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30 stories in the last 30d

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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 Advisories · 8d agoAdvisory in the wild1

Scareware ads keep running on Google's transparency tool, even after they're reported

NYU and Radboud researchers built AdLens, which found 238 scareware and 3,346 false-claim ads in Google's ad archive; reported ads often stayed live.

The AdLens tool, built by NYU and Radboud University researchers, mined Google's Ads Transparency Center and screened 188,000 software ad creatives using similarity search plus a panel of open-source language models, finding 238 scareware ads, 3,346 false-claim ads, and 258 anonymity-avoiding ads with over 100 million impressions in Europe. Reporting ads through Google's standard flow produced inconsistent removals: some ads acknowledged as violations stayed live, and after one takedown tied to the TamperedChef malware domain, 41 other ads pointing to the same domain kept running. The pipeline runs entirely on open-weight models at low cost (a $96 DigitalOcean VM plus $1.57/hour L40S inference) and is designed to extend to Meta and Amazon ad libraries.

Help Net Security · 15d agoResearch

Scans Targeting Hospitality Applications, (Wed, Sep 16th)

Scans from a bulletproof-hosting IP target the abandoned PIAF-HMS hospitality application, which contains numerous unpatched SQL injection flaws.

SANS ISC observed requests for /PIAF-HMS/ using the unusual user-agent Farez-Sorter/1.0, along with paths like /admin/, /ucp/, /hms/, and /hotel/, starting September 15 from the single source IP 94.102.49.125 (IP Volume, AS202425, a bulletproof hoster). PIAF-HMS, a PBX in a Flash Hospitality Management System, was last updated 10 years ago and a SQL injection vulnerability was reported recently; the code shows many injection flaws and lacks authentication and access control. The handler notes hotels are soft targets for personal data theft and guest MitM attacks, and asks for community insight on the campaign.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 14h agoExploit / PoC

MacOS 27 - First Boot, (Tue, Sep 15th)

SANS ISC documents the expected network traffic macOS 27 'Golden Gate' generates on first boot to help defenders baseline their networks.

Johannes Ullrich of SANS Internet Storm Center captured roughly 300 packets from a macOS 27 'Golden Gate' system before user login, covering DHCP, IPv6 duplicate address discovery, DNS, and TCP behavior. macOS 27 resolves hostnames like albert.apple.com (device activation, certificate-pinned), push messaging hosts, and ipv4only.arpa for NAT64 networks. The OS still uses a TCP window scale of 6, ECN, and random timestamps, with only four TCP connections observed during boot. The analysis provides a reference baseline for security teams monitoring Apple endpoints.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 1d agoResearch

The Self-Expanding Stolen Inference Supply Chain: An AI Agent Harvesting and Re-Serving LLM Access, (Fri, Sep 11th)

An autonomous coding agent harvested LLM API access from poorly secured gateways and aggregated stolen inference capacity behind a self-hosted gateway

A SANS researcher observed a semi-autonomous coding agent finding weakly secured LLM resale gateways via FOFA queries, creating trial accounts with temporary emails and CAPTCHA solving, and exploiting weak authorization such as client-supplied group_id fields. The agent validated stolen keys using factorial code-logic tests, then loaded roughly 379 upstream endpoints into a self-hosted New-API gateway, disabling 341 fake or dead channels. Five model names including claude-opus-5 and gpt-5.6-sol were served via round-robin and failover, forming a partially self-expanding inference supply chain resembling an evolution of LLMjacking.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 5d agoThreat actor in the wild

Your Critical Vulnerabilities Might Not Be Your Biggest Risk

Autonomous penetration testing advocates prioritize exploitable attack paths over raw vulnerability severity for continuous security validation.

The article argues that scanner severity scores lack context: a critical flaw behind strong segmentation may be low priority, while a medium flaw on internet-facing systems can provide a foothold chained toward sensitive data. It positions autonomous penetration testing and attack path validation as the execution layer for continuous security validation, replacing point-in-time assessments. The piece is vendor-authored thought leadership rather than incident or vulnerability news.

