Search: “maintenance”

Top 10 Best Application Control & Allowlisting Tools in 2026

Roundup ranks 2026 application allowlisting tools, scoring ThreatLocker 8.8/10, Airlock Digital 8.5/10 and free Microsoft WDAC among top default-deny options.

This is a scored buyer's guide to ten application control and allowlisting tools for 2026, with ThreatLocker ranked first (8.8/10), Airlock Digital second (8.5/10) and Microsoft's built-in WDAC/AppLocker third (7.2/10). It notes ransomware has renewed interest in default-deny execution controls and that CISA and other agencies list application control among the most effective yet under-deployed mitigations. The evaluation is research-based with no lab testing, weighting policy automation at 30% and operability at 25%.

Cyber Security News·Sep 9, 07:59 UTC · 7d agoIndustry1

What Breaks Under Pruning in Smart Homes, and When? Evaluating LLM Degradation Across Architectures and Task Complexity

Pruning study across four LLM architectures finds dense models degrade sharply on smart-home tool calling while MoE models tolerate far more.

Researchers systematically study pruning-induced degradation in smart-home tool calling across four LLMs spanning dense Transformer, dense hybrid, and mixture-of-experts architectures, combining depth, width, hybrid, and expert pruning methods, and evaluate over 19,500 instances from three datasets after post-pruning supervised fine-tuning. Dense models show narrow safe pruning regions followed by sharp degradation, while MoE models tolerate substantially more pruning. Pruning degrades grounded specificity (operation, device, argument, value) before schema-level intent, and aggressive dense pruning can induce systematic over-refusal.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL·Sep 15, 17:51 UTC · 17h agoAI research

240,000 Hit by Data Breach at Japan’s Digital Agency

Japan's Digital Agency says hackers exploited a VPN flaw and a maintenance account to steal ~246,000 records on 240,000 people.

Japan's Digital Agency disclosed a breach of its Government Solution Service (GSS) affecting roughly 240,000 individuals, discovered in late June. Attackers exploited a publicly disclosed vulnerability in a VPN product and used a maintenance and operations employee's account to access over 246,000 records, including names (~236,000), email addresses (~231,000), phone numbers (~94,000), and addresses (~1,000). The agency blocked external access to the affected server, suspended the account, and said no ID numbers or financial account data were compromised.

SecurityWeek·updated Sep 15, 14:43 UTC · 20h ago·first Sep 15, 11:45 UTC · 23h agoData breach in the wild 2 sources

Does Your Agent's Memory Survive a Model Upgrade? A Controlled Study of Memory Portability

A controlled study finds agent memory portability varies sharply: fixed-schema knowledge graphs survive model swaps while compressed notes degrade.

The study compares preserving an agent's history as raw long context, RAG chunks, compressed natural-language notes, or fixed-schema knowledge graphs across model upgrades, using 48 synthetic histories and two open-weight sub-10B-parameter models. Fixed-schema KG accuracy changed by only +0.0004 ± 0.0020 after a writer swap, while compressed NOTES shifted asymmetrically by +9.91 or -13.28 percentage points depending on migration direction. Mixed 50/50 embedding migrations captured only 4.96 of an 11.90-point RAG re-embedding gain; 80% of the NOTES deficit came from information lost at construction, and 81% of the RAG deficit from retrieval failures. Store-only repair of NOTES failed to reach 90% recovery in all 48 cases, while retaining raw histories enabled recovery in 34 of 48 for one direction.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL·Sep 4, 16:44 UTC · 11d agoAI research1

Machine Unlearning as Private Retroactive Algorithms

A cs.CR paper defines private retroactive algorithms, showing machine unlearning is a data-maintenance problem and giving DP constructions for linear statistics, clustering, histograms.

The paper argues that machine unlearning's requirement to emulate retraining from scratch carries no meaningful privacy semantics against adversaries observing sequences of releases, recasting it as a data-maintenance question addressed by retroactive algorithms. It defines private retroactive algorithms, combining retroactivity with differential privacy under continual observation. Constructions achieve privacy and retroactivity at no asymptotic cost over privacy alone for linear statistics, clustering, and histograms, alongside impossibility results.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 4, 16:32 UTC · 11d agoResearch

The Vulnerability Gap: Why Discovery Is Outrunning Repair

Dark Reading argues AI-accelerated vulnerability discovery and tightening regulation are widening the gap between flaw discovery and repair capacity.

