973 CVEs with two exploited zero-days, active exploitation of Cisco FMC, Check Point VPN and Ivanti flaws, China-linked crews chaining Chrome and Windows zero-days, AI agents mass-exploiting PaperCut to compromise 440 servers, and the emergence of Panzer cross-platform ransomware. It also covers Anthropic and OpenAI agentic AI incidents and CrowdStrike's SafeMind launch.
Metasploit Wrap Up: This One Goes to Sixteen!
Metasploit adds 16 modules including 10 exploits, five covering CISA KEV vulnerabilities in Cisco, SonicWall, PaperCut, JetBrains and Langflow.
Rapid7's weekly Metasploit update ships 16 new modules, 10 of them exploit modules, with five targeting CISA KEV entries. New exploits cover Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center auth bypass (CVE-2026-20079), a SonicWall SMA1000 SSRF-to-root RCE chain (CVE-2026-83548/CVE-2026-83549), JetBrains TeamCity deserialization RCE (CVE-2026-63077), PaperCut NG/MF chain (CVE-2026-81578/CVE-2026-82078), and Langflow authenticated RCE (CVE-2026-19295). The SonicWall and PaperCut chains were reported as actively exploited zero-days, and a new ESC8 relay module exploits CVE-2026-20929 against AD CS Web Enrollment.
Rapidly scaling online storage to serve over 1 billion ChatGPT users
OpenAI's Habitat online storage platform now handles over 70 million requests per second and 500 PB of data for 1 billion users.
OpenAI details the evolution of Habitat, its online storage platform backing ChatGPT and other products, which began in mid-2024 as a Python client-side library over Azure Cosmos DB. Habitat now processes more than 70 million requests per second, serves over 500 petabytes of data across nearly 40 geographic regions, and supports over 1 billion users weekly. By mid-2025 the client library approach became brittle, so OpenAI moved Habitat into a standalone service to centralize deployments, observability, and multi-tenancy reliability. This is part one of a two-part series; a future post will cover read optimization and scaling the Azure Cosmos DB partnership.
Tactical Threat Intelligence Explained: Benefits & Use Cases
Recorded Future explains tactical threat intelligence, covering attacker TTPs, IOC collection, and use in SOC detection, response, and control hardening.
Recorded Future published an explainer on tactical cyber threat intelligence, describing how it differs from strategic and operational intelligence by focusing on attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures. The piece outlines sources such as OSINT, dark web monitoring, malware analysis, and internal telemetry, and describes the intelligence lifecycle from collection through dissemination. It argues tactical CTI improves detection tuning, incident response, preventive controls, and resource allocation for SOC teams.