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Countering misuse of AI: September 2026 / Anthropic

Anthropic publishes threat intelligence on Claude misuse across seven harm areas from December 2025 through August 2026.

Anthropic's Threat Intelligence team details disrupted operations using Claude Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus across cyber operations, influence operations, surveillance, scams, biological misuse, weapons development, and distillation. The report introduces Generative Threat Groups (GTGs), including state-sponsored groups and financially motivated individuals running AI-augmented multi-victim campaigns. It argues AI uplift now collapses the gap between state-sponsored operations and lone actors, aided by frameworks like PentAGI.

Lobsters · securityupdated Sep 16, 17:41 UTC · 20h agofirst Sep 11, 09:46 UTC · 6d agoAI safety & security 20 sources1

Hackers Turn Telegram Into a Command Center for HEAVYGRAM Surveillance Malware

Group-IB links HEAVYGRAM, a Telegram-based Windows surveillance backdoor targeting Iranian dissidents and journalists since 2023, to the Handala Hack group with moderate confidence.

Group-IB identified 29 additional HEAVYGRAM samples, loaders, and payloads and linked the operation to Handala Hack with moderate confidence, expanding on US government disclosures. The backdoor has targeted journalists, Iranian dissidents, and government opponents since fall 2023, including a journalist at a UK-based Farsi-language outlet and a US-based victim. It collects screenshots and audio, steals Telegram Desktop data, executes commands, and persists via Windows registry entries, with associated CRUDEEXCLUDE samples adding security exclusions before delivery.

Cyber Security Newsupdated 13:46 UTC · 9m agofirst 12:53 UTC · 1h agoMalware in the wild 9 sources

Banking Trojans: Ursnif Global Distribution Networks Identified

Unit 42 maps banking-trojan distribution networks: spam botnets push Shiotob downloaders and Ursnif, KINS, Tinba at Japan and European targets via compromised web servers.

Unit 42 identified the distribution networks behind banking trojan attacks against Japan, Italy, Spain, Poland, Australia, and Germany. A spam botnet delivered 75 unique Shiotob (Bebloh/URLZone) variants across 7 million spam emails, with Shiotob acting mainly as a downloader that installs Ursnif and the Pushdo spam bot from C2 commands. Over 200 malicious files were hosted on 74 compromised, mostly European small-business web servers between April 2015 and January 2017, with localized invoice and photo-themed email lures per target country.

Palo Alto Unit 42Aug 17, 12:56 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Malware in the wild

The Gopher in the Room: Analysis of GoLang Malware in the Wild

Unit 42 analysis of 10,700 Go-compiled malware samples shows steady growth in the wild, with 92% targeting Windows and top families including Veil, GoBot2, and HERCULES.

Unit 42 collected roughly 10,700 unique Go-compiled malware samples and found that Go usage by malware developers has steadily risen in recent months. About 92% of samples targeted Windows and 75% were attributed to known families, led by Veil, GoBot2, and HERCULES. The most prevalent groupings were penetration testing tools, remote access Trojans, and backdoors. Statically linked Go binaries average 4.65MB, which can complicate phishing delivery but sometimes causes antivirus products to skip or fail scanning.

Palo Alto Unit 42Aug 17, 12:21 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Research1

Risky Bulletin: Academics find source code overlaps between Geedge and China's Great Firewall

Academics linked Chinese vendor Geedge Networks' Tiangou Secure Gateway source code to one of the Great Firewall's three traffic filtering capabilities.

US researchers presenting at USENIX Security reconstructed Geedge Networks' Tiangou Secure Gateway firmware from over 100,000 leaked files, including Git repositories with commit history, and matched its filtering behavior to sections of China's Great Firewall. They found only 1 of 3 characterized DNS injectors matched Geedge code, noted the system relies on memory-unsafe C components and copied third-party code, and said its bugs could aid future circumvention tools. Geedge also exports censorship tools to Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Myanmar. The newsletter additionally rounds up multiple breaches.

Risky Business NewsAug 21, 02:55 UTC · 27d agoResearch2

Quoting Boris Cherny

Anthropic's Boris Cherny says AI-generated production code needs a higher quality bar enforced with tests, fuzzers, and automated reviews.

In remarks quoted by Simon Willison, Anthropic's Boris Cherny argued that production code written by Claude should meet a higher quality bar than human-written code. He described guardrails at Anthropic including lint rules, extensive tests, Claude-driven end-to-end tests, daily Claude-powered fuzzers, and automated code and security reviews. He warned that without such controls AI-generated code can become hard to maintain.