The article argues that AI tooling is increasing the pace at which vulnerabilities are discovered while remediation capacity has not kept up, creating a growing backlog. It frames this widening 'vulnerability gap', combined with a tightening regulatory environment, as an all-hands-on-deck moment for security teams. The piece is analysis and opinion rather than disclosure of a specific flaw.

Dark Reading·Aug 24, 14:00 UTC · 22d agoIndustry

iOS 18.7.10 (22H374)

Apple released iOS 18.7.10 (build 22H374), a maintenance update delivering security fixes for iPhones on the iOS 18 line.

Apple published the iOS 18.7.10 release (build 22H374) on August 17, 2026 via its software releases feed. The listing provides download links and release notes but includes no CVE details in the announcement text. Point releases on the legacy iOS 18 branch typically carry security and stability patches for devices not yet on iOS 26.

Apple software releases·Aug 17, 17:00 UTC · 29d agoAdvisory

Three in four AI-generated vulnerability patches leave something broken

Help Net Security·Aug 6, 00:00 UTC · Aug 6, 2026VulnerabilityCVE-2026-8512

iPadOS 26.6.1 (23G83)

Apple released iPadOS 26.6.1 (build 23G83), a maintenance update applying security fixes to iPads on the iPadOS 26 line.

Apple listed iPadOS 26.6.1 (build 23G83) on August 17, 2026. The release entry contains only download links and release notes, with no CVE identifiers or exploitation details in the announcement. The matching build number with iOS 26.6.1 indicates shared core components updated in tandem across Apple platforms.

Apple software releases·Aug 17, 17:00 UTC · 29d agoAdvisory

Decomposition Buys Integrity, Not Yield

Study of 600 production deep-research traces finds agent-tree decomposition loses findings at rate N^(1-δ); flat architectures maximize yield.

The paper models multi-agent decomposition as a tree where an agent holding b items retains each with probability r(b); with r(b)=1/b every tree delivers exactly one finding regardless of shape. Analysis of 600 production deep-research traces estimates delta=0.34 retention decay, and 1,012 annotated traces show one brief in sixteen goes off-target per tier, giving an alignment penalty of 0.536. Depth still cuts root context exposure from N to N^(1/k) and is cheaper at scale, with a hazard model over 743,819 production tool calls showing delegation is an opening move rather than a response to filling context.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL·Sep 15, 17:04 UTC · 17h agoAI research

Palo Alto PAN-OS Buffer Overflow Lets Attackers Execute Arbitrary Code as Root

Palo Alto Networks fixed CVE-2026-0310, a CVSS 9.2 unauthenticated PAN-OS buffer overflow enabling root code execution on PA-Series firewalls.

Palo Alto Networks published an advisory on September 9, 2026 for CVE-2026-0310, a CWE-787 out-of-bounds write in PAN-OS XML processing with a CVSS v4.0 base score of 9.2, affecting the management and dataplane interfaces. Unauthenticated attackers could execute arbitrary code as root on PA-Series hardware firewalls, while VM-Series faces denial-of-service impact and Prisma Access and Cloud NGFW have reduced, authenticated exposure. Affected releases include PAN-OS 10.2, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, and 12.2 before fixed maintenance releases such as 12.2.3, 12.1.4-h10, 11.2.13-h2, 11.1.16-h2, and 10.2.18-h10; no workaround is available. Palo Alto is not aware of malicious exploitation but classifies remediation urgency as highest.

GBHackers·updated Sep 10, 12:10 UTC · 5d ago·first Sep 10, 11:39 UTC · 5d agoVulnerability 3 sourcesCVE-2026-0310

CONTINUITY: Security-Context Contracts for Composable LLM Agent Controls

Researchers introduce CONTINUITY, a framework of assume-guarantee contracts that preserves LLM agent security context across components, verified across 2,560 attack instances.