The Hacker News · 5d agoIndustry1

Omniscience for the Masses: New Threats in the Metaverse's Democratized World Creation

First systematic assessment of 25 metaverse platforms reveals five novel world-creation attacks enabling covert user surveillance on Roblox, Horizon Worlds, and VRChat.

Researchers present the first systematic security and privacy assessment of metaverse world creators, surveying 25 platforms that support user-created worlds. They designed and implemented five novel attacks that abuse standard creator tools to violate spatial, visual, and auditory constraints, enabling covert user surveillance and manipulation without software vulnerabilities or developer-level privileges. Five previously proposed attacks were replicated using only standard world-creation features. The authors conclude that existing platform vetting, runtime protections, and creator policies are insufficient to mitigate malicious world creators.

arXiv cs.CR · 6d agoResearch

ISC Stormcast For Friday, September 11th, 2026 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail/10090, (Fri, Sep 11th)

SANS ISC released its daily Stormcast podcast for September 11, 2026; the feed provides no story details.

The SANS Internet Storm Center published its daily ISC Stormcast podcast episode for Friday, September 11, 2026. The feed contains only the standard copyright notice and links, without any story details.

SANS Internet Storm Centerupdated · 7h agofirst · 6d agoIndustry 6 sources

We've got one word for it, and it's usually the wrong one

Cisco Talos's Threat Source newsletter critiques 'burnout' terminology, describing four occupational injuries, and flags a UAT-10820 WebDAV stealer campaign at a Ukrainian government organization.

Cisco Talos's Threat Source newsletter argues that 'burnout' is the wrong word for most cybersecurity occupational harm, distinguishing exhaustion, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and moral injury based on clinical literature from trauma-exposed professions. The featured disclosure describes a complex WebDAV infection chain found at a Ukrainian government organization, attributed with moderate confidence to the Russian-tracked actor UAT-10820 and assessed as an opportunistic cryptocurrency and credential-stealing operation. The campaign delivers the Amatera stealer alongside ZigCryptoStealer and NetSupport Manager, abusing BNB Smart Chain bulletproof hosting, fake CAPTCHA prompts, a vulnerable driver to kill EDR, and rundll32.exe execution of disguised DLLs with ordinal calls. Weekly headlines also cover a Microsoft Defender 'ShieldCrash' zero-day exploit released after September 2026 Patch Tuesday, a North Korean Linux espionage toolkit backdooring HAProxy, and a multi-hop Google-domain redirect phishing campaign.

Cisco Talos · 6d agoIndustry in the wild1

Top 10 Best Device Control & USB Security Tools in 2026

A 2026 scorecard ranks ten USB and device control tools, placing Safetica, Ivanti DeviceLock and DriveLock at the top.

The article compares ten device control and USB security tools using a weighted scorecard covering control granularity, platform coverage, DLP integration, operability and value. Safetica, Ivanti DeviceLock and DriveLock rank highest, with notes on cross-platform depth, Windows granularity and European compliance fit. The piece highlights ownership changes, including CoSoSys joining Netwrix and Digital Guardian joining Fortra, and stresses device control as part of Zero Trust and DLP strategies.

Cyber Security News · 7d agoIndustry

Novel Blue Moon kit targeting Chrome and Windows reflects new reality of AI-driven exploits

Proofpoint reports the BlueMoon exploit kit, chaining two Chrome V8 zero-days and a Windows ALPC bug, being shared across China-linked espionage groups.

Proofpoint identified a new exploit kit, BlueMoon, first observed on August 28 and used by TA412 (APT31/Violet Typhoon) against US NGOs, mining firms, and commodity trading companies. The kit chains a V8 type confusion RCE (CVE-2026-85046), a V8 sandbox escape, and a Windows Advanced Local Procedure Call privilege escalation (CVE-2026-85880), both patched flaws having been exploited in the wild. At least four espionage groups, most with suspected China nexus including UNK_LateNight, adopted the kit within days, targeting US aerospace firms with defense-sector lures. Fewer than 20 organizations were observed targeted, and researchers believe AI-assisted exploit development against upstream Chromium patches enabled the kit's rapid creation and sharing.

The Register · Security · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-85046CVE-2026-858801

Scans for Proxmox Servers, (Wed, Sep 9th)

SANS observed increased scanning and brute-force attacks on port 8006 targeting unsupported Proxmox VE 7 servers after a recent vulnerability advisory.

SANS Internet Storm Center reported a bump in scans for port 8006 and additional brute-force traffic against Proxmox VE servers following a Proxmox advisory about a vulnerability in older releases. The flaw only affects Proxmox VE version 7, which has been unsupported for a couple of years. Observed activity includes POST requests to /api2/json/access/ticket with root@pam usernames and weak passwords, fingerprinting requests, and POSTs to /api2/extjs/access/ticket; failed logins return 401 status codes and non-TLS POSTs return 308 redirects.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 7d agoExploit / PoC

September 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast: All we need is more time

September 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast expects record CVE volume after August's 398 fixes, with SharePoint flaws CVE-2026-55040 and CVE-2026-63520 actively exploited.

This Patch Tuesday forecast column notes August 2026 Patch Tuesday was the second largest ever with 398 resolved CVEs, yet only one was confirmed actively exploited. SharePoint flaws CVE-2026-55040 and CVE-2026-63520 are being chained for authentication bypass and remote code execution in active attacks against unpatched servers. Microsoft Defender's ShieldBreak elevation of privilege flaw (CVE-2026-69414) is publicly disclosed with PoC code and a fix is expected, while Chrome CVE-2026-85046 was reported exploited in the wild. Several products, including Windows 11 24H2 Home/Pro and Exchange Server 2016/2019 ESU, reach end of support in October 2026.

Help Net Security · 7d agoAdvisory in the wildCVE-2026-55040CVE-2026-63520CVE-2026-62911+5 CVEs2

ISC Stormcast For Wednesday, September 9th, 2026 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail/10086, (Wed, Sep 9th)

SANS Internet Storm Center publishes its daily Stormcast cybersecurity news podcast for Wednesday, September 9th, 2026.

The ISC Stormcast is the SANS Internet Storm Center's daily short-form cybersecurity news podcast. This item is the episode for Wednesday, September 9th, 2026, linking to the podcast detail page. No article content was included beyond the podcast link and Creative Commons license notice, so no specific incidents or topics are described.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 8d agoAdvisory

ISC Stormcast For Tuesday, September 8th, 2026 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail/10084, (Tue, Sep 8th)

SANS Internet Storm Center's daily Stormcast podcast digest for September 8, 2026, summarizing current internet security activity.

The SANS Internet Storm Center published its daily Stormcast audio briefing for Tuesday, September 8, 2026. The available item text contains only licensing and URL metadata, with no specific vulnerabilities, incidents, or topics described.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 9d agoAdvisory

Loyalty points fraud is funding hacker holidays (Lock and Code S07E18)

Malwarebytes' Lock and Code podcast examines loyalty-points theft, with LexisNexis' Kim Sutherland explaining why stolen airline and hotel points are lucrative for fraudsters.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions' Kim Sutherland says loyalty currency is worth roughly one cent per point, making 100,000 airline points worth about $1,000 in the US. Cited incidents include a Chicago teacher who lost 240,000 airline points, discovered only via a confirmation email, and a man whose miles were used to book rental cars in New York and Memphis. The episode discusses how points theft happens and what companies and consumers can do.

Malwarebytes Labs · 9d agoPhishing & fraud

Has anybody seen my keys? A key-hierarchy strategy for rack-level security

Oxide's RFD 0301 proposes a rack-level key hierarchy using Shamir secret sharing and a trust quorum to protect data-at-rest keys.

Oxide's request for discussion (RFD 0301) lays out a key-hierarchy strategy for rack-level security, deriving keys from a rack secret protected by Shamir secret sharing across a trust quorum of sleds, with keys exchanged over authenticated sprockets sessions. The document maps which keys protect control-plane data, metrics, Crucible extents, and authentication tokens, and defines open questions on key lifecycle, locality, and compromise handling. Future work includes sealing shares with the root of trust so an attacker would need to steal K whole sleds to reconstruct the rack secret.

Hacker News · security · 10d agoResearchHN 52↑ · 3 comments

Critical MikroTik Vulnerability - Patch Now, (Sun, Sep 6th)

MikroTik patched a critical SSH authentication bypass already exploited in the wild; attackers add accounts to affected routers for post-patch persistence.

MikroTik released a patch late last week for a critical vulnerability allowing SSH authentication bypass that is already being exploited in the wild, per the vendor's September 2026 advisory. Attackers have been adding new accounts to affected devices to maintain access even after the patch is installed. The patch attempts to detect compromise and set a 'Flagged' status on affected devices, and SANS ISC advises administrators to assume compromise.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 10d agoExploit / PoC in the wild

Researching Employment Scams

Schneier highlights research into North Korean fake-employment IT-worker scams that embed operatives in remote roles for long-term insider access.

The post discusses research into employment scams in which fabricated remote workers, associated with North Korean IT-worker schemes, embed in organizations for months or years to exfiltrate data or position for financial theft. Researchers used controlled sandbox environments to observe operatives syncing personal accounts and working under false identities. Commenters also note reverse scams targeting desperate job seekers through high-pressure MLM and door-to-door sales schemes.

Schneier on Security · 13d agoPhishing & fraud

Honeypot-Omaha and batch.py [Guest Diary], (Wed, Sep 2nd)

A SANS ISC guest diary describes batch.py, a Python tool that consolidates honeypot logs and enriches IOCs with threat intelligence data.

Written by a SANS.edu BACS intern, the diary explains analysis of the DShield Honeypot-Omaha sensor, which uses Cowrie to emulate SSH and Telnet and log attacker activity. The author's batch.py script implements a four-phase pipeline with SHA-256-generated master and guest authentication to consolidate JSON and log files, correlate data via external APIs, and produce MITRE, CVE, geolocation, threat-score and fingerprint enrichment for investigated indicators.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 14d agoTools1

ISC Stormcast For Thursday, September 3rd, 2026 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail/10080, (Thu, Sep 3rd)

SANS Internet Storm Center released its daily Stormcast audio briefing for September 3rd, 2026.

The SANS Internet Storm Center published its regular daily Stormcast podcast episode. The feed text contains no substantive threat details, only the podcast link and licensing information. No specific incidents, vulnerabilities, or advisories can be extracted from the available text.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 14d agoAdvisory

FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

The FCC proposed a public scorecard rating telecoms' anti-robocall effectiveness and removed 14 providers from US networks for compliance failures.

The Federal Communications Commission issued a public notice proposing a scorecard that would assess how effectively retail voice providers, including wireless, wireline and VoIP, prevent illegal robocalls, drawing on Robocall Mitigation Database filings, consumer complaint and enforcement data. The agency stressed it is not a rulemaking imposing new requirements, and it is seeking comment on scope, such as whether to focus on larger providers. The same day, the FCC removed 14 providers from the Robocall Mitigation Database for non-compliance, effectively requiring other US providers to block their traffic within two days.

CyberScoop · 14d agoPolicy & legal

ISC Stormcast For Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail/10078, (Wed, Sep 2nd)

SANS Internet Storm Center's daily Stormcast briefing for September 2, 2026; the feed carries no substantive story details.

This is the RSS shell for the ISC Stormcast daily podcast episode dated Wednesday, September 2, 2026. The provided text contains only licensing boilerplate and a link, with no incident, vulnerability, or threat details to extract.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 15d agoAdvisory

Guildma (Astaroth) malware infection from Brazilian Portuguese email, (Tue, Sep 1st)

Guildma (Astaroth) malware spread via geofenced Brazilian Portuguese phishing emails, using zip archives, shortcuts, and AutoIt loaders.

SANS researchers documented a Guildma (Astaroth) malware infection initiated on 2026-08-31 by a malicious Brazilian Portuguese email offering a DocuSign-themed PDF. The delivery link is geofenced to Brazil and requires Brazilian Portuguese browser and OS language settings, otherwise serving a legitimate installer. The infection chain uses a zip archive containing a Windows shortcut that retrieves a DLL saved as an alternate data stream, which installs a compiled AutoIt package for persistence. Unique SHA-256 indicators and HTTPS traffic to Azure-hosted and .cfd domains were observed, with prior reports noting the campaign's abuse of GitHub.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 15d agoMalware in the wild

Threat Actors Don’t Want Better Attacks. They Want Repeatable Ones

Opinion piece argues attackers prioritize repeatable playbooks like ClickFix (47% of Microsoft-notified attacks) and living-off-the-land over novel techniques.

The column analyzes why commodity techniques scale: Microsoft observed ClickFix as the top initial access method at 47% of its notifications last year, while Bitdefender found 84% of 700,000 analyzed high-severity incidents involved binaries already present on machines. Verizon's DBIR shows vulnerability exploitation rising to 31% of initial access vectors, up from 20%, and ransomware leak-site rankings show Qilin (roughly 1,600 claimed victims) and The Gentlemen (121 claimed victims in June) competing on throughput. The author argues attackers behave like a generics business, standardizing repeatable procedures rather than investing in novel tradecraft.

The Hacker News · 15d agoIndustry

ISC Stormcast For Tuesday, September 1st, 2026 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail/10076, (Tue, Sep 1st)

SANS Internet Storm Center's daily Stormcast podcast for September 1, 2026 summarizes current internet threat activity; no detailed content provided.

This is the daily ISC Stormcast audio briefing from the SANS Internet Storm Center for Tuesday, September 1st, 2026. No article body was provided, so the specific stories covered in this episode cannot be extracted. Stormcast episodes typically summarize notable internet-wide security events and handler findings.

SANS Internet Storm Center · 16d agoAdvisory

19 Chrome and Edge Extensions Found With Wallet-Stealing and Crypto

Socket found 19 malicious Chrome and Edge extensions, active since February 2024, stealing wallet seed phrases and credentials and draining crypto from about 80,000 users.

Socket researcher Karlo Zanki documented a cluster of 18 Chrome and one Edge extensions with wallet secret stealing and cryptocurrency draining capabilities, tracked as campaign Superior and possibly active since February 2024. The actor created 14 extensions and bought five legitimate ones, later pushing malicious updates; the largest, Enable Right Click & Copy, has roughly 80,000 installs across both browsers. The extensions maintain WebSocket C2 connections with endpoint rotation, strip CSP headers, and load 16 modules including multi-chain wallet drainers, hardware-wallet seed-phrase harvesters, credential grabbers, and ClickFix-style lures.

The Hacker News · 19d agoMalware in the wild

E4del and PINHOLE RATs Turn FTP Banners Into Dead Drops for Malware Commands

Researchers identified two new RATs, E4del and PINHOLE, using FTP banners as dead drop resolvers to fetch C2 commands via ClickFix-style lures.

SOCRADAR documented two previously unreported RATs, E4del and PINHOLE, that use FTP banners as dead drop resolvers, a first in-the-wild use of this technique. E4del is a Node.js-based RAT hidden in a digitally signed Electron application masquerading as Discord, with tiered-jitter beaconing, reverse shell, screenshot capture and desktop streaming. PINHOLE is more advanced, using Pinterest, SurveyMonkey and Cloudflare Workers for C2 resolution, six layers of unpacking, Halo's Gate EDR evasion and Early Bird APC injection. A related WebDAV delivery chain overlaps with ClearFake campaigns distributing WordlistLoader and Amatera Stealer.

The Hacker News · 22d agoMalware in the wild

Suspected Russian Hackers Abuse Google OAuth and WhatsApp Linking to Hijack Accounts

Google tracked three suspected Russian espionage clusters abusing OAuth flows, app passwords, and WhatsApp linking to hijack accounts of diplomats and defense targets.

Google Threat Intelligence Group detailed three suspected Russian espionage clusters, UNC6293, UNC7005 (Storm-2945), and UNC5976, targeting academia, aerospace, defense, governments, and think tanks in Europe, the US, Ukraine, and Armenia. UNC6293, assessed as a sub-cluster of APT29/Ice Relic, conducted OAuth and application-specific password phishing while impersonating State Department officials. UNC5976 registered file-sharing-themed domains hosting fake OAuth login pages and deployed a malicious Excel plugin codenamed HEADRUSH, while UNC7005 abused WhatsApp device linking to hijack accounts and record victims' audio and video.

The Hacker News · 26d agoThreat actor in the wild