Simon WillisonSep 11, 17:47 UTC · 5d agoAI tools & infra2

Using AI for Weapons Development

Anthropic report reveals Yemen-based actors used Claude Code to build guidance software for guided rockets and ballistic missiles.

Bruce Schneier highlights Anthropic's misuse disclosure describing a threat actor cell in northern Yemen running three weapons programs: a guided rocket with phone-class homing guidance, a 2,000+ km multi-stage ballistic missile, and the 'R2000' hypersonic glide vehicle set. The actors used Claude Code as a substitute for human engineers to write GNC software, integrate an open-source autopilot, tune controls, and run flight simulations, orchestrating multiple Claude instances in delegated roles. Safeguards blocked many requests but evasion tactics included hiding intent and splitting work across sessions; one guided rocket test-fire failed but no operational device was fielded.

Schneier on SecuritySep 14, 16:07 UTC · 2d agoAI safety & security in the wild

Disrupting a new covert influence campaign from Russia

OpenAI banned Russia-origin accounts that used AI tools to run a covert influence campaign behind a fake Israel-based think tank and pro-Russia sovereignty index.

OpenAI disrupted and banned accounts of Russia origin that were using its AI tools to conduct a covert influence operation. The campaign promoted a fictitious Israel-based think tank and a 'sovereignty' index praising Russia while criticizing Western countries. The action is part of OpenAI's ongoing monitoring and disruption of malicious uses of AI for influence operations.

OpenAI NewsAug 25, 00:00 UTC · 23d agoAI safety & security

Israeli contractor BlackCore trained Angolan officials in online influence operations

Citizen Lab links Israeli firm BlackCore to training Angolan officials to run covert influence campaigns with fake personas and pro-government content.

Citizen Lab documents show Israeli influence-for-hire firm BlackCore ran a 14-week training and operations program for Angolan officials, producing more than 40 pro-government content pieces through a fictitious outlet called Agita News. Posts received roughly 20,000 likes, with some later approaching 50,000, in a country with an estimated six million active Facebook users. France's Viginum previously linked BlackCore to interference targeting France Unbowed and suspected operations in New York, Scotland and Togo, and Meta disrupted a related Israel-origin network in August.

The Record12:15 UTC · 1h agoThreat actor

Agent-net Open Sources Webagent: A Go Harness That Turns Any Website into a Guarded AI Agent

Agent-net open-sourced Webagent, a Go harness turning websites into AI agents with code-enforced guardrails wrapping every tool call.

Agent-net released Webagent under Apache 2.0, a Go framework where a business fills in a declarative JSON spec, picks one provider for each of nine pluggable slots (retrieval, memory, guardrail, channel, secrets, presenter, model, action, observability), and runs webagent serve. Every tool the agent holds is wrapped by action.Guard so the chosen guardrail executes before any action runs and the model cannot bypass it. Live capabilities include OpenRouter/gateway LLM brains, MCP tools over Streamable HTTP, and Slack, WhatsApp, and HTTP channels; browser actions, OAuth-gated MCP, OTel export, and AgentNet identity/billing are not yet built. The project is v0 with a deferred-hardening list and cites arXiv 2511.19477 on an 85% versus 50% task-success gap attributed to architecture over model capability.

MarkTechPostSep 15, 04:03 UTC · 2d agoAI tools & infra1

Iranian Hackers Use Telegram-Controlled Malware to Spy on Dissidents and Journalists

FBI, NCSC, and AIVD detail Iran MOIS spyware CHOSEN BRICK/HEAVYGRAM, Telegram-controlled Windows malware spying on dissidents since 2023.

A September 15 joint advisory from the FBI, UK NCSC, and Dutch AIVD attributes the Windows spyware HEAVYGRAM (NCSC name CHOSEN BRICK) to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, with the campaign dating to autumn 2023 and targeting dissidents, journalists, and activists in the UK, US, Netherlands, and worldwide. Delivered via messages impersonating known contacts or tech support, the malware assigns each victim a dedicated Telegram bot for command-and-control and exfiltration, and can take screenshots, record microphone audio, steal Telegram/WhatsApp data, saved passwords, and emails, download more malware, and wipe the computer. Persistence uses a registry Run key (SMQDService or winappx) plus Microsoft Defender exclusions, with stolen data exiting via Telegram and cloud storage services like Vultr and Storj. The US Justice Department seized four pro-Iranian leak sites in March that had published stolen victim data.

