CISA tells operators to harden Siemens S7 PLCs. Here’s how to do it without disrupting production
CISA, NSA, FBI and other agencies warn of active targeting of internet-exposed Siemens S7 PLCs and urge patching, exposure removal and hardening.
Joint advisory AA26-231A from the NSA, CISA, FBI, Department of Energy and EPA warns that actors are actively targeting Siemens S7 PLCs using internet scanning, AI-assisted scripts and libraries such as Snap7 and python-snap7 over S7comm on TCP port 102. The advisory covers S7-200 through S7-1500 series controllers and recommends patching, removing internet exposure, access controls, monitoring and disabling unneeded services. Siemens states no new S7 vulnerabilities are involved, only misconfigurations addressed in existing ProductCERT guidance SSB-104599. The article details how to apply each measure without breaking production dependencies such as remote I/O, HMI links and diagnostics.
AI-fueled attacks pose ‘active threat’ to water, other sectors, U.S. agencies warn
NSA, CISA, FBI, DOE and EPA warn hackers are using AI-generated scripts to actively attack Siemens S7 PLCs across critical-infrastructure sectors.
A joint cybersecurity advisory from the NSA, CISA, FBI, Department of Energy and EPA warns of an active threat campaign targeting water, food, energy, chemical, manufacturing and commercial facilities via Siemens S7 Series programmable logic controllers. The actors use internet scanning to find exposed or poorly protected PLCs, then deploy AI-generated exploitation scripts disguised as legitimate monitoring tools, an OT first that dramatically lowers the expertise required for ICS attacks. Siemens says no new S7 vulnerabilities are involved, only exploitation of misconfigurations, and it is coordinating with CISA's ProductCERT. The warning follows a joint FBI-EPA advisory confirming attacks at water and wastewater utilities in at least 12 states since July 27.
7th September – Threat Intelligence Report
Check Point weekly bulletin: exploited SonicWall SMA 1000 zero-days (CVE-2026-83548/49), JFrog Artifactory auth bypass, and a 2.8M-patient Baylor Genetics breach.
Check Point's weekly bulletin covers breaches including Thomson Reuters' C-Track platform (court records across 11 US states and Canada), Baylor Genetics (2.8M patients and employees, SSNs included), Hit casinos in Slovenia, and Dropbox (~5,000 accounts via abused Lenovo email verification). SonicWall patched two exploited SMA 1000 zero-days, including CVE-2026-83548, a CVSS 10.0 pre-authentication SSRF, while JFrog fixed exploited authentication bypass CVE-2026-82329 (CVSS 9.8). Malware and actor coverage includes Gambling Goblin, JSCeal, Mirage Kitten's NodeRabbit/PollCat campaign, and DPRK Contagious Interview macOS activity, plus a FalconFlank privilege-escalation PoC against CrowdStrike Falcon.
September 2026 Patch Tuesday: Record patch count, 2 zero-days, and a SigRed successor
Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday delivers a record patch count, fixing two exploited zero-days and a wormable DNS flaw dubbed a SigRed successor.
Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday sets another record patch count, fixing two vulnerabilities exploited as zero-days: CVE-2026-81963, a Windows Update Stack low-privilege-to-SYSTEM escalation reported by MSTIC, and CVE-2026-85880, a Windows Advanced Local Procedure Call escalation reported by Proofpoint. Zero Day Initiative's Dustin Childs urges priority on a cluster of 20 potentially wormable bugs including DNS RCE CVE-2026-69730, described as a spiritual successor to SigRed, plus Kerberos authentication bypass CVE-2026-69676 that could give any authenticated domain user RCE on domain controllers, and Exchange RCE CVE-2026-55007 via a malicious Visio attachment. All Windows fixes are bundled in cumulative updates, and experts stress prioritizing exploitable, reachable flaws over raw patch counts.
Apple Releases iOS 27 Security Update to Fix Over 120 Vulnerabilities
Apple released iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 patching roughly 126 vulnerabilities across kernel, WebKit, sandboxing, and authentication components; no active exploitation reported.
Apple released iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 on September 14, 2026, fixing approximately 126 vulnerabilities across more than 90 components, including the kernel, WebKit, AppleKeyStore, Sandbox, and TCC. Flaws include memory corruption, information disclosure, denial-of-service, logic errors, sandbox escapes enabling root privileges, and a Bluetooth issue permitting remote code execution in specific circumstances. Apple also shipped iOS 26.7 and iPadOS 26.7 with over 80 fixes for users delaying the major upgrade, including 75 vulnerabilities shared with iOS 27. No vulnerabilities were reported as actively exploited at release time.
US agencies warn of AI-powered attacks on Siemens industrial controllers
NSA, CISA, FBI, DOE, and EPA warn threat actors use AI-assisted scripts and snap7 libraries to access internet-exposed Siemens S7 PLCs in critical infrastructure sectors.
