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$20 per zero-day is already the WordPress plugin reality

TrendAI and CHT Security used an AI pipeline to find over 300 verified WordPress plugin zero-days at roughly $20 per vulnerability.

A pipeline built in three days by TrendAI and CHT Security, presented at Ekoparty Miami, paired AI-driven static analysis with automated Docker provisioning and Chrome DevTools MCP dynamic verification to surface more than 300 critical zero-days in WordPress plugins within 72 hours. The run consumed about 222 million tokens across 95 tasks, averaging roughly $20 per verified vulnerability, with findings including pre-auth RCE, SQL injection, privilege escalation, SSRF, and an AI-assembled downgrade attack chain. Dynamic verification eliminated over 80% of false positives, but manual review at 30-60 minutes per finding remains the bottleneck, straining ZDI and NIST triage backlogs.

Help Net Security · 23d agoResearch1

LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices

Gamers Nexus found LG smart TVs record microphone audio in standby, scan home networks, and feed LG Ad Solutions ad targeting.

A 135-minute Gamers Nexus investigation with Level1Techs and independent researchers found retail LG OLED TVs running webOS sweep local networks, gather device names and Wi-Fi metadata, and run Automated Content Recognition. Tests showed the TVs capture clean microphone audio while appearing powered down and store it offline, uploading once reconnected. The team also found RCE vulnerabilities in webOS now moving through responsible disclosure; LG claims 216 million smart TV sales, and its ad unit claims access to 363 million addressable devices in the US.

Risky Bulletin: Expired cards can be used for new transactions

Researchers show expired Visa contactless cards can be revived via NFC man-in-the-middle relay to run fraudulent transactions; roundup also covers major breaches.

University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers built an NFC man-in-the-middle rig that updates a card's expiration date in transit and relays the modified payment to POS terminals, reviving expired contactless cards; Visa terminals and the backends of all five banks studied failed to catch the manipulation. The same roundup reports Iranian hackers shut down a small UK power plant for four days, Lazarus breached South Korea's Presidential Office as part of a campaign exceeding 100 victims, and French telecom SFR suffered a breach affecting over 2.1 million customers.

Risky Business News · 23d agoResearch1

Hackers Steal Active Directory Password Hashes Without Attacking Domain Controllers Directly

Attackers use the DCSync technique to impersonate domain controllers and harvest AD password hashes and Kerberos keys without directly compromising domain controllers, Trellix warns.

Per Trellix, threat actors increasingly abuse Active Directory replication via DCSync, using privileged credentials to invoke DRSGetNCChanges and retrieve NTLM password hashes and Kerberos key material without running code on domain controllers. Capturing the krbtgt account hash enables forging Golden Tickets for persistent, highly privileged domain access. Because malicious replication traffic mimics legitimate DRS/RPC activity, defenders should monitor Windows Security Event ID 4662, restrict replication permissions, and investigate replication requests from non-domain-controller systems.

GBHackers · 5d agoResearch in the wild 2 sources2

Researchers Turn USB Auto-Install Into a Full SYSTEM Takeover on Windows 11

DEF CON researchers chained Windows Plug and Play auto-install abuse with third-party driver flaws to reach SYSTEM on fully updated Windows 11.

In 'Plug And Pwn' research prepared for DEF CON 34, Alejandro Hernando and Borja Martinez emulated USB devices so Windows auto-installed signed vendor software, chaining a Sierra Wireless SwiService.exe SetDNS primitive, a Sony FeliCa co-installer path-traversal flaw that writes a DLL into System32, and device reconnection for SYSTEM code execution. A remote variant over Remote Desktop forges a synthetic Intel RealSense device and abuses a CRYPTBASE.dll search-order hijack when PnP or low-level USB redirection is enabled. Microsoft notes RDP does not allow supported PnP and RemoteFX USB redirection by default, and no in-the-wild exploitation has been reported.

The Hacker News · Aug 11, 2026Research