The paper identifies security-context discontinuity, where individually sound controls drop, widen, or reinterpret security context as actions cross component boundaries, and proposes CONTINUITY, a framework of assume-guarantee contracts using signed root grants, provenance commitments, role-bound transition receipts, and effect-bound execution permits. It formalizes end-to-end consequence integrity, requiring every external effect to be backed by a valid authorization witness linking principal, task, provenance, and policy state. A reference verifier and cross-layer fault-injection suite covering 32 fault classes showed the full configuration committed no harmful external effect across 2,560 parameterized attack instances while completing all 700 benign tasks and escalating all 200 ambiguous cases.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 4, 15:26 UTC · 11d agoAI safety & security

SMOKE#SCREEN Campaign Abuses ScreenConnect to Give Attackers Remote Control Access

Security Affairs·Aug 9, 11:05 UTC · Aug 9, 2026Threat actor1

Context Engineering Inside the Harness: 4 Mechanisms That Beat Context Overflow and Goal Loss on Long-Horizon Tasks

Survey of four harness mechanisms—context budgeting, compaction, todo-state, and memory—that keep long-horizon LLM agents on task across 200+ tool calls.

The article details how agent harnesses, not larger context windows, solve context overflow and goal loss on long-horizon tasks, citing Chroma's Context Rot report showing 18 LLMs (GPT-4.1, Claude 4, Gemini 2.5, Qwen3) degrade on long inputs. Concrete implementations include LangChain Deep Agents offloading tool responses over 20,000 tokens to the filesystem and truncating old tool calls at 85% window usage, and Claude Code capping auto memory at 25KB while re-reading the 5 most recently modified files after compaction. OpenAI's Responses API now offers server-side compaction via context_management with a standalone /responses/compact endpoint, which Codex uses for long-running coding tasks. Manus reports a roughly 100:1 input-to-output token ratio per ~50-tool-call task, motivating todo.md state recitation to prevent goal drift.

MarkTechPost·Sep 13, 05:56 UTC · 3d agoAI research1

Adobe fixes critical Magento zero-day exploited to backdoor servers

Adobe emergency-patches actively exploited max-severity Magento/Adobe Commerce zero-day CVE-2026-75650 (StyleSmuggler), used since Sept 4 to backdoor servers.

Adobe released an emergency hotfix (VULN-39341) for CVE-2026-75650, a max-severity zero-day dubbed StyleSmuggler affecting Adobe Commerce 2.4.4-2.4.9, Adobe Commerce B2B 1.3.3-1.5.3, and Magento Open Source 2.4.6-2.4.9, enabling arbitrary code execution. Sansec reports the flaw has been exploited since at least September 4 to plant a backdoor whose C2 host is disguised as an NTP server, leaving traces like 'Payment Transaction Failed Reminder' emails. A second attacker with unrelated tooling is exploiting the flaw to deploy a 485-byte PHP web shell that collects server details, checks pub/media writability, and exfiltrates data to an oast.site subdomain. Adobe recommends immediate hotpatching plus rotation of all secrets including admin passwords, API keys, database credentials, and SSH keys.

BleepingComputer·Sep 8, 13:34 UTC · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-756501

Large Language Models for HVAC Operations in Building Energy Systems: A Critical Review of Methods, Applications, and Deployment Readiness

Systematic review of 66 studies finds LLMs for HVAC operations are mostly research-stage, with no ready-now deployment and only four pilot-level studies.

A critical review of 66 peer-reviewed studies from 2023 to March 2026 examines LLMs for HVAC operations in building energy systems. Only four studies reach pilot-level evidence, none reports sustained operational deployment, and 63 of 66 are research-only. Conventional ML, MPC, and RL remain dominant for high-frequency control and short-horizon forecasting, and the evidence supports LLMs primarily as semantic and workflow layers rather than autonomous controllers.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL·Sep 4, 16:08 UTC · 11d agoAI research

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: April 21, 2026

Help Net Security·Aug 6, 12:16 UTC · Aug 6, 2026Vulnerability

Senior engineers are spending their week cleaning up AI-generated code

New Relic study finds AI-generated code doubles critical runtime issues, with senior engineers losing a third of their week to fixes.

A New Relic survey of U.S. technology leaders reports AI now writes the majority of shipped code, with senior SRE and DevOps engineers spending up to a third of their week triaging and refactoring it. A large majority of organizations had at least one AI-related production failure in the past six months, and roughly three in ten saw newly introduced security vulnerabilities. AI-generated code showed nearly twice as many critical runtime issues as peer-reviewed human-authored code, with gaps concentrated in edge cases, concurrency, deprecated APIs, and complex state changes. Most teams now prompt AI tools to embed logs and traces directly into generated code.

