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France Establishes New Government-Focused Cyber Incident Response Unit

France created REACTIV, an ANSSI-led interministerial cyber incident response unit for state services, after the DGFiP breach exposed up to 678,000 taxpayers.

ANSSI announced REACTIV (Interministerial Response & Action against Data Breaches) on September 7, a dedicated incident response capability for French state services. It lets ANSSI require ministries to take urgent protective measures for citizens' data and lead centralized technical crisis communications during attacks on state services. The move follows the DGFiP tax authority attack that exposed data of 350,000 to 678,000 taxpayers, after which the Prime Minister ordered an extensive audit of ANSSI. Two suspects aged 16 and 18 from the ZeroBytes hacking group were arrested in late August.

Infosecurity Magazine · 8d agoPolicy & legal

Mistral raises €3B as sovereign AI becomes big business

Mistral AI raised a €3B Series D at a €21B+ valuation, led by Samsung Electronics, to scale European compute capacity and sovereign AI services.

French AI lab Mistral AI raised €3 billion (~$3.58B) at a post-money valuation above €21 billion, which it calls the largest equity round ever completed by a European technology company. Samsung Electronics led the round, with EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity as co-leads; a16z, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Advent, BlackRock, and Luxembourg also participated. The company plans to build 1 GW of European compute capacity by 2030, offer region-selectable query processing, and host third-party open-weight models as part of a sovereign AI strategy. Mistral operates in 20 countries and targets governments and enterprises seeking control over AI models and data residency.

TechCrunch · AI · 8d agoAI industry

Risky Bulletin: BEC campaign steals €35 million from French notaries

Hackers stole over €35 million from 500+ French notary offices in a four-year BEC campaign; ANSSI spent two years helping evict the attackers.

A business email compromise campaign breached more than 500 French notary offices — about 7% of all French notaries per the Conseil Supérieur du Notariat — over four years, stealing more than €35 million by phishing initial access and silently modifying wire transfer details. France's cybersecurity agency ANSSI worked for two years behind the scenes to help notaries remove the persistent attackers, who had deep access; officials also feared hackers could issue fake notarized acts such as marriage certificates or forged real estate deals. No forged documents have been found so far, but notaries have added two-factor authentication and in-person requirements for banking details, and banks added extra checks in 2024. The newsletter also notes other incidents, including a $320 million Bitcoin extraction from Blockstream's Liquid Network and a JetBrains Cadence breach via TeamCity servers.

Risky Business News · 10d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

G7 Urges Fast-Track on Quantum-Safe Cybersecurity Rules

G7 cybersecurity agencies led by France's ANSSI urged accelerated transition to post-quantum cryptography, prioritizing critical systems and phased, risk-based migration.

Under France's 2026 G7 Presidency, ANSSI, chairing the G7 Cybersecurity Working Group, published a September 3 call to action urging governments and organizations to begin quantum-safe (PQC) transitions now, reframing the quantum threat as near-term. The document, signed by the national cyber agencies of all G7 members and supported by the EU Commission and ENISA, outlines five priorities including national PQC strategies, R&D, public-private partnerships, and integrating PQC into cybersecurity requirements. It recommends cryptographic inventories, dependency mapping, prioritizing the most critical systems, and buying PQC-integrated products during normal renewal cycles. ANSSI will stop vetting non-quantum-safe products in 2027, with PQC mandatory in some security product procurement by 2030.

Infosecurity Magazine · 12d agoPolicy & legal

Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

Mistral and Mozilla partnered to power Firefox's Smart Window AI browsing assistant in France and North America, with zero data retention.

Mozilla's Firefox Smart Window (beta) AI browsing assistant is now powered by Mistral models for users in France and North America, with the UK and Germany expected later this year. Conversations are not saved on Mozilla's servers by default, and Mistral agreed to zero data retention. Both companies frame the partnership as advancing open-source, privacy-first, and regionally fine-tuned AI, with models trained on regional languages, dialects, and cultural context.

Hacker News · securityupdated · 14h agofirst · 21h agoAI industry 2 sourcesHN 35↑ · 8 comments2

OpenAI banned Russian ChatGPT accounts backing covert influence operation

OpenAI banned Russian-run ChatGPT accounts behind fake think tank IBI, which used AI-generated posts and a 'Sovereignty Index' to push pro-Russia narratives.