The Hacker NewsSep 15, 16:29 UTC · 1d agoMalware in the wild1

Gaming the system: how a Chinese-speaking actor turned Brazilian government sites into an SEO weapon

Check Point identifies Chinese-speaking group Gambling Goblin hijacking Brazilian government domains via malicious Apache modules for SEO-manipulated gambling phishing.

Check Point Research tracks a sustained campaign since mid-2025 against Brazilian government and educational organizations by Gambling Goblin, a Chinese-speaking cybercrime cluster linked to Earth Berberoka. Attackers compile and install malicious Apache modules that silently reverse-proxy visitors to phishing pages impersonating Google Play, Microsoft Store, and Amazon, chaining compromised high-reputation domains to inflate search rankings. The group deploys a heavily obfuscated Linux toolkit including DownPro, AlphaAgent, oRAT, a 3snake-based credential stealer, and SSH brute-forcers, with parallel phishing networks localized for Vietnamese, Spanish, and English victims.

Check Point ResearchSep 2, 10:16 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor

Malicious Apache Modules Hijack Brazilian Government Site Traffic to Push Betting Pages

Check Point links Gambling Goblin, a Chinese-speaking cluster, to malicious Apache modules hijacking Brazilian government servers to promote betting sites.

Check Point Research tracks Gambling Goblin, a Chinese-speaking cluster, installing malicious Apache reverse-proxy modules on compromised Brazilian government and education web servers since mid-2025. The modules divert visitors to gambling and fake app-store pages while stripping the site's security headers, likely for large-scale SEO manipulation. The group's Linux arsenal includes DownPro, AlphaAgent, oRAT, a 3snake-based credential stealer, and SSH brute-forcing tools, and it is tied to Trend Micro's Earth Berberoka. Related SEO-fraud campaigns on .gov.br domains were documented by ESET (GhostRedirector), Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, and Hunt.io.

The Hacker NewsSep 2, 13:44 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor in the wild

Houthis Used Claude Code to Develop Missile Guidance Software: Anthropic

Anthropic's threat report details a Houthi-linked Yemeni cell using parallel Claude Code sessions to build missile guidance software, evading safeguards by fragmenting tasks.

Anthropic's September threat report describes a Yemen-based cell, assessed as highly likely Houthi-linked, that used Claude Code across multiple parallel instances to develop guidance software for a tactical guided rocket, a ballistic missile with over 2,000 km range, and a hypersonic glide vehicle concept called 'R2000'. The operators integrated open-source autopilot software, built six-degree-of-freedom trajectory simulations, and used reinforcement learning to tune flight-control algorithms, ultimately compiling an offline executable. The group test-fired a guided rocket that failed, then used Claude within hours to analyze launch telemetry. Anthropic blocked numerous requests, but operators evaded safeguards by obscuring intent and dividing work across separate conversations before accounts were banned; the case is one of six conventional-weapons cases (three China-linked, two Russia-linked) in a report covering disrupted operations from December 2025 to August 2026.

Hacker News · AISep 13, 14:15 UTC · 3d agoAI safety & security HN 47↑ · 38 comments1

Dark Caracal Adds New Malware to Cyber Espionage Arsenal

Dark Caracal added GoCaracal, a modular malware framework, expanding its espionage toolkit for data theft and persistent access.

Dark Caracal, a known espionage-focused threat group, has added GoCaracal, a new modular malware framework, to its arsenal. The framework broadens the group's ability to steal victim data and maintain persistent access, according to Dark Reading coverage on 2026-08-26. The addition indicates continued investment in the group's offensive toolset.

Dark ReadingAug 26, 21:33 UTC · 21d agoMalware in the wild

Fake OpenAI Codex download tricks macOS users into installing malware

Cato Networks uncovered a malware campaign using sponsored search ads and fake OpenAI Codex pages to deliver an AMOS-like infostealer to macOS users.

Cato Networks researchers discovered a campaign using sponsored search results and a fake OpenAI Codex download portal on Google Sites to lure macOS users. Victims are instructed to paste a Terminal command that decodes a Base64-encoded URL and runs a multi-stage infection chain ending in a universal Mach-O binary. The delivery chain closely resembles Atomic macOS Stealer (AMOS), and related infrastructure impersonating Claude Code was also found. Operators use iframe-based hosting and path/device gating to evade analysts and automated scanners.