Help Net Security·Aug 24, 04:22 UTC · 23d agoAI industry1

automatic module_metadata_base.json update

Metasploit Framework's automated pipeline refreshed its module metadata file, a routine repository maintenance commit introducing no new modules or exploits.

An automated Metasploit Framework commit updated module_metadata_base.json, the metadata database consumed by module tooling. The change is routine maintenance and contains no new exploit modules or vulnerability content.

Metasploit Framework commits·Sep 3, 13:45 UTC · 12d agoTools1

“We Think the Security Control Is Working” Is No Longer Good Enough

Opinion piece argues CISOs must replace point-in-time, sampling-based audits with continuous control monitoring to prove controls work in real time.

The article contends that annual, sampling-based compliance assessments no longer satisfy boards, customers, and regulators who demand live proof that security controls are working. It cites a 2025 Dell study where 69 percent of IT professionals said leadership overestimates cyber readiness, and notes NIST's 2024 CSF update added a Govern function emphasizing continuous, measurable outcomes. The author advocates continuous control monitoring of identity, cloud configuration drift, vulnerability remediation clocks, and vendor posture, feeding automated evidence into existing GRC systems.

SecurityWeek·Sep 15, 19:30 UTC · 15h agoIndustry

NSA, CISA, FBI, DOE, and EPA Warn of Active AI

Five US agencies warn of active AI-assisted attacks on internet-exposed Siemens S7 PLCs across critical infrastructure, using disguised snap7 scripts for pre-positioning reconnaissance.

NSA, CISA, FBI, DOE, and EPA issued joint advisory CISA AA26-231A warning of an active hacking campaign against Siemens S7-series PLCs, from S7-200 through S7-1500 F-series, across US critical infrastructure. Threat actors use internet scanning services such as Censys and ZoomEye to locate exposed controllers, then perform read operations over S7comm on TCP port 102 using the legitimate snap7.dll and python-snap7 libraries, disguising AI-generated exploitation scripts as monitoring tools. The agencies assess the activity as pre-positioning ahead of possible process disruption, equipment damage, or safety incidents in Energy, Water, Critical Manufacturing, Chemical, Food and Agriculture, and Commercial Facilities sectors.

Security Affairs·Aug 20, 17:36 UTC · 26d agoExploit / PoC in the wild

Explainability Assistant: A Conversational XAI Interface for Interpreting Energy Consumption Models

Researchers release Explainability Assistant, an open-source conversational XAI tool using LLM function calling, lifting intent-parsing accuracy from 76.8% to 94%.

The paper introduces the Explainability Assistant, an open-source conversational XAI system for interpreting energy consumption forecasting models such as genetic-programming symbolic regressors. It uses LLM function calling instead of rigid custom grammars, achieving 94% intent-parsing accuracy versus 76.8% for prior work TalkToModel, and adapts to different ML problem types without task-specific fine-tuning. Comparative evaluation with energy domain specialists against a traditional XAI dashboard showed improved usability, with all experts preferring the conversational interface.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL·Sep 10, 17:40 UTC · 5d agoAI research1

Critical Check Point VPN Flaws Let Unauthenticated Attackers Execute Remote Code

Check Point fixed critical unauthenticated RCE flaws CVE-2026-85102 and CVE-2026-85103 in its VPN gateways; no exploitation observed yet.

Check Point disclosed two critical vulnerabilities affecting Remote Access VPN and Site-to-Site VPN on its security gateways. CVE-2026-85102 is an authentication-bypass flaw that can lead to unauthenticated remote code execution, while CVE-2026-85103 is a heap overflow in ASN.1 decoding that can corrupt memory and also result in RCE. Fixes are available via Jumbo Hotfix, with Check Point Live Patch rollout starting September 9, 2026; the vendor found and fixed the issues through internal research and reports no evidence of exploitation in the wild.

GBHackers·updated Sep 14, 09:43 UTC · 2d ago·first Sep 11, 05:23 UTC · 5d agoVulnerability 9 sourcesCVE-2026-85102CVE-2026-85103

Patch Tuesday to Pentest Wednesday: How an Equipment Rental Company Is Turning Continuous Testing Into Continuous Exposure Management

An equipment rental company uses Horizon3 NodeZero for continuous exposure management, surfacing an SSH key exposure in eight hours versus annual pentesting.

