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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 Blogupdated · 4d agofirst · 6d agoThreat actor in the wild 13 sources2

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

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

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

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

Post-quantum migration gets harder when every user holds a key

Quantus CEO Christopher Smith discusses post-quantum migration pitfalls, including oversized keys breaking IPsec, SSH and TLS, and hard-to-migrate blockchain user keys.

Quantus CEO Christopher Smith describes post-quantum migration findings from banks and hospitals, including forgotten default passwords, orphaned admin keys held by former employees and hidden password hashes on user devices. Larger post-quantum keys and signatures break size assumptions in IPsec, SSH, TLS and libp2p, while migrating blockchain user keys remains hard because every user must act. He argues boards should fund quantum migration like insurance by quantifying cryptographic failure risk, and warns a silent quantum break would be difficult to detect from outside.

Help Net Security · Aug 12, 2026Research

This Key Will Self-Destruct: An Open Standard for Revocable API Keys

SecurityWeek opinion piece proposes ORKS, an open standard adding issuer prefixes, discovery files, and unauthenticated revocation endpoints to make leaked API keys quickly revocable.

The article argues that plain API keys leak frequently yet lack any standardized revocation mechanism, unlike OAuth tokens which gained RFC 7009 revocation in 2013, and that GitHub's Secret Scanning Partner Program solves this only in a proprietary, invite-only way. The author proposes ORKS (Open Revocable Key Standard), with a draft spec on GitHub, built on four parts: keys embedding their issuer domain in a fixed prefix format, a discoverable /.well-known/api-key-config JSON file, unauthenticated revocation by possession of the full key, and declared constraints such as IP allowlists, expiry, scopes, and mTLS. An optional quarantine mode inspired by Toyota's andon cord restricts a reported key to read-only and throttled operation for a default 24-hour window before automatic revocation. The piece frames AI agents as making this urgent, since agents hold many credentials, can exfiltrate them via prompt injection, and can leak secrets into logs at machine speed.

SecurityWeek · 7d agoTools1

From Infostealer Log to Marketplace Listing: A Technical Walkthrough of the Credential Theft Pipeline

Cyble walkthrough maps how infostealer logs move from endpoint infection through aggregation and enrichment to dark web credential marketplace sales.

Cyble breaks the credential theft pipeline into stages: infostealer execution harvesting browser credential stores, cookies, session tokens, crypto wallets, and FTP configurations; aggregation of stealer logs via C2 panels into bundled archives; parsing and enrichment against previously leaked datasets; and final listing on dark web marketplaces. Enrichment adds employer and role context that raises prices and enables credential stuffing across reused passwords. The report advises SOC teams to monitor stealer logs and marketplace chatter early rather than waiting for breach alerts.

Cyble · 5d agoMalware1

Automatic Key Exchange: faster, post-quantum secure origin handshakes for 45 billion daily connections (and counting)

Cloudflare's Automatic Key Exchange probes origins to lead with preferred key exchange, cutting HelloRetryRequests from 52% to 3.7% and enabling automatic post-quantum origin connections.

Cloudflare announced Automatic Key Exchange, an extension of Automatic SSL/TLS that probes each origin's supported key agreement algorithms and leads with the preferred one, favoring the post-quantum hybrid X25519MLKEM768. Rollover across roughly 45 billion daily origin connections cut HelloRetryRequests from about 52% to 3.7%, saving more than 150 ms of p90 handshake latency. Hundreds of thousands of domains now receive post-quantum origin connections without manual configuration, supporting Cloudflare's goal of quantum-safe encryption by 2029 to counter harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks.

Cloudflare Blog · 7d agoResearch

AutoTrans: AI-Assisted Automatic Translation of Security Assertions for RISC-V Processors

AutoTrans uses LLMs with regex extraction and formal verification to automatically translate security assertions across RISC-V processors, achieving 78% unattended acceptance.

AutoTrans is an automated framework for translating verified security assertions between RISC-V processor targets, where manual translation takes hours per assertion. It combines a regex-based SystemVerilog signal extractor to prevent LLM signal hallucination, a pinned prompt template yielding byte-identical prompts resilient to model updates, and JasperGold FPV formal verification of generated assertions. Applied with DeepSeek V4 to translate assertions between RISC-V targets such as IBEX and NS31A, it achieves a 78% automatic translation acceptance rate without human intervention and 100% after human refinement.

arXiv cs.CR · 6d agoResearch

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 · 12d agoPolicy & legal

What your vendor says about PQC tells you if they are ready

Allot CTO outlines a telecom post-quantum migration playbook: inventory crypto, deploy hybrid ML-KEM on TLS first, and avoid missed interfaces.