OpenAI banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts, likely operated from Russia via VPNs, that generated English-language social media comments for X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram and Substack promoting the International Burke Institute (IBI). The Israel-branded IBI website, registered in February 2025, claimed ties to figures like Francis Fukuyama, but 34 of 36 sampled articles were copied or misattributed. Its 'Sovereignty Index' consistently ranked Russia favorably while criticizing France, Germany, the EU and the US; OpenAI rated the campaign at the lower end of Brookings Breakout Scale Category Three.

Security Affairs · 20d agoAI safety & security

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: June 30, 2026

Help Net Security lists cybersecurity job openings across the US, UAE, France, Israel, Japan, Ireland, India, and Canada at major employers.

The roundup includes roles such as AI Offensive Security Engineer at AGAPI, Cloud Security Engineer at Spotify, IAM Engineer at Proton, DFIR in Israel, and a Senior Inspector overseeing NIS2 and AI regulation compliance in Ireland. Most listings were marked as no longer accepting applications, with a few still open including DFIR at Cye, IAM Engineer at Proton, and Detection Engineering at Saronic. The list covers employers across finance, infrastructure, and technology sectors.

Help Net Security · 27d agoIndustry1

Ukrainian software developer faces 12 years in Swiss ransomware trial

Swiss prosecutors seek a 12-year sentence for a Ukrainian developer accused in LockerGoga, MegaCortex and Nefilim ransomware attacks causing roughly $160 million in losses.

A 52-year-old Ukrainian software developer went on trial at Zurich District Court over alleged involvement in ransomware attacks using LockerGoga, MegaCortex and Nefilim, with victims including Stadler Rail, Crealogix and Meier Tobler. Prosecutors allege he participated in attacks on 10 companies between December 2018 and May 2020, causing more than 130 million Swiss francs (~$160 million) in losses, and seek a 12-year sentence plus 1.8 million Swiss francs in proceeds. He denies developing malware, and his defense challenges digital evidence handling. The case ties to Oleksandr Ieremenko, who allegedly directed the attacks, was said to have FSB protection, and died falling from a Moscow window in 2022.

The Record · 29d agoPolicy & legal in the wild1

EU chief wants joint response to cyberattacks, sabotage

EU Commission President von der Leyen proposed an Emergency Security Protocol letting any member state convene joint responses to cyberattacks and sabotage.

In her State of the Union address, Ursula von der Leyen proposed an Emergency Security Protocol, modeled on NATO Article 4, allowing a single EU member state to summon all 27 governments to coordinate responses to cyberattacks, sabotage, arson, and drone incursions. The proposal is part of a broader European security strategy that includes a European Security Council with partners such as the UK, Canada, Norway, and Ukraine, plus a European Instrument for Strategic Enablers supporting cyber and defense capabilities. She cited rising incidents in Denmark, Lithuania, Poland, and an attempted drone attack in Leipzig, but did not specify whether unanimous decision-making rules would change.

The Record · 16h agoPolicy & legal

Revolut confirms customer data breach through fake government requests

Revolut disclosed customer identity data, including passports and possibly selfies, to an attacker using a legitimate government email domain.

Attackers impersonating a government agency used a legitimate agency email domain to submit fraudulent information requests, prompting Revolut to disclose customer identity and contact data to an unauthorized third party. Exposed data included birth dates, postal and email addresses, phone numbers, passport and driver's license copies, and possibly verification selfies, account statements, and transaction histories. Revolut said a limited number of customers were affected, blocked the email address, and notified the agency, law enforcement, and regulators, adding that systems and customer funds were unaffected. Security researcher ZachXBT reported the scam appeared to target high net worth users of the fintech, which serves over 80 million customers.

TechCrunch · Securityupdated · 2d agofirst · 4d agoData breach in the wild 3 sources3

Claude Used to Automate Exploitation and Data Theft Across Multiple Victims

Anthropic's 154-page report details Generative Threat Groups, including APT29-linked GTG-20006 and ShinyHunters affiliates, using Claude for reconnaissance, exploitation, and data theft.

Anthropic reports that between December 2025 and August 2026 state-sponsored hackers, criminals, spyware vendors, and propaganda operators used its Claude models for cyber attacks, weapons design, propaganda, and mass surveillance. Notable clusters include GTG-50014, a ShinyHunters affiliate that scanned 1.8 million Android APKs for secrets via 10 AWS EC2 workers, GTG-10007, a Chinese-speaking group targeting roughly 50 organizations, and GTG-50029, a lone French-speaking actor exploiting a previously undocumented WordPress re-installation race condition. The report describes multi-agent frameworks autonomously executing reconnaissance, exploitation, and exfiltration against multiple victims, and influence operations that were disrupted before building authentic audiences.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 12h agofirst · 5d agoThreat actor in the wild 19 sources1

Risky Bulletin: Ukraine's top prosecutor resigns amid scam call center scandal

Ukraine's top prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko resigned after NABU arrested a deputy for taking bribes protecting scam call centers running fake investment platforms.

Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau NABU arrested Serhiy Kropyva, Deputy Head of International Cooperation at the Prosecutor General's Office, alleging officials took monthly protection fees from a network of 100-500 scam call centers luring victims into fake investment platforms, with bribes reportedly growing from $700,000 to $3.5 million per month. Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko resigned on Monday, calling it a political decision, while Kropyva was fired with bail set at 120 million hryvnias ($2.7 million) and over 100 call centers shut down in the past month. The newsletter also briefly covers a cyberattack crippling more than 80 Luxembourg medical practices via payment vendor BMS Engineering, ShinyHunters' claimed theft of 200,000 Florida DMV driver records, a cyberattack on the American Meteor Society, and school closures in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Risky Business News · 7d agoPhishing & fraud

French prosecutors confirm arrest of suspected ZeroBytes hacker behind tax cyberattack

French prosecutors arrested an 18-year-old suspected ZeroBytes member tied to a tax authority breach exposing data of 600,000 people.

French authorities arrested an 18-year-old, alias 'ChatNoir,' in the Paris region on Aug. 18 and placed him in pretrial detention two days later over ZeroBytes attacks; a second suspect under 16 was arrested Aug. 26 and released. ZeroBytes claimed attacks on French government agencies, schools and companies starting July 16, including the DGFiP tax authority, which disclosed an August breach affecting data of more than 600,000 people. The suspect was previously under formal investigation for the 2024 Free telecom breach affecting over 19 million customers and for X account takeovers of BFM-TV and RMC linked to the Epsilon collective. Charged offenses carry up to 10 years in prison and a 300,000-euro fine.

The Record · 8d agoPolicy & legal

The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

A G7 working group report urges governments and industry to accelerate post-quantum cryptography migration, framing quantum risk as a near-term economic threat.

A cybersecurity working group formed at the June 2026 G7 Summit in France called on organizations to stop postponing migration of critical systems to post-quantum cryptography, warning that harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks against currently encrypted data exist today. The report was signed by CISA, the UK NCSC, France's ANSSI, Germany's BSI, Canada's CSE, Japan's NCO, and Italy's ACN. It also cautions that some NIST-selected PQC algorithms have already been broken on classical computers, reinforcing support for crypto-agility. The push aligns with a recent US executive order moving federal PQC migration timelines from 2035 to 2030, while Google and others target 2029.

CyberScoop · 13d agoPolicy & legal

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: March 10, 2026

Help Net Security's roundup lists open cybersecurity roles at BioNTech, AIG, ServiceNow and others across Europe, the Middle East and Canada.

A job-board roundup of cybersecurity openings including Associate Director Application Security at BioNTech (Germany), CISO at AIG (Israel), Cloud Security Professional at ServiceNow (Italy), and SOC/GRC, analyst, engineer and data governance roles in the UK, UAE, India, Canada and France. Roles span application security, cloud security, SOC operations, compliance and OT environments. Most listings are marked no longer accepting applications.

Help Net Security · 19d agoIndustry

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: March 31, 2026

Help Net Security's job roundup lists cybersecurity vacancies worldwide, from malware research director to SOC, IAM, and GRC roles, mostly already closed.

The roundup aggregates cybersecurity openings across Israel, Ireland, India, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Canada, the US and the UAE. Roles include Android malware research director, cloud security engineer, IAM analyst, SOC lead, GRC specialist, and vulnerability management positions at employers such as Iceland Foods, Pernod Ricard, A10 Networks, and TOMRA. Most listings were marked as no longer accepting applications at publication.

Help Net Security · 19d agoIndustry

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 · 21d agoIndustry

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: April 14, 2026

Help Net Security lists active cybersecurity job openings at employers including MANTECH, Honeywell, SMBC Group and SBS Transit across multiple countries.

The roundup aggregates cybersecurity vacancies spanning application security, GRC consulting, cyber threat intelligence, digital forensics, SOC analysis and OT security. Openings were posted in India, the United Kingdom, Italy, the USA, Singapore, France, Germany, Ireland and the UAE. Most roles were no longer accepting applications at publication. Named employers include Honeywell, MANTECH, TENEX.AI, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, SMBC Group, SBS Transit and VINCI Energies.

Help Net Security · 21d agoIndustry2

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 · 25d agoData breach in the wildCVE-2026-19478

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

Paris Prosecutors Raid Elon Musk X

Paris prosecutors raided the offices of Elon Musk's social platform X as part of a judicial investigation in France.

Infosecurity Magazine reports that Paris prosecutors carried out a raid at the French offices of X, the social platform owned by Elon Musk. Such raids typically accompany French judicial investigations, and this action places the platform's operations in Europe under legal scrutiny. The full scope of the warrant and any charges were not detailed in the available information.

Infosecurity Magazine · 29d agoPolicy & legal

International Meteor Organization says cyberattack dealt ‘critical blow’ to website

A cyberattack forced the International Meteor Organization's website offline, with weeks of partial downtime expected during an infrastructure migration.

The Belgium-based International Meteor Organization (IMO), founded in 1988 to coordinate meteor observation standards and maintain a global fireball database, said a cyberattack took much of its aging infrastructure offline. The site now shows a static notice, and the organization expects several weeks of partial downtime while transitioning to new infrastructure, with the fireball reporting system prioritized and already restored. No hacking group has claimed responsibility. The incident follows 2023 attacks on the NOIRLab astronomy facility in Hawaii and the ALMA observatory in Chile, plus ransomware at the American Meteorological Society.

The Recordupdated · 8h agofirst · 14h agoData breach 2 sources

Hackuity Raises $19 Million for AI-Powered Vulnerability Management

Vulnerability management vendor Hackuity raised $19 million led by Forgepoint Capital, bringing total funding to $38 million for its AI-driven prioritization platform.

Hackuity, a Lyon, France-based vulnerability management vendor founded in 2018, raised $19 million led by Forgepoint Capital, bringing total funding to $38 million. Its platform aggregates and normalizes vulnerability and asset data from more than 130 security products, adding threat intelligence and business context for risk-based prioritization and remediation orchestration. Existing investors Bright Pixel Capital, Bpifrance, and Seventure Partners participated; the funds will strengthen AI capabilities and support expansion across Europe and Asia.

SecurityWeek · 18h agoIndustry

Swiss court sentences 52-year-old Ukrainian ransomware dev to nearly 13 years in the cooler

Zurich court sentences Ukrainian ransomware developer to 12 years, 9 months for LockerGoga, MegaCortex and Nefilim attacks including Stadler Rail.

Zurich District Court sentenced a 52-year-old Ukrainian to 12 years and 9 months for developing LockerGoga, MegaCortex, and Nefilim ransomware, plus a 10-year ban from Switzerland; the verdict can be appealed. The operations hit over 1,800 victims across 71 countries with losses of several hundred million Swiss francs, including Stadler Rail (2020, $6 million Nefilim demand), Meier Tobler, and Crealogix. Alleged mastermind Volodymyr Tymoshchuk, indicted in the US and tied to at least 250 companies including Norsk Hydro, remains at large with an $11 million FBI bounty.

The Register · Security · 1d agoPolicy & legal

Schneider Electric SCADAPack x70 Products

CISA advisory: Schneider Electric SCADAPack x70 RTUs contain CVE-2026-81861, an insufficiently protected credentials flaw allowing unauthorized access to RTU configuration.

CISA advisory ICSA-26-258-04 discloses CVE-2026-81861 affecting all versions of Schneider Electric SCADAPack 47x, 47xi, 47xd, 470R, 57x, 3xx, and 32 remote terminal units. The CWE-522 insufficiently protected credentials vulnerability could expose authentication information and permit unauthorized access to RTU configuration through the Secure Lock functionality. The flaw carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 6.5 (medium), and the products are deployed worldwide in critical manufacturing and energy sectors. Abhinav Agarwal reported the vulnerability to CISA.

CISA Advisories · 1d agoAdvisoryCVE-2026-81861

Attack Chains, Not Just Attack Surfaces: Why Testing Individual Techniques Misses the Point

Filigran introduces Attack Chaining in OpenAEV to continuously simulate multi-stage attack paths, exposing gaps that isolated MITRE ATT&CK technique testing misses.

Filigran announced Attack Chaining, a new scenario type in its OpenAEV platform that links individual techniques into automated, continuously-run multi-stage attack paths, using each step's real output (credentials, tokens, open ports) to branch dynamically toward a final objective. The article cites Filigran's State of Threat Management report, in which 93% of security leaders reported a business-impacting cyberattack in the past 12 months, 88% said AI accelerates attackers, and 84% blamed siloed tools and disconnected testing. The 2025 DGFiP breach is cited as an example where individually survivable weaknesses chained into a major intrusion. The feature includes conditional chaining logic, live attack path mapping, structured findings for identifying chokepoints, and predefined scope and safety guardrails.

The Hacker News · 1d agoTools

Sexually Explicit Deepfake Sites Target 100-Plus Politicians in Europe

Deepfake pornography sites have targeted nearly 150 European politicians, overwhelmingly women MPs, per new research on 160 abusive domains.

Researcher Benjamin Shultz analyzed roughly 160 deepfake abuse domains and found at least 138 women MPs from 22 EU countries appeared or were mentioned, versus nine male MPs — making women MPs 33 times more likely to be targeted. Sites host database-like profiles with names, photos, personal details, and links to 'nudifier' creation tools. The findings, published by German think tank Agora Digitale Transformation, show politicians from Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and France most affected, with senior politicians targeted more often. The UK and EU are planning bans on nudify services, while the US Take It Down Act has taken major deepfake sites offline.

WIRED · Security · 2d agoAI safety & security1

UK Council Attack Linked to Mass Exploitation of SonicWall Flaw

Hunt.io links a UK council attack to mass exploitation of SonicWall SMA1000 flaw CVE-2026-15409 (CVSS 10.0), enabling credential and Active Directory theft.

Hunt.io links, with moderate confidence, the July 17, 2026 attack on the Borough Council of King's Lynn and West Norfolk to mass exploitation of SonicWall SMA1000 appliances via CVE-2026-15409, an unauthenticated SSRF in the WorkPlace portal WebSocket proxy with CVSS 10.0. The operator adapted Rapid7's July 15 PoC into a 50-thread mass scanner within days and stole LDAP credentials for 534 Active Directory accounts across 160 domains, with nine environments losing SAM/LSA secrets and five losing full AD databases via DCSync. CISA added the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and noted use in ransomware campaigns; targeting of ~200,000 Shodan-derived SonicWall addresses spanned government, healthcare, finance, universities, and manufacturing worldwide.

Security Affairs · 5d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-154091

India’s Pocket FM doubles revenue run rate to $500M as AI powers 93% of audio content

Indian audio platform Pocket FM doubled its annualized revenue run rate to $500M, with AI now producing 93% of its catalog.

Pocket FM, an Indian serialized audio storytelling platform, doubled its annualized revenue run rate to $500 million in a year, with AI powering 93% of its catalog and 99% of new content. The company says generative AI, including in-house creative-writing and text-to-speech models, made production roughly 80 times cheaper, letting 550,000+ creators produce about 2.5 million hours of content annually across 770,000 audio series for 250 million listeners. Parent Pocket Entertainment is reportedly in talks to raise $100-120 million at about a $2 billion valuation, is profitable on an adjusted basis, and its AI-only microdrama app Pocket Saga has reached a $15 million annualized run rate.

TechCrunch · AI · 6d agoAI industry

AI-powered attack exploited PaperCut flaws to hack 395 organizations

AI-driven campaign exploited PaperCut flaws CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078, compromising 440 servers at 395 organizations in 48 countries.

GreyNoise reports a likely Russian-speaking threat actor used hundreds of AI agents combining OpenAI Codex and DeepSeek models to build, test, and refine exploits for CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078 in PaperCut NG/MF, launching the campaign on August 31. At least 440 PaperCut instances at 395 organizations across 48 countries were compromised, with the education sector accounting for roughly half of victims and the US most targeted. Attackers harvested credentials from 280 victims, obtained OS or domain secrets from 147, and gained admin privileges at 12 organizations, using LSASS dumping, pass-the-hash, noPac, and DCSync to dump NTDS.DIT. The adversary went from empty workspace to first RCE in under four hours, and compromised at least 11 organizations within 26 seconds once the campaign launched.

BleepingComputerupdated · 5d agofirst · 6d agoExploit / PoC in the wild 6 sourcesCVE-2026-81578CVE-2026-82078CVE-2021-42278+1 CVEs1· 1 read

AI adoption brings new security headaches for already stretched CISOs

Proofpoint's 2026 Voice of the CISO report finds 79% of CISOs must manage AI-related risks without added resources or expertise.

Proofpoint's 2026 Voice of the CISO report says AI governance is expanding CISO responsibilities faster than resources, with 79% expected to manage AI-related risks without proportional support. Seventy-eight percent of CISOs consider GenAI a security risk, chiefly customer data loss through public AI platforms, and 61% expect a targeted attack within 12 months, down from 76% in 2025. Human risk remains the top vulnerability for 79% of respondents, and 93% of organizations with material data loss said departing employees played a role. Cloud account takeover now tops perceived threats, while email fraud, ransomware and malware declined in the rankings.

Help Net Security · 7d agoIndustry

Srsly Risky Biz: America's Drivers Licence Breach is a National Security Disaster

Dark web service Nexus sold 153 million US and Canadian driver's licenses, linked to identity verification firm IDScan under FBI investigation.

Krebs On Security reported that a dark web service called Nexus sold access to 153 million US and Canadian driver's licenses, claiming over a year of continuous exfiltration from a major identity verification company, with roughly 400,000 new licences added in a single day. Krebs verified the data as genuine and linked the incident via circumstantial evidence to identity verification firm IDScan, whose licences of senior US officials including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth appeared in the database; the FBI is investigating and IDScan has confirmed a breach inquiry. The article argues the data has national security implications, citing how Chinese APT espionage (Anthem, Equifax, Marriott, OPM) and Bellingcat investigations exploited leaked databases. Class action suits are being prepared, and the piece calls for stricter oversight of identity verification firms.

Risky Business News · 7d agoData breach in the wild

Hackers Use Hundreds of AI Agents to Exploit PaperCut Flaws and Compromise 440 Servers Worldwide

A Russian-speaking actor used hundreds of AI agents to exploit PaperCut flaws, compromising 440 servers across 395 organizations in 48 countries.

GreyNoise's Global Observation Grid observed a Russian-speaking threat actor operating from IP 45.142.193.132 deploy hundreds of autonomous AI agents, built on OpenAI's Codex harness with a DeepSeek model, to exploit PaperCut NG/MF flaws CVE-2026-81578 (authentication bypass) and CVE-2026-82078 (unsafe reflection RCE). At least 440 servers across 395 organizations in 48 countries were compromised; the US had 98 victims and educational institutions accounted for 204. The agents paired with Mimikatz, Certipy, Rubeus, and Impacket, escalated to domain admin in 12 of 440 cases, and executed DCSync to exfiltrate the full NTDS.DIT credential database.

FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

FBI officials said AI is accelerating adversary capabilities while its new cyber strategy emphasizes continuous patching, cyber hygiene, and AI-enabled defense.

At the Billington CyberSecurity Summit and ahead of a new FBI cyber strategy, deputy assistant director Jason Bilnoski said AI is boosting the speed and capability of both criminal and nation-state attackers, while stressing that basic controls like MFA would still prevent most attacks. Colleen Ferranti urged a shift from quarterly Patch Tuesday cycles to continuous, risk-based patching as AI accelerates vulnerability discovery. The strategy pledges AI-enabled triage, malware analysis, attribution support, agentic AI adoption, expanded Computer Network Operations, ICS Coordinators in every field office, and a pledge on victim relief and privacy.

CyberScoop · 7d agoPolicy & legal

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: August 18, 2026

Help Net Security lists current cybersecurity job openings at ADI Global Distribution, Schneider Electric, L'Oreal, GovCIO, Elastic, and others across multiple countries.

A recurring job roundup featuring roles such as CISO at ADI Global Distribution, Cybersecurity Analyst at Schneider Electric in India, Cybersecurity Architect at L'Oreal in France, and security engineering positions at GovCIO, Neros Technologies, Elastic, and Chamelio. Most listed positions are no longer accepting applications; several emphasize AI-enabled security environments and identity threat detection and response. No vulnerability, incident, or research content is included.

Help Net Security · 7d agoIndustry 2 sources

Proofpoint 2026 Voice of the CISO Report Finds Cyber Resilience Improving, While AI Expands the CISO Mandate

Proofpoint's 2026 survey of 1,600 CISOs finds improving cyber resilience, rising human risk, and expanding AI responsibilities without added resources.

