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IT Help Desk Impersonation Lets Hackers Bypass MFA

Arctic Wolf tracks PREY-0058 posing as IT help desk to steal Microsoft 365 sessions via AiTM panels, then extorting executives after SaaS data theft.

Arctic Wolf documented a threat cluster tracked as PREY-0058 that impersonates internal IT help desk staff by phone, luring Directors, VPs, and executives to authentication-themed URLs formatted as victim-organization lure domains. Adversary-in-the-middle panels intercept credentials and MFA approvals, and stolen sessions are replayed through residential proxies such as NodeMaven from IPs matching the victim's geo-location and ASN, defeating impossible-travel alerts. Attackers perform discovery against SharePoint and Entra ID, then harvest data from OneDrive, Exchange, and Box before issuing extortion demands. Defenders are advised to require managed devices, use phishing-resistant MFA like FIDO2, enable Continuous Access Evaluation, and monitor sign-ins, SharePoint SearchQueryPerformed, and MailItemsAccessed events.

Security Affairs · 8d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

IT help-desk vishing tricks executives into handing over Microsoft 365 access

Arctic Wolf tracks PREY-0058 (linked to UNC6671), a vishing campaign stealing Microsoft 365 session tokens via AiTM panels for SaaS data theft and extortion.

Arctic Wolf is tracking a campaign, PREY-0058, sharing tradecraft with Google Threat Intelligence Group's UNC6671, in which callers posing as internal IT talk employees through fake passkey/MFA setups. Operator-controlled adversary-in-the-middle pages harvest passwords and MFA approvals to seize session tokens, then actors enumerate and bulk-exfiltrate data from SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, and Box. Extortion brands include BlackFile, Pink, Helix, Cinder, and Redact; targets are mostly US-based executives in construction, healthcare, real estate, finance, and professional services, with exfiltration shifting to residential proxies like NodeMaven.

Help Net Security · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Bring your spreadsheet data to life with Sheets canvas

Google added Sheets canvas to Workspace, letting users generate interactive dashboards, trackers, and charts from spreadsheet data via prompts.

Google introduced Sheets canvas, a Workspace feature that turns spreadsheet data into interactive dashboards, custom study trackers, and seating charts from a simple prompt. The announcement is a productivity feature launch with no described security impact or risk. No metrics, model details, or pricing are provided in the notice.

Google · AI · Aug 13, 2026AI industry

Week in review: Linux rootkit deployed on F5 BIG-IP APM devices, Cisco FMC bugs exploited

Weekly roundup: Cisco FMC and N-able N-central zero-days exploited in the wild, MikroTik RouterOS hijacks, Microsoft Patch Tuesday ships two exploited zero-days.

State-sponsored and financially-motivated attackers are actively exploiting CVE-2026-20079, a critical authentication bypass in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC), alongside CVE-2026-20316. N-able issued an emergency hotfix for CVE-2026-86218, a critical pre-auth RCE in the N-central RMM platform exploited in the wild. CERT Polska disclosed six RouterOS vulnerabilities being chained to hijack internet-exposed MikroTik devices. Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday shipped a record patch count including two zero-days, while roughly 67,000 Trezor customers faced phishing after a shipping-partner breach and researchers privately disclosed a zero-click WeChat worm to Tencent.

Help Net Security · 3d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-20316CVE-2026-862182· 1 read

Introducing the Admin plugin for ChatGPT Work and Codex

OpenAI launched an Admin plugin for ChatGPT Work and Codex to manage workspace usage, members, permissions, and limits.

OpenAI introduced an Admin plugin for ChatGPT Work and Codex aimed at enterprise workspace administration. The plugin lets administrators analyze workspace usage, manage members and permissions, adjust usage limits, and act on admin requests. The announcement is a routine product feature launch with no security incident or vulnerability details.

OpenAI News · 22d agoAI industry

Top 10 Best Endpoint Encryption Software in 2026

A 2026 roundup of ten endpoint encryption products argues the engines are solved and buyers should choose management layers like Intune, Sophos, or Trellix.

The guide ranks ten endpoint encryption options, arguing BitLocker and FileVault have won the engine war so the real purchase decision is the management layer for compliance proof, key escrow, and cross-platform policy. Microsoft BitLocker with Intune is named the baseline for Windows estates, with Sophos, ESET, Trend Micro, Check Point, Trellix, and others covering mixed or regulated fleets. It also warns that TrueCrypt-lineage freeware is unmaintained and that Kaspersky cannot be sold to US customers.

Cyber Security News · 6d agoIndustry

Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?

A Hacker News thread debates whether agent skill files are worth managing, citing 2–4x output-token reductions on flagship models in one company's testing.

Commenters argue skills are stored prompts that help less-technical users compensate for weak prompting, while one participant reports company testing found skills reduce flagship-model output tokens by roughly 2–4x, a gap growing with newer models. Others note skills can bundle reusable scripts and inline commands for deterministic context building, and that harnesses now execute backticked commands before the agent sees the skill. Some argue improving model capability makes downloadable skills redundant.

Top 10 Best Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) Tools in 2026

A 2026 scorecard ranks ten endpoint privilege management tools, led by BeyondTrust, ThreatLocker and Delinea for elevation, coverage and policy depth.

The article ranks ten endpoint privilege management (EPM) tools using weighted criteria covering elevation workflow, platform coverage, policy depth, time-to-value and value. BeyondTrust scored highest overall (8.4) for cross-platform breadth, with ThreatLocker (8.2), Delinea (8.1) and Admin By Request (8.0) highlighted for allowlisting integration, cloud administration and deployment speed respectively. It also notes that Netwrix acquired CoSoSys in 2024, which affects bundling when shortlisting both EPM and device control.

Cyber Security News · 6d agoIndustry

Keepnet launches free SMS/Call Reporter for iOS

Keepnet launched a free iOS app, SMS/Call Reporter, letting users one-tap report smishing and vishing into corporate incident response pipelines.

Keepnet released the free SMS/Call Reporter app for iOS, letting users report suspicious SMS and voice phishing with one tap. For enterprise customers, reports flow into Keepnet Incident Responder alongside email phishing reports. The company cites Verizon 2026 DBIR data showing mobile phishing simulations achieve a 40% higher median click rate than email, and FBI IC3 2025 counted $798 million in smishing and vishing losses. An Android version is planned.

Help Net Security · 14d agoTools

Webinar: The forgotten Google Workspace access that can lead to a breach

BleepingComputer and Material Security will host a September 23, 2026 webinar on breaches caused by forgotten third-party Google Workspace integrations.

BleepingComputer announced a live webinar on September 23, 2026, titled 'Breach autopsy: How fast-growing companies are breached through Google Workspace' in partnership with Material Security. Speakers include Rajan Kapoor, VP of Security at Material Security, and Rick Fitzgerald, President of Fireside Consulting LLC. The session will examine real documented Google Workspace breaches involving overly permissive third-party integrations, social engineering entry paths, first-hours breach response decisions, and high-value security controls for lean security teams.

BleepingComputer · 8d agoIndustry

The /wayfinder Skill: Navigating the “Fog of War” of Planning

Matt Pocock released the /wayfinder skill, an orchestrator layer that manages planning sessions, maps, and tickets for AFK coding agents.

Latent Space interviews Matt Pocock, whose AI Skills for Real Engineers project has 220,000+ GitHub stars, about his new /wayfinder skill. The skill manages agent context during ambiguous planning by splitting work into grilling, prototype, research, and task tickets organized under a shared map, enabling overnight AFK agent runs. It uses deliberate terminology like map, ticket, and session to steer agent behavior, and was tested on projects including a personal website rearchitecture.

Latent Space · 27d agoAI tools & infra

Top 10 Best Application Control & Allowlisting Tools in 2026

Roundup ranks 2026 application allowlisting tools, scoring ThreatLocker 8.8/10, Airlock Digital 8.5/10 and free Microsoft WDAC among top default-deny options.

This is a scored buyer's guide to ten application control and allowlisting tools for 2026, with ThreatLocker ranked first (8.8/10), Airlock Digital second (8.5/10) and Microsoft's built-in WDAC/AppLocker third (7.2/10). It notes ransomware has renewed interest in default-deny execution controls and that CISA and other agencies list application control among the most effective yet under-deployed mitigations. The evaluation is research-based with no lab testing, weighting policy automation at 30% and operability at 25%.

Cyber Security News · 7d agoIndustry1

LandingAI Releases Agentic Document Extraction Gen2 with DPT-3 Pro and DPT-3 Verity

LandingAI shipped Agentic Document Extraction Gen2 with DPT-3 Pro and DPT-3 Verity parsing models, adding usage-based billing, block-tree outputs, and word-level grounding.

LandingAI has generally released Agentic Document Extraction Gen2, rebuilt around two parsing models: DPT-3 Verity for deterministic transcription of digital documents with per-word bounding boxes and confidence scores, and DPT-3 Pro for layout-aware parsing of scans, handwriting, non-Latin scripts, and LaTeX math. Billing changes from a flat 3 credits per page to a page-plus-output-character model (Pro: 1 credit/page plus 0.5 credits per 1,000 output characters on priority; Verity: 0.3 plus 0.2), with an asynchronous standard tier at 0.5x price and vendor-claimed 25-80% cost reductions. Parse v2 returns a document-page-block tree with semantic IDs, normalized bounding boxes, and line- or word-level atomic grounding, replacing flat chunks; Gen1 client code will not run against Gen2 endpoints. Deployment options include US/EU cloud, VPCs on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, Snowflake, and air-gapped on-premises environments, with automated model routing planned for fall 2026.

MarkTechPost · 6d agoAI tools & infra

5 new ways to level up your learning with Search

Google promotes five Search study tools for students preparing for classes and standardized tests.

Google published a back-to-school post highlighting five ways to use Search tools when studying for classes and standardized tests. The post is promotional product guidance rather than a launch, research result, or security announcement.

Google · AI · 28d agoAI industry

GPT-6 Astra needs leaner prompts and fewer guardrails, OpenAI recommends

OpenAI's Eric Provencher advises developers using GPT-6 Astra to shorten skill descriptions, trim AGENTS.md reading requirements, relax approval rules, and define clear completion goals.

OpenAI's Eric Provencher published guidance on adapting developer setups when switching to GPT-6 Astra, arguing that overly long skill descriptions, blanket reading requirements, and rigid approval rules waste context or make the agent stop too early. Skills are Markdown prompt files whose names and descriptions enter Codex's context, and too many or conflicting skills cause truncation and wrong skill selection. He recommends selective document references in AGENTS.md, explicit permissions for safe operations like local test runs, and defining upfront what "done" means, since Astra may stop earlier than GPT-5.6 Sol even without restrictions.

The Decoderupdated · 4d agofirst · 4d agoAI tools & infra 10 sources1

Who Should Grade My Work? Student Perspectives on Transparent AI-Assisted Writing Assessment in Higher Education

A Saudi university study finds students value ChatGPT writing feedback but treat human instructors as the final grading authority.

Thirteen male undergraduate computing students at a Saudi public university completed handwritten writing tasks that were scored by ChatGPT using a rubric-based prompt, then reflected after being told the score and feedback were AI-generated. Inductive thematic analysis identified four themes: perceived feedback usefulness, awareness of AI's contextual and pedagogical limitations, conditional trust, and reflection on the instructor's institutional role. Participants accepted GenAI feedback for surface-level revision but consistently positioned human instructors as the authority over grading decisions, distinguishing feedback utility from evaluative authority.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 12d agoAI research

How to connect AI usage to business value

OpenAI explained how ChatGPT Admin Console analytics link AI usage, spend, and Codex contributions to business outcomes.

OpenAI published guidance describing analytics features in the ChatGPT Admin Console that combine usage, credit, and token data across ChatGPT Work and Codex. The Insights task classifier groups messages into use cases such as software engineering and sales research, while an Outcomes view tracks Codex contributions to merged commits and lines of code. An Admin plugin and Admin API let teams automate reporting and combine AI analytics with business metrics like ticket resolution time or revenue.

OpenAI News · 9h agoAI industry

Slack can now vibe-code interactive charts and reports inside chats

Slack launched Slackforce Surfaces, letting Slackbot build interactive dashboards, reports, and microsites directly inside chat channels.

Slackforce Surfaces uses AI to gather context from conversations and connected apps such as Google Drive and Salesforce to generate shareable interactive reports, polls, dashboards, and presentations. Surfaces can be pinned to channels where colleagues can view, interact, and comment. The feature is available to all customers, including free users, with Slackbot enabled, and live data support starts in October.