The company moved from periodic penetration testing to continuous exposure management using the NodeZero Proactive Security Platform, feeding telemetry into a Splunk-based CTEM pipeline via Horizon3 APIs. NodeZero exposed SSH RSA key pairs from a PHP web server change about eight hours after introduction and found more findings in 12 hours than a third-party engagement found in roughly 30 days. An Active Directory password audit of 15,000 passwords found about 300 identical or similar compromised passwords, driving a banned-password list, 12-character minimums, service desk changes, and self-service reset rollout; users with similar passwords later dropped from 880 to 209. NodeZero also validated a suspected Cisco vulnerability as exploitable.

Horizon3.ai·Sep 9, 15:58 UTC · 6d agoIndustry

When a PNG Isn’t a PNG: WordPress Patches an Author-Level Imagick RCE

WordPress 7.0.4 patches an author-level RCE in how uploaded media is handed to ImageMagick.

WordPress maintenance release 7.0.4 includes a security fix that changes how uploaded media is passed to ImageMagick, closing a path that let a logged-in author turn a crafted image upload into remote code execution. Patchstack's analysis explains the flaw as a file-type handling issue where a PNG may not be treated as a PNG. The text does not mention a CVE ID or observed exploitation, but the flaw affects extremely widely deployed software.

Patchstack·Aug 12, 15:32 UTC · Aug 12, 2026Vulnerability

When Models Edit Too Much: On the Fidelity of Minimal Code Edits

A 400-task BigCodeBench evaluation shows frontier LLMs widely over-edit code; a preservation instruction cuts excess edits and raises Pass@1 by 2.3 points.

Researchers built an evaluation framework from 400 BigCodeBench problems with injected AST-level corruptions, each with a known minimal patch, to measure over-editing in LLM code repair. Even strong models like GPT-5.5 produce unnecessarily large edits despite high Pass@1. Adding a preservation instruction reduced average excess Levenshtein distance from 0.195 to 0.131, cut added cognitive complexity by 26.6%, and raised Pass@1 by 2.3 points. Reinforcement learning post-training gave the best out-of-domain edit-fidelity trade-off, while supervised fine-tuning overfit to seen corruption patterns.

Hugging Face daily papers·Sep 2, 20:00 UTC · 13d agoAI research1

Global sinkhole operation ends Sality botnet’s 23-year run

Law enforcement, CrowdStrike, and Shadowserver sinkholed the 23-year-old Sality P2P botnet, cutting 15,000+ infected machines from its operator.

Sality, active since 2003 as a file-infecting virus with two P2P networks (versions 3 and 4), distributed credential thieves, spam, proxies, and DDoS payloads, and most recently delivered the EggJagger clipboard hijacker that swapped cryptocurrency wallet addresses for at least $150,000 in operator profit. A coordinated sinkhole operation replaced the botnet's super-peer list with defender-controlled sinkholes, and investigators in the US, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania seized payload domains. The Shadowserver Foundation is coordinating ISP and CERT notifications to infected device owners.

Help Net Security·Sep 2, 00:00 UTC · 14d agoMalware1

The patch window is collapsing: Why security needs a new control plane

Microsoft argues patch windows are shrinking and urges a new security control plane to protect systems between vulnerability discovery and remediation.

A Microsoft Security Blog post contends that the window between vulnerability discovery and patch deployment is collapsing, leaving exploitable gaps. It argues organizations need a security 'control plane' that provides protection in the gap between discovery and remediation. The piece is vendor thought leadership with no new incident, CVE, or product announcement details.

Microsoft Security Blog·Aug 25, 16:00 UTC · 21d agoIndustry1

Windows BitLocker Flaw Lets Attackers Execute Code on Vulnerable Systems

Microsoft patched CVE-2026-69449, a heap-based buffer overflow in Windows BitLocker allowing privileged local attackers to execute code; no exploitation reported.

Microsoft disclosed CVE-2026-69449 on September 8, 2026, an Important-severity heap-based buffer overflow (CWE-122) in Windows BitLocker with a CVSS 3.1 base score of 6.7. The attack vector is local (AV:L) with high privileges required, so exploitation needs privileged local access rather than remote access over the internet. Microsoft, as assigned CNA, has not reported public exploitation, and administrators are urged to inventory BitLocker-enabled systems and apply updates. Interim mitigations include least-privilege access, limiting administrative rights, and monitoring for unexpected elevated process activity.

GBHackers·Sep 9, 10:28 UTC · 7d agoVulnerabilityCVE-2026-694491

Dependency-Check: Open-source Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tool

Help Net Security·Aug 5, 11:29 UTC · Aug 5, 2026Vulnerability1

An open letter to Dario: if you mean it, open the weights

Open letter urges Dario Amodei to champion a law forcing all publicly released AI models to ship as open weights, arguing regulation otherwise gets captured.

A blogger responds to Anthropic's essay 'We Must Pace the Frontier' by proposing a law requiring any AI model offered to the public be released as open weights, citing Anthropic's 'Fable' and OpenAI's 'Astra' as examples. The author argues frontier lab valuations depend on proprietary weights, so mandatory openness would cut funding for future training runs and slow progress across all labs. The letter contends regulatory approaches like embedded evaluators, compute thresholds, and antitrust waivers inevitably lead to regulatory capture favoring incumbents. It appeals to Amodei's record on safety, export controls, and Anthropic's PBC structure to back the proposal.

Hacker News · AI·Sep 12, 19:15 UTC · 3d agoAI policyHN 40↑ · 1 comments1

The Regulators Already Assume You Have an AI Inventory. Do You?

Checkmarx argues regulators now expect organizations to maintain an AI inventory as AI-generated code and outputs enter security workflows.

Checkmarx contends that implicit trust in AI-generated code, AI summaries, and scanner output has become a governance liability that regulators no longer accept. The piece argues security teams must formalize AI inventories and treat AI outputs as untrusted inputs. It frames AI governance as an emerging compliance expectation rather than an internal maturity project.

Checkmarx·Aug 26, 09:15 UTC · 21d agoAI policy1

Six Maximum

Cisco patched nine critical flaws, six rated CVSS 10.0, in Crosswork platforms and Secure Workload, none known to be exploited.

Cisco released fixes for nine critical vulnerabilities in its Crosswork platforms and Secure Workload software, discovered during an internal security review that used advanced AI models. Six flaws carry CVSS 10.0 ratings, including SQL injection CVE-2026-20030 and missing authentication CVE-2026-20357 in Crosswork, and access control CVE-2026-20315 and authentication flaws CVE-2026-20317 in Secure Workload. Fixes shipped in Crosswork 7.2.1-SP, Secure Workload 3.10.9.1, and 4.0.4.16. Cisco says no exploitation has been observed.

Security Affairs·Aug 21, 12:30 UTC · 25d agoVulnerabilityCVE-2026-20030CVE-2026-20357CVE-2026-20358+6 CVEs1

Adversarial Testing of Automated Program Repair Agents for Security Vulnerabilities

SWEADV benchmark shows adversarial issue descriptions make LLM program-repair agents write insecure fixes in 51.7% of cases, evading most detection tools.

Researchers built SWEADV, a benchmark of 750 adversarial issue descriptions derived from 150 SWE-bench Verified repair tasks, covering command execution, deserialization, path traversal, denial of service, and weak hashing attack types. Tested on mini_swe agents backed by GPT-5-Mini, MiniMax-M2.5, and DeepSeek-R, adversarial descriptions induced malicious behavior with successful repair in 51.7% of cases. Detection was weak: LLM-as-judge pre-repair screening reached only 62.3% accuracy, and post-repair detection via static analysis and LLM-as-judge achieved just 39.4% and 55.4%.

arXiv cs.CR·Sep 14, 17:53 UTC · 1d agoAI safety & security1

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: February 10, 2026

Help Net Security's roundup lists open cybersecurity roles at KPMG, Pentera, Google, Group-IB and others across multiple countries.

A job-board roundup featuring Cloud Security Engineer at KPMG (Israel), Cloud Security Researcher at Pentera (Israel), Cyber Defence Senior Analyst at Google (UK), and Cyber Investigation Specialist at Group-IB (UAE). Additional listings cover SOC operations, penetration testing, network architecture, OT/IT convergence and AI/ML security testing across Australia, Italy, the US, India, France, Ireland and the UAE. All listings are marked no longer accepting applications.

Help Net Security·Aug 26, 09:46 UTC · 21d agoIndustry

EVOHARNESSBENCH: Can Your Agents Keep Pace with an Evolving Harness?