Help Net SecurityAug 25, 00:00 UTC · 23d agoMalware in the wild

HOL Guard: Open-source antivirus for AI agents

HOL Guard is an open-source local guardrail that pauses AI coding agents before risky actions like secret access and prompt injection.

HOL Guard sits between AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI and others) and the host machine, intercepting risky commands before execution with checks taking under 50 milliseconds and running fully offline. It offers four sensitivity modes — Gentle, Balanced (default), Strict, and Paranoid — and parses command structure, environment, sensitive-path access and network destinations to decide when to interrupt. The core runtime is free and open source on GitHub, with 552,000 downloads reported; the vendor says it has no telemetry on adoption because collection is off by default.

Help Net SecurityAug 31, 12:02 UTC · 17d agoAI tools & infra1

Hackers Deploy New SloppyRAT via ClickFix to Enable Ransomware Lateral Movement

Zscaler ThreatLabz reports SloppyRAT, a new Windows RAT delivered via ClickFix lures that supports reconnaissance, reverse SOCKS proxying, and lateral movement for ransomware affiliates.

Zscaler ThreatLabz first observed SloppyRAT in June 2026, delivered through multi-stage ClickFix chains that abuse finger.exe, a renamed curl.exe, and IronPython to load a reflective Python payload. The C++ implant implements 47 PowerShell-like commands via native APIs and direct syscalls, modifies Microsoft Defender settings, and establishes a reverse SOCKS proxy that lets operators pivot into internal networks. It is linked to CastleLoader and CastleRAT components and uses certificate-pinned HTTPS C2 with an EtherHiding fallback via Polygon JSON-RPC. Zscaler assesses it as an intrusion-enablement tool for ransomware operations, though flawed persistence logic suggests the family is still under development.

GBHackersupdated Sep 11, 09:12 UTC · 6d agofirst Sep 11, 06:17 UTC · 6d agoMalware in the wild 3 sources

17th August – Threat Intelligence Report

Colombia's Ministry of Justice suffered a ransomware attack disrupting drug-monitoring and legal public services, per Check Point's 17 August 2026 threat intelligence report.

Check Point Research's weekly threat intelligence bulletin for 17 August 2026 leads with a ransomware attack on Colombia's Ministry of Justice. The attack affected part of the ministry's technology infrastructure and disrupted public services related to illicit-drug monitoring and legal processes. Officials confirmed that some files were impacted; the bulletin also aggregates other cyber research and attack discoveries from the week.

Check Point ResearchAug 17, 13:37 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Ransomware

China's AI-Enabled APT Operations Are Getting Interesting

Bitdefender links seven RAT families, five previously undocumented, to China-nexus espionage actor SilkParasite using AI-assisted malware development against Central Asian governments.

A Bitdefender report attributes seven remote access tool families to a single actor dubbed SilkParasite, with medium confidence a China-nexus group targeting governments in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. The RATs are written in .NET, C++, Go and JavaScript, use C2 via Google Drive and protocols like HTTP, DNS and TCP, and employ modular plugin architectures with regular rotation of infrastructure, encryption material and persistence artifacts. Evidence of AI-assisted development includes leftover test functions, placeholder encryption keys, and GoginRAT and NomadRAT sharing a high-level architecture despite different languages, suggesting a specification implemented twice with AI. The newsletter also covers the US Operation Economic Outcast sanctioning six MOIS-linked Iranian hackers, including hands-on-keyboard operators who targeted US critical infrastructure.

Risky Business NewsAug 27, 05:05 UTC · 21d agoThreat actor1

SilkParasite Hackers Use SpiceRAT Infrastructure to Target Central Asian Governments and Energy Firmsnew

Hunt.io links SpiceRAT C2 infrastructure to the China-nexus SilkParasite espionage cluster targeting Central Asian governments, telecoms, and energy firms.