The Verge · AI · 6d agoAI industry1

From Parameters to Answers: How LLMs Retrieve and Use Their Internal Knowledge

Interpretability study traces how Qwen, Llama, and Gemma route query information and internal knowledge across layers when answering questions.

Researchers used layerwise interventions on hidden states to separate query-routing signals from target knowledge in language models, testing Qwen, Llama, and Gemma on country-continent questions with varied answer types. A pair-conditioned request direction strengthens before interventions alter downstream knowledge, opening a causal window while answer-supporting content is still forming. Trajectories differ by model: Gemma shows a partially overlapping mid-layer routing profile, while Llama has no sustained routing-effect window under the same gates.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 6d agoAI research1

How loveholidays is making everyone a builder with Codex

loveholidays uses OpenAI Codex to let business teams build software, shortening the path from ideas to shipped products.

OpenAI published a customer story describing how travel company loveholidays deploys Codex to make software development accessible across business teams. The company says the approach helps non-engineers turn ideas into products faster. The piece is a vendor case study rather than new technical or research output.

OpenAI News · 21d agoAI industry

From assistance to execution: How enterprises put AI to work

OpenAI reports enterprise adoption patterns of agentic AI through ChatGPT and Codex, with frontier firms pulling ahead in deployment.

OpenAI published a report on how enterprises are moving from AI assistance to autonomous execution, focusing on agentic AI deployments. It highlights the use of ChatGPT and Codex in enterprise workflows and argues that frontier firms are pulling ahead of peers in AI adoption. The piece is adoption research and marketing rather than a security disclosure.

OpenAI News · Aug 12, 2026AI industry1

Ask HN: Anyone still coding like 2021? Where do you work?

Hacker News users debate coding without LLMs, with one developer fired for refusing AI tools and others describing daily hand-coding practice to counter skill atrophy.

An Ask HN thread collects experiences of developers who still write code without LLM assistance. One contributor says he was fired for political reasons after refusing to use LLMs despite adequate stated performance, and observes fewer job ads now require LLM use. Others describe starting each day with a LeetCode problem or 30-60 minutes of hand-coding to stay sharp, contractual bans on AI-generated code for a government-adjacent embedded product over unresolved copyright issues, and inconsistent corporate policies where ChatGPT or Codex use flip-flops between allowed and blocked while a CIO mandates 70-80% AI-generated code next year.

Passkey-themed social engineering leads to identity and cloud compromise

Microsoft tracks ongoing cloud intrusions where passkey-themed helpdesk lures enable AiTM credential theft, MFA persistence, and SharePoint data theft.

Microsoft Security Research is tracking active cloud-based intrusions, observed since May 2026, that begin with helpdesk impersonation calls and SMS lures urging urgent passkey, MFA, or SSO updates. The lures lead to adversary-in-the-middle phishing or device-code authentication flows that capture credentials and session tokens or grant actor access, after which the actors add authentication methods, conduct Microsoft Graph reconnaissance, and download SharePoint and OneDrive content via REST APIs. Phishing domains embed victim organization names as subdomains (e.g., contoso.add-passkey[.]com), are often registered with Nicenic, and go operational within hours. Microsoft advises revoking sessions and removing unauthorized authentication methods for confirmed compromises.

Microsoft Security Blog · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild2

Codex bundles LibreOffice

OpenAI's Codex desktop app bundles 1.7GB of runtimes including full Python, Node.js, Poppler, git, and LibreOffice binaries.

Blogger Simon Willison found that the OpenAI Codex desktop app (since rebranded to ChatGPT) keeps about 1.7GB in a ~/.cache/codex-runtimes/codex-primary-runtime folder, including full Python and Node.js installations plus native binaries for Poppler, git, and the LibreOffice office suite. Bundled skills in the plugins directory instruct Codex on how to find and use these binaries. The observation highlights the heavyweight local runtime stack shipped with agentic coding tools.

Simon Willison · 15d agoAI tools & infra1

Context Engineering Inside the Harness: 4 Mechanisms That Beat Context Overflow and Goal Loss on Long-Horizon Tasks

Survey of four harness mechanisms—context budgeting, compaction, todo-state, and memory—that keep long-horizon LLM agents on task across 200+ tool calls.