Researchers introduce EVOHARNESSBENCH, a benchmark showing that evolving agent harnesses (tools, skills, agents) cause forgetting and inconsistent adaptation across 802 tasks.

The paper introduces EVOHARNESSBENCH, a benchmark that places non-stationarity in the externally supplied agent harness rather than in the task stream, evaluating agents across tools, skills, and specialist agents. It comprises 17 multi-stage harness streams built deterministically from verifier-based benchmarks, totaling 802 tasks, 520 tools, 42 skills, and 62 agents. Evaluation covers deployment (retention of previously accessible competence) and self-evolving adaptation settings. Results show harness expansion alone degrades previously solved tasks (harness-induced forgetting), adaptation gains are inconsistent, and retention and adaptation can pull in opposite directions.

Hugging Face daily papers·Sep 2, 20:00 UTC · 13d agoAI research

ANY.RUN & SentinelOne: One Workspace, Instant Context for Rapid Response

ANY.RUN integrates its interactive sandbox, IOC lookups, and STIX/TAXII threat feeds natively into SentinelOne for faster automated malware triage.

ANY.RUN and SentinelOne launched connectors that embed interactive sandbox analysis and threat intelligence into the SentinelOne console via Singularity Hyperautomation. Suspicious files and URLs from alerts are automatically submitted to the ANY.RUN sandbox, with behavioral verdicts and risk scores returned into alert notes. On-demand IOC lookups draw on sandbox history from 16,000 organizations and 700,000 analysts. A separate STIX/TAXII feed streams verified malicious IPs, domains, and URLs through the SentinelOne Marketplace TAXII Connect app.

ANY.RUN·06:40 UTC · 4h agoTools

Why Patch Automation Needs Brakes, Not Just an Accelerator

Action1's field CTO argues patch automation needs staged deployments and stop conditions, not just speed.

Gene Moody, Field CTO at Action1, writes on BleepingComputer that patch automation must pair acceleration with safeguards. He recommends staged deployment rings with predefined go/no-go criteria, keeping human judgment for domain controllers, databases, and ERP systems. The piece warns that automation without brakes can push a bad update to 10,000 endpoints as fast as a good one.

BleepingComputer·Sep 14, 14:01 UTC · 1d agoIndustry

Cisco bundles fixes for multiple vulnerabilities, some critical, into one patch

Cisco patched seven IOS XR vulnerabilities, two rated CVSS 9.8, allowing unauthenticated remote code execution and root access on carrier routers; no exploitation observed.

Cisco released fixes for seven internally discovered vulnerabilities in IOS XR, its Linux-based network operating system for carrier-grade routers. Two flaws, CVE-2026-20274 and CVE-2026-20279, are rated CVSS 9.8 (critical) and involve lifetime resource control issues that can enable unauthenticated remote code execution with root access; the other five are rated 8.2-8.8 and cover buffer overflows, access control failures, and out-of-bounds access. All IOS XR releases including IOS XR7 are affected regardless of configuration, no workarounds exist, and remediation requires software maintenance upgrades (SMUs) or fixed releases 26.2.2/26.3.1. Cisco says the flaws are not known to be actively exploited, but experts urge immediate patching of internet-facing and core routing systems, citing parallels with Salt Typhoon tradecraft.

CSO Online·Sep 9, 02:22 UTC · 7d agoVulnerabilityCVE-2026-20274CVE-2026-20279

LLMs and Contextual Integrity

Bruce Schneier highlights two papers: the CIMemories benchmark shows frontier LLMs leak memory attributes up to 69%, and an RL method reduces inappropriate disclosures.

Bruce Schneier discusses contextual integrity in LLMs, referencing the CIMemories benchmark, which uses synthetic profiles with 100+ attributes per user to test whether models with persistent memory disclose sensitive information appropriately. Evaluation showed frontier models exhibit up to 69% attribute-level violations, with GPT-5's violation rate rising from 0.1% to 9.6% across 40 tasks and reaching 25.1% with repeated prompting, showing unstable leakage behavior. A second paper introduces a reinforcement learning framework trained on a synthetic 700-example dataset that substantially reduces inappropriate disclosure while maintaining task performance, with improvements transferring to the human-annotated PrivacyLens benchmark.

Schneier on Security·Aug 18, 10:40 UTC · 29d agoAI safety & security