Dr. Yaakov Stein, VP CTO of Allot, explains how mobile operators should triage post-quantum migration by data shelf life, protecting subscriber identity mappings, billing records, and call metadata that stay sensitive for years. He recommends starting with a comprehensive crypto inventory, then hybrid ML-KEM key exchange on TLS-protected 5G SBA and management interfaces, followed by IPsec backhaul and roaming links. Stein warns that migrations most often fail operationally through missed legacy interfaces such as SSH, RADIUS, or forgotten load balancers, and cites the early Kyber multi-packet TLS client hello issue as an example of middlebox incompatibility.

Help Net Security · 15d agoIndustry

日本のビジネスパーソンを対象としたWiz調査で 「AI導入加速」はクラウド移行を上回ることが明らかに

Wiz survey of Japanese business professionals finds AI adoption outranking cloud migration and 60% planning AI security investment.

A Wiz survey of Japanese business people found that accelerating AI adoption now outranks cloud migration as a priority. At the same time, more than 80% feel behind in preparing for AI-driven cyber-attacks, and 60% plan to invest in AI security. The findings highlight a preparedness gap as organizations adopt AI faster than they secure it.

Wiz Blog · 22d agoIndustry

The OpenClaw 2.0 release moves your sessions into SQLite

OpenClaw 2.0 migrates AI agent sessions to SQLite, adds guided credential setup, and flags shared-session controls as not a security boundary.

OpenClaw 2.0, described as the largest update in the project's history, migrates sessions and transcripts into SQLite and adds guided setup that detects existing AI credentials from Codex, ChatGPT, Claude CLI sign-ins, API keys, and local Ollama or LM Studio models. The release expands multiplayer sharing while explicitly stating its permission controls are not tenant isolation or a security boundary, and that revoked access can briefly remain usable. Startup JavaScript requests fell from 140 to 45 and startup time from about 1.6 seconds to 575 milliseconds in simulated tests against a mocked Gateway. Automation wrappers must now inspect reported health because requesting --json does not waive risk acknowledgement.

Help Net Security · 16d agoAI tools & infra1

Lazarus Used Post-Quantum Key Exchange to Deliver Zero-Day

Lazarus used a post-quantum key exchange to shield delivery of a Windows zero-day exploit, adding stealth to its campaign.

North Korean Lazarus Group malware used a post-quantum key exchange to protect the delivery of a Windows zero-day exploit. The technique adds a layer of stealth to the campaign's initial access, complicating detection and traffic inspection. It signals growing APT adoption of post-quantum cryptography in offensive operations.

Infosecurity Magazine · Aug 12, 2026Threat actor in the wild

I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

Security researcher factored two 512-bit RSA root CA keys from defunct 1990s certificate authority E-Certify using CADO-NFS on a desktop in roughly 30 hours each.

A researcher extracted legacy root certificates from archived Netscape and Internet Explorer installers, identifying two 512-bit RSA roots shipped with Netscape 4.51 in 1999 by the defunct Canadian CA E-Certify. Using CADO-NFS on a Ryzen 9 5950X desktop, the keys were factored in 32 and 29 hours respectively, allowing private key reconstruction. The work comes shortly after RSA-260 (862-bit) was factored, the largest known factorization to date. The researcher also built a legacy TLS server and published keys and tools on GitHub.

Notes on gotchas while migrating 35kb preprompts from Opus to self-hosted Ollama

Opinion piece urges migrating 35KB preprompts from Anthropic/OpenAI to self-hosted Ollama, citing session privacy risks and safety filters blocking security research.

The author documents gotchas migrating 35KB preprompts from Claude Opus to self-hosted Ollama, motivated by fears that frontier providers train on user sessions, citing the OpenAI Navier-Stokes controversy. The piece argues inference providers cannot audit their own retention or training pipelines and that only self-hosted hardware offers verifiable privacy. It also criticizes frontier safety filters for refusing vulnerability research tasks and calls for models that support exploitability testing in CI/CD pipelines.

Open-source secrets scanning tool Sift hunts credentials in Microsoft 365, Slack, and Jira

Stratus Security open-sourced Sift, a CLI secrets scanner covering Active Directory, SharePoint, Teams, Slack, Jira, and Confluence, outperforming Snaffler in benchmarks.