The article details how agent harnesses, not larger context windows, solve context overflow and goal loss on long-horizon tasks, citing Chroma's Context Rot report showing 18 LLMs (GPT-4.1, Claude 4, Gemini 2.5, Qwen3) degrade on long inputs. Concrete implementations include LangChain Deep Agents offloading tool responses over 20,000 tokens to the filesystem and truncating old tool calls at 85% window usage, and Claude Code capping auto memory at 25KB while re-reading the 5 most recently modified files after compaction. OpenAI's Responses API now offers server-side compaction via context_management with a standalone /responses/compact endpoint, which Codex uses for long-running coding tasks. Manus reports a roughly 100:1 input-to-output token ratio per ~50-tool-call task, motivating todo.md state recitation to prevent goal drift.

MarkTechPost · 3d agoAI research1

Attackers use passkey-themed scams to hijack Microsoft 365 accounts

Microsoft tracks ongoing M365 cloud intrusions since May using passkey-themed helpdesk vishing, AiTM phishing, and device-code abuse.

Microsoft Security Research has tracked active cloud intrusions since May in which attackers posing as IT helpdesk staff lured employees with fake passkey/MFA enrollment requests. Attacks used adversary-in-the-middle phishing pages, device-code authentication flows, and Teams messages from compromised accounts. Attackers registered their own MFA methods, enumerated tenants via Microsoft Graph, and accessed SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange Online data, throttling activity below 1000 files/emails per hour.

CSO Onlineupdated · 6h agofirst · 5d agoThreat actor in the wild 9 sources1

I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop your coding agent from burying the answer

Developer releases I-have-ADHD, an open-source skill that stops coding agents from burying direct answers under verbose output.

A GitHub project titled I-have-ADHD packages a 'skill' intended to make AI coding agents answer directly instead of hiding the answer inside lengthy output. It gained traction on Hacker News with 45 points and 42 comments. It targets prompt/agent configuration rather than introducing a new model or infrastructure component.

Technical Manual for a Toolkit for Measuring Contextual Individuation in Transformer Language Models

An open methodology toolkit measures whether transformer language models contextualize fixed word forms across domains using bridge forms and layer-wise silhouette analysis.

The manual documents an open toolkit built around 'bridge forms' - identical written words recurring across two or more subject domains with a different sense in each - to test whether transformer language models individuate word occurrences by context beyond the embedding layer. It covers declarative specification of bridge forms, Wikipedia corpus acquisition, occurrence localization, layer-wise representation extraction, domain-pairwise silhouette measurement, and visualization, justifying each choice against failure modes such as sense contamination and subword-tokenization misalignment. It is a methodological and implementation reference and reports no empirical results.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 12d agoAI research

Webinar: What happens in the first hours of a Google Workspace breach

BleepingComputer and Material Security will host a September 23 webinar analyzing first-hours response decisions in real Google Workspace breaches.

The September 23, 2026 webinar 'Breach autopsy' features Material Security VP of Security Rajan Kapoor and Fireside Consulting president Rick Fitzgerald examining publicly documented Google Workspace breaches. Two analyzed attacks combined social engineering with malicious OAuth applications to gain access. Sessions will cover scoping exposed users and data, confirming whether attacker access persists, and which early containment decisions limited or worsened impact for lean security teams.

BleepingComputer · 9h agoIndustry

How AI-native companies turn workflows into operating capability

OpenAI highlights Basis, Clay, and Exa Labs using AI agents for onboarding, account management, and developer integrations in enterprise workflows.

An OpenAI news post profiles AI-native companies Basis, Clay, and Exa Labs that use AI agents to improve onboarding, account management, and developer integrations. The piece positions these workflows as operating capability and draws lessons for enterprise leaders. It is promotional case-study content rather than product or research news.

OpenAI News · 15d agoAI industry

Show HN: Panel – A research workspace where the agent can build its own panes

Panel is an open-source research workspace where AI agents dynamically build their own panes, posted on Hacker News.

Panel, shared as a Show HN project on GitHub, is a research workspace in which the agent can construct its own panes rather than using a fixed interface. The post received 41 points and 8 comments on Hacker News. It targets agentic research workflows with a dynamically generated UI.