Hunt.io analysis expanded the SpiceRAT command-and-control footprint tied to SilkParasite, a China-nexus espionage cluster (medium confidence per Bitdefender) targeting government, telecommunications, and energy entities across Central Asia. Five active servers coordinated from mid-March 2026 were clustered via reused hostnames, TLS certificates, and a byte-identical clone of RTX Corporation's webpage found on 13 IPs; a certificate for azure.uzrailwaystax[.]com appeared across eight servers. Domains impersonated Türkmengaz, Tojiktelecom, Turkmenistan's Foreign Ministry, and Uzbek and Kyrgyz bodies, with passive DNS history dating to mid-2022. Impersonated organizations were not confirmed as compromised; Cisco Talos previously linked SpiceRAT to SneakyChef's LNK/HTA infection chains.

GBHackers13:12 UTC · 43m agoThreat actor in the wild 2 sources

AWS Introduces Pizza Bot: An Open Source Inbox for Background AI Agents

AWS open-sourced Pizza Bot, a self-hosted inbox app for background AI agents with approval gating and multi-provider model support.

AWS released Pizza Bot under Apache 2.0 after earlier versions served over 2,000 Amazon employees for meeting prep, email drafting, and research. The app provides macOS, Windows, and Linux desktop builds plus browser and terminal clients talking to a Hono API server, with LangGraph/DeepAgents checkpoints preserving thread state and approval pauses. It supports Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic, Google Gemini, OpenAI, OpenRouter, and Ollama, exposes external tools via MCP servers, and lets skill authors gate actions behind approve/edit/reject flows.

MarkTechPostSep 13, 08:10 UTC · 4d agoAI tools & infra1

Google Open-Sources Mantis: A Modular Skills Toolkit That Lets Coding Agents Find, Reproduce and Patch Vulnerabilities

Google open-sourced Mantis, an Apache-2.0 modular skills toolkit that lets AI coding agents find, reproduce, and patch vulnerabilities with sandboxed verification.

Google released Mantis on GitHub under Apache 2.0 as a stack-agnostic set of slash-command skills that chain through the full vulnerability lifecycle: mining version history, building threat models, filtering findings, reproducing bugs in gVisor or network-disabled VMs, assembling exploit chains, patching, and scoring residual risk from 1 to 10. It runs with Gemini CLI, Antigravity CLI, the Google ADK, or comparable agent frameworks, and a supervisor skill (/mantis-meta-agent) can drive the whole loop. Google says the design targets the sub-7 percent true-positive rate of naive AI code scanning, and that its hierarchical summary tree cuts token overhead by over 85 percent. The toolkit is deployable for local and internal evaluation but not yet recommended for production.

MarkTechPostSep 9, 22:58 UTC · 7d agoAI tools & infra

Dark Caracal Deploys New Go Malware With Ethereum-Based C2 Fallback

Dark Caracal targeted a Venezuelan communications organization with new Go-based GoCaracal malware and an updated Bandook backdoor using Ethereum smart-contract C2 fallback.

Arctic Wolf Labs linked a June 2026 intrusion against a communications organization in Venezuela to Dark Caracal, an espionage group associated with Lebanon's General Directorate of General Security (GDGS). The group deployed a previously undocumented Go-based framework called GoCaracal in lightweight and extended builds alongside a Delphi-loaded Bandook backdoor, with delivery via phishing emails carrying weaponized SVG attachments through URL shorteners. The extended build uses a custom Solidity contract, BulletproofC2, on Ethereum to retrieve replacement C2 addresses without redeploying malware, and Arctic Wolf traced 249 related samples from January to July 2026 showing a modular evolution arc.

Security AffairsAug 27, 20:31 UTC · 20d agoThreat actor in the wild

Aggah Campaign: Bit.ly, BlogSpot, and Pastebin Used for C2 in Large Scale Campaign

Aggah campaign abuses Bit.ly, BlogSpot, and Pastebin as multi-hop C2 to deliver RevengeRAT across the Middle East, US, Europe, and Asia.

Unit 42 details the Aggah campaign, which began with spearphishing emails in March 2019 spoofing a large financial institution and targeting education, media/marketing, and government organizations in the Middle East, later expanding to the US, Europe, and Asia. Delivery documents use Template Injection to load a remote OLE file whose macro runs mshta against a Bit.ly link redirecting to a BlogSpot post, which then uses Pastebin pastes to download RevengeRAT configured with a duckdns[.]org C2 domain. The embedded script also deletes Microsoft Defender signatures and kills Defender and Office processes, and modifies registry keys to enable macros. High-level TTPs resemble the Gorgon Group, but Unit 42 could not confirm attribution.

Palo Alto Unit 42Aug 17, 13:21 UTC · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor