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Source: Help Net Security

269 stories in the last 30d

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CategoryAllTools 61Industry 50AI safety & security 21Exploit / PoC 19Phishing & fraud 15Research 15Data breach 13Threat actor 11AI tools & infra 11AI industry 10Vulnerability 9Advisory 9Malware 8Policy & legal 5
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August 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast: How do we deal with the patch apocalypse?

August 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast urges risk-based triage as AI inflates CVE volume, flags actively exploited SharePoint RCE CVE-2026-50522 and LegacyHive Windows flaw.

July 2026 Patch Tuesday set records with over 600 CVEs, including 405 for Windows 11 and Server 2025, though only two were exploited zero-days and one was publicly disclosed. The author recommends prioritizing known-exploited and internet-facing vulnerabilities, matching patches to high-risk systems, and accelerating ring-based deployment toward Microsoft's suggested three-day turnaround. Notable items include actively exploited SharePoint RCE CVE-2026-50522 enabling machine key theft, the unassigned LegacyHive Windows User Profile Service flaw, and several end-of-servicing dates for Windows and Exchange.

Help Net Security · 22d agoIndustry in the wildCVE-2026-505221

New TCG guidance gives buyers a way to test PQC-ready TPM claims

Trusted Computing Group published PTP 1.07-based requirements defining PQC-ready and PQC-upgradable TPM designations to guide buyers assessing quantum-safe hardware.

The Trusted Computing Group published requirements establishing PTP 1.07, based on TPM 2.0 Library Specification Version 1.85, as the baseline for a 'TCG PQC-ready TPM', and defined a second designation, 'TCG PQC-upgradable TPM', for chips that can be upgraded to that support. The guidance lets buyers request vendor evidence that TPMs meet end-to-end post-quantum requirements for identities, attestation, and hardware-anchored trust rather than single-algorithm compliance. TCG also announced plans to extend its certification programs to certify TPMs meeting PTP 1.07, noting that 90% of businesses still lack a formal PQC roadmap.

Help Net Security · 22d agoTools

INTERPOL crackdown on West African crime rings uncovers troubling new trend

INTERPOL's Operation Jackal IV arrested 58 suspects across 22 countries targeting Black Axe-linked West African fraud networks, flagging a rising trend of sextortion against minors.

Operation Jackal IV (November 2025 to June 2026) coordinated arrests across 22 countries against West African organized crime groups such as Black Axe, which INTERPOL links to a large share of global cyber-enabled fraud. Johannesburg raids on a romance and investment scam syndicate targeting retirees yielded $2.67 million seized, 257 bank accounts frozen and 39 arrests, while Argentina exposed a 196-member Crime-as-a-Service network with 17 arrests. Romanian police dismantled a call-center investment scam with roughly €143 million stolen and laundered, and INTERPOL warned these groups increasingly sextort minors as young as 14 and procure Crime-as-a-Service via the dark web.

Help Net Security · 22d agoThreat actor

Citrix UniconOS dual boot turns Windows endpoints into their own recovery device

Citrix released UniconOS dual boot in Release 7 2607, turning Windows endpoints into self-recovery devices after ransomware, failed updates or OS corruption.

Citrix announced dual boot in UniconOS Release 7 2607, which installs an isolated, hardened recovery environment alongside Windows in a separate partition protected by secure boot. If Windows is unavailable, users reboot into UniconOS and reconnect to applications via Citrix DaaS and SecurAccess with Chrome Enterprise. The capability is aimed at reducing reliance on spare hardware and central reimaging during ransomware or update failures, with automatic enrollment in UniconOS Management for fleet-wide boot policies.

Help Net Security · 22d agoTools

AI supply chain risk is showing up in developer workflows first

Zentera Systems CEO says AI supply chain attacks currently hit developer workflows first, advising segmentation over tooling and citing the Phantom Raven campaign.

In an interview, Zentera Systems CEO Dr. Jaushin Lee argues that most active AI supply chain incidents target developer workflows and open-source package repositories, while poisoned model weights, compromised MCP servers, and poisoned vector stores remain largely in research and demos. He cites the active 'Phantom Raven' campaign, where attackers register AI-hallucinated package names in public repositories with malicious payloads that silently infect vibe-coding build pipelines. He recommends software-defined segmentation, semiconductor-style project enclaves with egress controls, and warns that self-hosting models without agent sandboxing leaves exposure unchanged.

Help Net Security · 22d agoAI safety & security

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 Security · 22d agoMalware in the wild

The cybercrime supply chain has five stages, each with a price

Vigilant's CEO outlines the five-stage cybercrime supply chain, from $5-$50 credential logs through RaaS affiliates to laundering, plus cookie-based MFA bypass.

In a Help Net Security video, Vigilant CEO Chris Nyhuis argues the lone ransomware attacker image is 15 years out of date and describes five businesses inside the cybercrime supply chain. The stages are infostealer harvesters, brokers who verify and resell access, ransomware-as-a-service operators, affiliates who run intrusions, and launderers. He notes stolen credential logs sell for $5 to $50, broker listings stay under $1,000, and stolen session cookies let attackers bypass multi-factor authentication.

Help Net Security · 22d agoIndustry

Unpatched Zimbra servers are falling to CVE-2026-73570 attacks

Attackers are exploiting unpatched Zimbra servers via CVE-2026-73570; 274 instances compromised, and CISA added the flaw to its KEV catalog.

The Shadowserver Foundation counted at least 274 compromised internet-facing Zimbra Collaboration Suite instances exploited through CVE-2026-73570, up from 155 on August 20. The unauthenticated code injection flaw affects servers with the optional zimbra-snmp package and SNMP notifications enabled, allowing arbitrary OS command execution via crafted SMTP requests. Synacor patched the issue in ZCS v10.1.20 on July 20, 2026, and at least 8,200 instances remain unpatched. CISA added the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and gave US federal civilian agencies three days to remediate and check for compromise.

Help Net Security · 22d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-735701

ShinyHunters taunts ReliaQuest after its own employee falls for social engineering attack

ShinyHunters mocked ReliaQuest after a fake-SSO social engineering call gave attackers brief view-only access to its identity dashboard via one employee.

ReliaQuest confirmed that on August 22, 2026, a caller posing as a named security team member directed an employee to a fake single sign-on page, capturing a password and an approved MFA push notification. The attackers, linked to extortion group ShinyHunters, obtained brief view-only access to the identity dashboard, with no applications, systems, or customer data reached and no persistence established. ShinyHunters posted screenshots claiming access to a ReliaQuest Okta SSO account on its leak site on August 23, contradicting the company's account. The incident followed ReliaQuest's warning about a ShinyHunters campaign using .claims TLD domains to impersonate legal, help desk, and IT staff.

Help Net Security · 22d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

TruffleHog AWS Analyze reduces remediation time on leaked AWS credentials

Truffle Security launched TruffleHog AWS Analyze, which maps leaked AWS keys' permissions and role assumptions; research found 88% of 64,024 leaked keys still active.

Truffle Security announced TruffleHog AWS Analyze, a TruffleHog Enterprise feature that enriches leaked AWS credentials with identity, effective permissions, and role-assumption context to help teams assess blast radius and prioritize remediation, extending earlier coverage of SaaS and Google Cloud to AWS. Truffle Security research on 64,024 unique leaked AWS keys found 88% still active, a median exposure of five years, only 14% rotated, 84% with full administrator access, and 1 in 6 being root keys, including 929 keys AWS had flagged via its compromised-key quarantine policy that still authenticated. A scan of 7.6 petabytes of public AI training data on Hugging Face found 3,343 live AWS keys, over 900 of which could list S3 buckets holding at least 51.7 TB of private data.

Help Net Security · 22d agoTools

Fideo Lens reveals connections across identities, accounts and devices

Fideo Intelligence launched Fideo Lens, an investigative platform mapping relationships across identities, accounts, devices and behaviors for fraud and AML teams.

Fideo Intelligence introduced Fideo Lens, an investigative intelligence platform that helps fraud, financial crime, and AML teams discover hidden relationships among identities, accounts, devices, and behaviors. The tool draws on the company's Identity Fraud Intelligence Network (iFIN) and offers interactive relationship mapping, entity resolution, explainable reason codes, and continuously refreshed data. It is designed to complement existing fraud, AML, and case management systems rather than replace them.

Help Net Security · 22d agoTools

Microsoft patches critical Entra ID vulnerability (CVE-2026-69836)

Microsoft patched critical Entra ID RCE CVE-2026-69836 (CVSS 10.0), fully mitigated server-side with no customer action; no in-the-wild exploitation confirmed.

Microsoft patched CVE-2026-69836, a critical (maximum CVSS 10.0) unauthenticated remote code execution flaw in Entra ID caused by deserialization of untrusted data over a network. Entra ID, formerly Azure Active Directory, is Microsoft's cloud identity service verifying logins and controlling access to Microsoft 365, Azure, and connected third-party apps. The flaw was discovered by Microsoft Principal Security Engineer Robert Fitzpatrick and fully mitigated server-side, requiring no customer action. Microsoft initially reported the bug as exploited, but later changed the status to 'no' and confirmed the vulnerability was not exploited in the wild.

Help Net Security · 23d agoVulnerabilityCVE-2026-69836

GentleKiller targets more than 400 security processes across 48 products

ESET details the Gentlemen ransomware gang's in-house GentleKiller EDR-killer framework targeting over 400 security processes across 48 products, supplied to affiliates.

ESET analyzed the Gentlemen ransomware gang's in-house GentleKiller EDR-killer framework, confirmed through an internal data leak from May 2026. The framework has at least eight variants impersonating legitimate security products and abusing vulnerable or malicious kernel drivers, targeting more than 400 process names across 48 security products. Gentlemen emerged in late 2025, became one of the five most active ransomware gangs in Q1 2026, offers affiliates a 90% ransom share, and practices double extortion using Go-based and C-based ESXi encryptors. The suite also reuses outside tools including HexKiller, ThrottleBlood, and HavocKiller, unified by a shared evasion layer that mimics well-known security vendors.

Help Net Security · 23d agoRansomware in the wild

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 · 23d agoAI industry1

Building a risk-based vulnerability management program that scales

Asimily CEO Shankar Somasundaram outlines a risk-based vulnerability management approach using inventory, attack paths, KEV and EPSS data.

In a Help Net Security video, Asimily CEO Shankar Somasundaram argues patching everything is infeasible as AI-driven attacks inflate vulnerability counts, with one customer finding a thousand unknowns for each known one. He recommends building a full inventory of devices, applications, and data flows, mapping attack paths for reachability, and prioritizing with KEV, EPSS, and business impact. Mitigations include patching, virtual patching via NACs and firewalls, segmentation, and configuration snapshots to detect drift.

Help Net Security · 23d agoIndustry

$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

Researchers open-source a Wi-Fi cyber range for security training

NTNU and Aegean researchers open-source a software-emulated Wi-Fi cyber range using mac80211_hwsim with LLM-assisted scenario building.

Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the University of the Aegean published a design and prototype for a cyber range dedicated to IEEE 802.11 security training, emulating access points and clients with mac80211_hwsim, Linux namespaces, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, dnsmasq, and FreeRADIUS. The platform bundles Aircrack-ng, Wireshark, and custom tools WPAxFuzz and Bl0ck, and can convert plain-language scenario descriptions into deployable definitions via a locally hosted Llama model. A working prototype covering scenario creation and deployment is on GitHub; monitoring, access control, and orchestration zones remain future work.

Help Net Security · 23d agoTools1

Six new dnsmasq vulnerabilities open the door to DNS cache poisoning, local root

Six dnsmasq flaws enable DNS cache poisoning, DoS, memory leaks, and local root code execution; fixes ship in version 2.92rel2.

Researchers disclosed six dnsmasq vulnerabilities spanning memory safety and input validation, including heap buffer overflows in extract_name() and extract_addresses(), DNSSEC infinite-loop and out-of-bounds read flaws, and a DHCPv6 out-of-bounds write allowing local root code execution. Exploitation paths include DNS cache poisoning, bypassing security controls, remote denial of service, and local privilege escalation. Maintainers released version 2.92rel2 with fixes, and a stable 2.93 release is expected within weeks.

Help Net Security · 23d agoVulnerabilityCVE-2026-2291CVE-2026-4890CVE-2026-4891+3 CVEs

Google researchers uncover criminal zero-day exploit likely built with AI

Google links a likely LLM-built criminal zero-day for an open-source admin tool to planned mass exploitation and maps AI-assisted threats.

Google Threat Intelligence Group linked a zero-day exploit for a popular open-source web-based administration tool, enabling 2FA bypass with valid credentials via a semantic logic error, to a criminal group, citing educational docstrings, a hallucinated CVSS score, and textbook Python as signs of LLM authorship; the vendor was notified before a planned mass exploitation campaign. The report also details Russia-nexus malware families CANFAIL and LONGSTREAM using AI-generated decoy code, the PROMPTSPY Android backdoor driving the UI through the Gemini API, APT27 using Gemini to build relay tooling, and the TeamPCP (UNC6780) supply chain compromise of LiteLLM and Trivy repositories that planted the SANDCLOCK credential stealer.

Help Net Security · 23d agoThreat actor

Can your coding style predict whether your code is vulnerable?

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth researchers present VulStyle, a stylometry-based vulnerability detector that also exposes benchmark reliability problems.

VulStyle combines stylometric features with syntax-tree structure and source tokens, pre-trained on about 4.9 million functions across seven programming languages and fine-tuned on five vulnerability detection datasets. It beat token-only detectors on some benchmarks but its F1 drops sharply on DiverseVul, which the authors link to noisy labels inflating reported performance across popular datasets. The authors argue style-aware detection should be harder to evade but did not test this empirically, and they note that uniform LLM-generated code may strip away the individual developer style the model depends on.

Help Net Security · 23d agoResearch1

One in four MCP servers opens AI agent security to code execution risk

Noma Security whitepaper finds most popular AI Skills and many MCP servers carry high-risk capabilities, with state changes most prevalent.

Noma Security analyzed hundreds of popular MCP servers and Skills across eight risk categories, finding most widely used Skills carry at least one risky characteristic and a typical enterprise runs well over a hundred high-risk agent tools, with arbitrary code execution common across MCP servers. The most prevalent risk is the ability to change state or data, and named toxic combinations include ContextCrush data leakage, ForcedLeak via poisoned Salesforce CRM records, DockerDash supply-chain compromise, the Replit production database deletion, and the hijacked Amazon Q VS Code extension. Building on OWASP LLM06:2025, the paper proposes the No Excessive CAP framework of capabilities, autonomy, and permissions, recommending allowlisting, MCP version pinning, approval gates on irreversible actions, and user-scoped expiring credentials.

Help Net Security · 23d agoAI safety & security

What researchers learned about building an LLM security workflow

Oslo and FFI researchers show structured agentic workflows lift LLM alert-triage accuracy from 0% to about 93% on malicious cases.

Researchers at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment tested GPT-5-mini, Claude 3 Haiku, Qwen3:30B, and Gemma 3:27B on alerts from the AIT Log Data Set V1.1; given only alert descriptions and log summaries, all four models correctly flagged zero percent of true-positive cases involving reconnaissance, brute-force logins, and initial access. Wrapping the same models in a workflow with constrained SQL queries over Suricata logs, an evidence summarizer, and a verdict stage with revision loops raised malicious-case accuracy to an average of 93 percent, with GPT-5-mini identifying every malicious case across 100 runs. The authors flag it as a proof-of-concept on one synthetic scenario and note models skewed conservative on benign alerts, with GPT-5-mini marking every benign case uncertain.

Help Net Security · 23d agoAI research1

ChatGPT advanced account security adds passkeys and hardware keys

OpenAI launches Advanced Account Security for ChatGPT and Codex, replacing passwords with passkeys or hardware keys and disabling email/SMS recovery.

The opt-in setting disables password sign-in plus email and SMS account recovery for ChatGPT and Codex accounts, allowing only passkeys, hardware security keys, and user-held recovery keys, with shortened sessions and automatic exclusion of enrolled accounts' conversations from model training. OpenAI partnered with Yubico to offer discounted bundles of the YubiKey C Nano and C NFC, while any FIDO2/WebAuthn-compliant key or software passkey is supported, mirroring standards adopted by Google, Microsoft, and GitHub. Individual members of Trusted Access for Cyber using the most permissive models must enable the setting from June 1, 2026, or their organizations can attest to phishing-resistant authentication in their single sign-on.

Help Net Security · 23d agoAI industry

Can AI make threat intelligence easier? One platform thinks so

Feedly positions its AI-driven Threat Intelligence platform to cut CTI collection time, scanning 10,000+ sources with 1,000 AI models and reporting 70% time savings.

A profile of Feedly Threat Intelligence describes how CTI teams such as RH-ISAC reduced threat data collection from 10 hours weekly to 2-3 hours after adoption. The platform scans over 10,000 open web sources using 1,000 AI models to extract TTPs, CVEs and IoCs into a real-time Threat Graph queryable via an Ask AI LLM with source citations. Customers including GreyNoise, Sopra Steria, gematik and GISA reported measurable gains such as 20 hours saved daily and earlier vulnerability flagging than CISA 65% of the time. The product integrates with Anomali ThreatStream, Cortex XSOAR, Microsoft Sentinel and OpenCTI, plus a REST API and GitHub scripts.

Help Net Security · 23d agoTools

Ransomware attackers are zeroing in on mid-market companies

Black Kite found mid-market firms were 73% of disclosed ransomware victims in North America and Europe from January 2023 to June 2026.

Black Kite analyzed 13,336 publicly disclosed ransomware and data-extortion incidents with known revenue between January 2023 and June 2026, finding mid-market companies (annual revenue $10M-$1B) accounted for 73% of victims in North America and Europe, consistently between 72% and 75%. Manufacturing was the most affected sector, followed by professional, scientific, and technical services and construction. Of more than 120,000 assessed mid-market organizations, 54.7% had at least one significant patch-management issue on a public-facing system, over a quarter had a known-exploited vulnerability, and nearly one-third had stealer-log credential findings.

Help Net Security · 23d agoRansomware

AWS makes it easier to spot firewall rules that have gone quiet

AWS Network Firewall added rule hit counts for stateful rules, letting teams identify unused rules and validate control effectiveness at no added cost.

AWS Network Firewall's rule hit count capability gives security teams visibility into which stateful firewall rules are matching traffic, helping identify unused or redundant rules and validate controls for compliance frameworks like PCI DSS 4.0 and DORA. The feature covers stateful rules in custom and managed rule groups, is enabled by default at no additional Network Firewall cost, and is available in all supported Regions except UAE and Bahrain. Data is surfaced in the Network Firewall dashboard's Top Rule Hits view and can be queried via CloudWatch Logs Insights or Amazon Athena.

Help Net Security · 23d agoTools

Product showcase: AI Paper Trail shows the privacy cost of talking to AI

Proton launched AI Paper Trail, a free tool that analyzes ChatGPT or Claude exports and reports what personal data can be inferred from AI conversations.

Proton released AI Paper Trail, a free web tool that analyzes the 200 most recent prompts from exported ChatGPT or Claude conversation histories and generates a privacy report with an AI Exposure Score, inferred personal data categories, and an estimated advertising value. In a hands-on test it identified 47 data points, returned a 58/100 exposure score, estimated $185 in advertising value, and flagged five red flags spanning location, interests, finances, and relationships. Proton states that uploaded data is deleted after analysis and is not stored on its Lumo servers.

Help Net Security · 23d agoAI industry

Cybersecurity job ads demanding AI skills double in a year

AI skill requirements in G7 cybersecurity job postings doubled year-over-year to 28.5%, with AI-skill roles paying a 14.9% salary premium.

Research from the AI Workforce Consortium, Cornerstone and Indeed covering April 2024 to March 2026 found that 28.5% of G7 cybersecurity job postings between October 2025 and March 2026 required AI skills, double the 14.2% a year earlier. Lightcast salary data put median advertised pay for AI-skill postings 14.9% above the overall cybersecurity median in the US. Senior-titled postings grew 65% in six months while junior titles only recently returned to growth, and a Cisco survey of 8,000 security leaders flagged hands-on AI-agent experience and technical depth as the biggest entry-level gaps.

Help Net Security · 23d agoIndustry

Fake bank websites play dead to evade security scanners

Fortra uncovered Chameleon SEO Poisoning: cloaked typosquat bank sites rank on Google and Bing to steal credentials while evading scanners, with cases up 40% in Q2 2026.

Fortra's threat intelligence unit FIRE spent three months tracking Chameleon SEO Poisoning, a phishing method that ranks recently registered typosquat domains on second-level domains like .ph.com and .gr.com above legitimate bank sites on Google and Bing. The technique uses presentation control (cloaking by referrer): direct visits get a dead, offline-looking page, while search-referred clicks receive a convincing fake bank login page, letting poisoned results persist for days or weeks. Fortra recorded a 40% jump in cases during the second quarter of 2026 and recommends referrer-spoofed URL testing, faster SLD takedowns, and bookmarking bank logins.

Help Net Security · 23d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Android car head units infected with proxy botnet malware through built-in software updaters

Kaspersky found malware delivered via car head unit updaters, attributed to the MoYu Group's BADBOX operation, recruiting devices into a proxy botnet.

Kaspersky discovered malware delivered through the built-in TWCore system updater in Android-based car head units running DoFun infotainment firmware, turning devices into ad-fraud tools and nodes in a proxy botnet. The three-stage infection chain (JarService dropper, loader, and final payload supporting nine commands) installs the zhima reverse-proxy module, which Nokia's Deepfield team independently found on TV set-top boxes. Kaspersky attributes the operation with high confidence to the MoYu Group, linked to the BADBOX supply-chain botnet first identified by HUMAN Security in 2023. DoFun closed the gap after Kaspersky's responsible disclosure.

Help Net Security · 23d agoMalware in the wild

CISA's logging guidance works beyond government

CISA released its Logging Reference Architecture in August 2026 to help federal agencies meet OMB M-26-14 logging requirements, usable as a benchmark by critical infrastructure operators.

CISA's Logging Reference Architecture (LRA), released in August 2026, helps US federal civilian agencies satisfy logging requirements in OMB Memorandum M-26-14 and explicitly encourages critical infrastructure operators to use it as a benchmark. The framework is organized around continuous event monitoring and threat hunting, investigation, response, and forensics, with a federal baseline of six months searchable and one year retrievable logs. Agencies must submit Agency Logging Plans within 90 days and work toward Advanced maturity within 320 days; the guidance also treats AI outputs as derived data requiring human review and preserved metadata.

Help Net Security · 23d agoAdvisory

Suspected Iran-linked attack knocked UK power plant offline for days

Suspected Iranian hackers knocked a small UK power plant offline for four days in July 2026, with no noticeable impact on the national grid.

Sources told The Telegraph that a British power plant was offline for four days in July 2026 following a suspected Iranian cyberattack, reported to the National Cyber Security Centre. The UK energy minister said the incident affected a small-scale energy generator with no noticeable effect on the power supply, and energy CEOs were briefed and given further advice afterward. The attack followed warnings about Iranian cyber activity against US energy, water, and government networks, including a coordinated attack on 30+ US community water utilities.

Help Net Security · 23d agoThreat actor

Week in review: Records allegedly stolen from Azure tenants, Medusa ransomware hits 500+ orgs

Week in review: Medusa ransomware hit 500+ orgs per CISA, millions of Azure tenant records allegedly stolen, SafePal and French tax authority breaches disclosed.

Help Net Security's weekly roundup covers the FBI, CISA, and HHS joint advisory update reporting Medusa ransomware has breached more than 500 organizations since June 2021, and threat actor TheHatman's claim of millions of employee records stolen from Azure tenants of Fortune 500 firms including McDonald's, Vodafone, Kyndryl, and Tata Consultancy Services, per Hudson Rock. It also covers the SafePal breach affecting 39,798 customers, France's DGFiP breach exposing data on 678,000 individuals, and UT San delaying its fall semester after a cyberattack. Security items include critical unauthenticated GitLab flaw CVE-2026-19478, an actively exploited patched macOS Screen Sharing flaw deploying a cryptominer, US charges against 17 Mabna Institute Iranian hackers over 31TB of stolen academic data, and Google Mandiant's AI agents finding 100+ high-severity vulnerabilities.

Help Net Security · 24d agoData breach in the wildCVE-2026-19478

Nearly half of enterprises have no one leading PQC migration

Axiad survey finds 46% of enterprises lack a single leader for post-quantum cryptography migration despite most maintaining cryptographic inventories.

Axiad research on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) readiness found 75% of respondents maintain continuously updated inventories of certificates, keys, and algorithms, but 46% have no single person owning the migration. About half have never formally assessed whether public-facing infrastructure supports post-quantum key exchange. 67% said the harvest-now-decrypt-later threat is an active priority, with competing priorities, budget constraints, and lack of regulatory guidance cited as top obstacles; executives were more confident than PKI practitioners.

Help Net Security · 26d agoPolicy & legal

Citrix urges customers to fix critical NetScaler authentication bypass (CVE-2026-19490)

Citrix patched a critical authentication bypass, CVE-2026-19490, in NetScaler Gateway and NetScaler ADC, urging customers to upgrade immediately.

Citrix has patched two flaws in NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway. CVE-2026-19490 is a critical authentication bypass (CVSS v4.0 9.3) that works when the appliance is configured as an SSL VPN, ICA Proxy, CVPN, RDP Proxy Gateway or AAA virtual server, with additional conditions depending on firmware and SAML configuration. A second flaw, CVE-2026-19489 (CVSS 8.8), is a memory overflow that can cause denial of service when SIP ALG is enabled on LSN setups. Rapid7 had not observed exploitation as of August 19, 2026, but urged emergency patching; a signature-based mitigation is available via NetScaler Console.

Help Net Security · 26d agoVulnerabilityCVE-2026-19490CVE-2026-19489

GitLab 19.3 helps enterprises scale agentic development securely

GitLab 19.3 runs its Duo Agent Platform AI Gateway inside Dedicated single-tenant environments and adds Secrets Manager plus agentic SAST remediation.

GitLab 19.3 lets GitLab Dedicated customers run the Duo Agent Platform AI Gateway within the same single-tenant environment and region, with support for bring-your-own inference models. The release adds Secrets Manager in limited availability scoping secrets to environment and branch across Kubernetes, Terraform, and OpenTofu, plus bulk SAST false positive detection and agentic vulnerability resolution generating ready-to-merge fixes. Flow Creator Agent creates automation flows from plain-language descriptions, and GitLab Credits usage caps are now generally available.

Help Net Security · 26d agoAI tools & infra1

A $25 template helped scammers build hundreds of phantom bank domains

Allure Security researchers found 838 live phantom bank sites sharing a $25 template, built to lend credibility to investment and romance scams.

Allure Security researchers discovered roughly 2,200 domains presenting invented banks, of which 1,095 returned working pages and 838 contained a shared phrase. 97% of those retained parts of the $25 Cuex front-end template and 94% ran Laravel, with a misspelled 'Curreny Charts' heading on 90% of sites. The sites presented login pages, session cookies, and anti-forgery tokens consistent with a fraud model where scam contacts direct victims to fake financial portals. A leftover 'Remedy bank' title and form submission to remedycodes[.]site linked some sites to already-flagged fraud infrastructure.

Help Net Security · 26d agoPhishing & fraud

New infosec products of the week: August 21, 2026

Weekly product roundup covering NETSCOUT outbound DDoS mitigation, F5 AI Gateway enhancements, Intezer Workflows, and Tufin TOS 5.3.

NETSCOUT extended Adaptive DDoS Protection to automatically mitigate outbound attack traffic for service providers. F5 enhanced its AI Gateway and integrated it into the F5 AI Security Platform for unified AI access governance. Intezer launched Workflows, native automation and response inside its platform without a separate SOAR, and Tufin released Orchestration Suite 5.3 with AI-powered Segmentation Intelligence for multi-vendor environments.

Help Net Security · 26d agoTools

Attackers impersonate popular AI brands to spread malware

Sophos documented 38 MDR cases where attackers impersonated AI brands like Claude and Perplexity to deliver infostealers and backdoors.

Sophos X-Ops analyzed 12 months of MDR cases and confirmed 38 incidents involving AI. Software impersonation accounted for 30 cases, with Claude impersonated in 26; fake installers used an 'InstallFix' technique delivering mshta commands, in-memory payloads, and process hollowing. Malicious browser extensions posing as AI assistants, including a fake Perplexity extension with 10,000 installs, acted as infostealers. In one case, attackers used a Claude coding agent to develop a Rust remote access trojan communicating over Slack after an SQL injection compromise.

Help Net Security · 26d agoThreat actor in the wild

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: December 16, 2025

Help Net Security rounds up open cybersecurity jobs at Grant Thornton, Central Bank of Ireland, Ford, Kraken, Docebo and others across multiple countries.

This is a job listing roundup covering cybersecurity openings at organizations including Grant Thornton, the Central Bank of Ireland, Ford Motor Company, Global Medical Response, banglalink, Mindrift, Kraken, PFH Technology Group, Kiwibank, Mazrui International, Docebo and Alpitronic. Roles span SOC operations, GRC, endpoint security, FedRAMP compliance, threat intelligence and privacy leadership across the USA, Ireland, India, Bangladesh, France, UAE, Canada and other locations. All listings were marked as no longer accepting applications at publication time.

Help Net Security · 27d agoIndustry