NSA, CISA, FBI, DOE, and EPA issued a joint advisory warning that threat actors combine open-source snap7.dll/python-snap7 libraries with AI-generated scripts to gain read/write access to Siemens S7-200 through S7-1500 PLCs over the S7comm protocol. Actors use Censys and ZoomEye to find internet-exposed devices and abuse default or weak credentials, with activity assessed as persistent reconnaissance and positioning for future write operations. Agencies urge device inventory, patching, removing PLCs from the internet, and hardening; the pattern resembles Iran-linked CyberAv3ngers targeting of Rockwell, Schneider, and Siemens PLCs.
NIST and CISA finalize playbook to stop token theft and forgery
NIST and CISA finalized NIST IR 8587, a playbook helping federal agencies and cloud providers defend identity tokens against theft and forgery.
The finalized NIST IR 8587 guidance covers protecting token signing keys, verifying tokens, lifetimes, revocation, session management, and dividing security responsibilities between cloud providers and customers. It cites an incident in which foreign actors forged tokens with a stolen commercial signing key to steal more than 60,000 emails from one government agency. It also recommends extending token protections to AI agents and preparing identity systems for a future post-quantum cryptography transition.
China-Based Artificial Intelligence Companies Conducting Industrial-Scale Distillation Campaigns Against U.S. AI Companies
NSA, CISA, and FBI warn DeepSeek, Alibaba, and other Chinese AI firms ran industrial-scale distillation of U.S. frontier models, threatening U.S. AI leadership.
A joint NSA, CISA, and FBI Cybersecurity Advisory (AA26-251A) says China-based firms DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI extracted billions of tokens from U.S. frontier models including Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok, likely with Chinese government knowledge. Campaigns running since at least late 2024 used native APIs, cloud providers, third-party aggregators, gray-market proxy "transfer stations", and shared premium subscriptions to bypass geographic restrictions, evade safeguards, and violate providers' terms of use. The agencies recommend detecting anomalous prompts, accounts, and usage patterns; subtly altering responses to suspected distillers; and cross-organization intelligence sharing. They also call DeepSeek's publicly cited $5.6M training cost misleading because it excludes data acquired through distillation.
CISA Red Team Compromised Two Critical Infrastructure Orgs, One Detected Nothing
CISA red teams fully compromised two critical infrastructure orgs with similar tradecraft; one detected nothing, the other contained phishing within minutes.
CISA advisory AA26-237A, 'A Tale of Two SOCs,' describes two simultaneous red team assessments of a Government Services organization and a Water and Wastewater Systems organization, both compromised to the domain level. Organization A never detected the intrusion, enabled by default credentials, a misconfigured AD CS template (ESC1), cleartext credentials, non-expiring static AWS keys, and over-permissioned Entra ID applications. Organization B detected and isolated phishing within 2-20 minutes, though the red team still reached krbtgt via DCSync from cleartext SCCM credentials. CISA attributes the outcome gap to people and processes rather than the security tools themselves.
CISA Red Team Fully Compromised Two Critical Infrastructure Orgs
CISA red teams achieved full domain and cloud compromise at two critical infrastructure orgs; one SOC never detected the intrusion.
CISA advisory AA26-237A documents two simultaneous red team assessments. Organization A (Government Services sector) missed the intrusion entirely, as default credentials on a web app, ADCS ESC1 abuse, and thousands of false-positive alerts let the red team reach sensitive business systems and read SOC email. Organization B (Water/Wastewater sector) detected, isolated, and reimaged hosts quickly, but both orgs lacked Conditional Access for workload identities, and B still exposed DCSync, Golden Ticket, and OT network attack paths.
Chinese AI firms are siphoning capabilities from American models, CISA warns
CISA, NSA and FBI warn Chinese AI firms including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI extracted billions of tokens from US frontier models via distillation campaigns.
A joint CISA, NSA and FBI advisory says China-based firms including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun and Z.AI have run industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns against US frontier models such as Claude, GPT, Gemini and Grok since at least late 2024, likely with Chinese government knowledge. The campaigns used gray-market API proxies called transfer stations, premium account pools and traffic routing to bypass restrictions, evade safeguards and exfiltrate billions of tokens used to train models like DeepSeek R1/V3 and Kimi. The agencies challenge DeepSeek's reported $5.6 million training cost and recommend identity verification, usage monitoring, response variation, differential privacy and indicator sharing as defenses.
AL26-019 - Vulnerabilities impacting Citrix NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway - CVE-2026-19490 and CVE-2026-19489
Canadian Cyber Centre alerts on Citrix NetScaler ADC/Gateway flaws CVE-2026-19490 (authentication bypass) and CVE-2026-19489 (buffer overflow), urging emergency patching.
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security issued alert AL26-019 covering two Citrix NetScaler vulnerabilities disclosed in a vendor advisory on August 19, 2026. CVE-2026-19490 (CWE-288) allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to bypass authentication on appliances configured as a Gateway for SSL VPN, ICA Proxy, CVPN, RDP Proxy, or as an AAA virtual server. CVE-2026-19489 (CWE-120) is a classic buffer overflow that may cause memory overflow, unpredictable behavior, or denial-of-service conditions. Affected appliances are vulnerable when configured as a SAML IdP; fixed versions include 14.1-73.32, 13.1-63.21, and 13.1-37.277 for FIPS.