Proofpoint released its 2026 Voice of the CISO report, a Censuswide-conducted survey of 1,600 CISOs across 16 countries fielded in May 2026. Expected material cyberattacks fell from 76% to 61% year over year and material data loss declined from 66% to 53%, but 79% of CISOs now identify human risk as their biggest vulnerability and GenAI security concerns jumped 18 points to 78%. The report also finds 79% of CISOs expect to manage AI-related risks without proportional resources, and 85% say boards are evaluating cyber risk through a commercial lens.

Proofpoint Threat Insight · 8d agoIndustry

Agents Gone Wild: An AI-Orchestrated Global Campaign Against PaperCut NG/MF

AI-orchestrated campaign exploited PaperCut NG/MF RCE (CVE-2026-81578/82078), compromising 440+ instances at 395 organizations in 48 countries.

GreyNoise tracked a likely Russian-speaking actor using AI (OpenAI Codex harness plus a DeepSeek model) to develop, test, and deploy exploits for PaperCut NG/MF (CVE-2026-81578, CVE-2026-82078) starting 31 August 2026. The actor compromised at least 440 PaperCut instances across 395 organizations in 48 countries, achieving domain admin at 12 victims — fastest time to domain admin was five minutes and a US high school was fully compromised in seven minutes. Attack paths involved LSASS memory and registry secret harvesting, pass-the-hash to domain controllers, noPac attacks, account additions to Domain Admins, and DCSync to exfiltrate full NTDS.DIT credential dumps. Impact scope suggests access development potentially for handoff, with prior PaperCut intrusions historically leading to extortion.

GreyNoise · 8d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2026-81578CVE-2026-82078CVE-2021-42278+1 CVEs1

BigBear 2 PhaaS Campaign Steals 5000+ Microsoft Credentials

CloudSEK researchers found the BigBear 2.0 PhaaS kit, built on Evilginx2, has stolen over 5,100 Microsoft 365 credentials across 461 organizations in 40+ countries.

CloudSEK gained admin access to the BigBear 2.0 phishing-as-a-service panel, an Evilginx2-based adversary-in-the-middle platform operated by someone using the alias 'General Boss'. The team observed 3,331 unique victim IPs across more than 40 countries, 42 VPS nodes mostly on Vultr, and 5,137 credential records across 461 organizations, including 4,148 session cookies, 1,032 plaintext passwords, and 474 completed MFA-bypassed authentications. IT and managed service providers were the most targeted sector, raising supply-chain risk since their compromise can expose client infrastructure and privileged Azure AD access.

Infosecurity Magazine · 8d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Switzerland's Federal Government Is Replacing Microsoft on 3k Computers

Switzerland's Federal Chancellery launched a pilot replacing Microsoft 365 with open-source openDesk on 3,000 federal workstations by end of 2027.

Switzerland launched a CHF 9 million pilot to migrate 3,000 federal workstations (about 7% of the federal workforce) from Microsoft 365 to the German open-source openDesk suite, targeting completion by end of 2027. The move follows a successful 172-employee proof of concept (PoC BOSS) and the 2024 EMBAG open-source law, driven by digital sovereignty concerns about foreign access to Swiss government data. The Swiss Army's Cyber Command plans a faster migration, replacing Microsoft 365 with openDesk by October 2026, while Microsoft is investing over CHF 325 million in Swiss AI and cloud infrastructure.

Critical VMware Workstation and Fusion Flaw Lets VM Admins Execute Host Code

Broadcom patched two VMware Workstation and Fusion flaws, including critical integer overflow CVE-2026-59346 (CVSS 9.3), letting guest admins execute host code; no exploitation seen.

Broadcom released updates fixing CVE-2026-59346 (CVSS 9.3), an integer-overflow vulnerability allowing a malicious actor with local administrative privileges on a VM with a VMXNET3 adapter to execute code on the host, and CVE-2026-59347 (CVSS 8.1), a stack-based buffer overflow in HGFS allowing code execution as the host's VMX process. Both flaws affect VMware Workstation and Fusion 25H2 and 26H1, have no workarounds, and are fixed in Workstation 26H1u1 and Fusion 26H1u1. No in-the-wild exploitation has been observed, though VMware vCenter flaws CVE-2026-59309 and CVE-2026-59310, the latter suspected of China-nexus APT use, have recently breached 361 unique victim IPs across 47 countries.