Stratus Security released Sift, a free open-source command line tool that hunts passwords, API keys, and sensitive data across local disks, Windows shares, Active Directory, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Slack, Jira, and Confluence. In the firm's benchmarks, Sift scanned 250,000 files in 10.61 seconds versus Snaffler's 25.48 and averaged 92 MiB memory versus Snaffler's 337 MiB. Optional false-positive filtering runs through a local language model via Ollama, and scans write checkpoints so interrupted runs resume. The tool found thousands of credentials in Jira ticket comments that prior pentesting had missed.

Help Net Security · 14d agoTools

Getting ahead of ‘harvest-now-decrypt-later’: Post-quantum cryptography planning

Opinion piece urges organizations to begin post-quantum cryptography migration now, citing harvest-now-decrypt-later risk and NIST deadlines.

CSO Online outlines why harvest-now-decrypt-later makes long-lived sensitive data a current risk even before quantum computers exist. It cites NIST IR 8547 timelines deprecating RSA-2048 and ECC P-256 by 2030 and removing them by 2035, finalized FIPS standards ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA, upcoming FN-DSA (FIPS 206), NSA requirements for national security systems from 2027, and UK NCSC phased guidance through 2035. The author recommends cryptographic discovery, crypto-agility, and prioritizing long-confidentiality data and TLS endpoints.

CSO Online · 6d agoResearch

Nearly 1 in 10 Exposed LiteLLM Gateways Accepted the Example "sk-1234" Admin Key

Wiz found 294 of 3,074 internet-facing LiteLLM gateways accepted the documented default admin key sk-1234, exposing provider API keys and cloud IAM credentials.

Wiz Research's February Shodan scan found 3,074 LiteLLM gateways, 294 of which accepted the setup guide's sk-1234 admin key; 191 had no master key set and would accept any credential. The master key doubles as the authentication switch, and before 1.82.0-stable a gateway started without one granted every request full admin rights, exposing stored provider API keys, prompts, and MCP-connected tools. A documented pass-through endpoint lacks checks against private and cloud metadata addresses, letting an admin-key holder retrieve cloud IAM credentials, though no real-world abuse is reported. Related LiteLLM flaws include CVE-2026-59821 (disputed guardrail code execution), CVE-2026-59822 (CVSS 8.8, added to CISA KEV on September 2 and observed against Wiz honeypots), and CVE-2026-42271, used to install a cryptominer.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 5d agofirst · 6d agoVulnerability in the wild 4 sourcesCVE-2026-59821CVE-2026-59822CVE-2026-42271+2 CVEs

LLM Forensics: Where Do Backdoors Hide? Localizing and Controlling Trigger Mechanisms with Sparse Autoencoders

Researchers use sparse autoencoders to localize trigger-based backdoor mechanisms in 1B and 8B LLMs, finding detection features differ from causal control features.

In a controlled language-switching backdoor setting where fixed trigger sequences make 1B and 8B language models continue English prompts in French or German, the authors train sparse autoencoders (SAEs) across layers and transformer components. Attention and MLP features detect triggered prompts with near-perfect F1, but ablating them rarely suppresses the language switch, while residual-stream features can suppress triggered generation and some can induce target-language continuations without the trigger. The work decomposes token-trigger mechanisms into distinct SAE feature roles: trigger detection, residual-stream propagation, and language tracking, a decomposition the authors expect to transfer to other trigger-based backdoors.

AD Rights Management Service (Part 1): Architecture, Deprecation, and Reconnaissance

Huntress maps AD RMS architecture and recon paths, setting up an offline key-extraction attack against its unrotatable 255-year root key.

Huntress's multi-part research examines Active Directory Rights Management Services, Microsoft's enterprise DRM role that still ships in Windows Server 2025 despite migration guidance favoring Azure Information Protection. Part 1 covers the trust model and how an ordinary domain account can locate RMS clusters and read rights-policy templates. Part 2 will detail four independent paths for extracting the Server Licensor Certificate (SLC) private key via service-group membership and the configuration database, enabling fully offline decryption of protected documents. The SLC certificate is valid from 2002 to 2258 and has no key-rotation mechanism, so a stolen key decrypts protected content indefinitely.

Huntress · 8d agoResearch1

North Korean Hackers Deploy New Linux Espionage Toolkit

Rapid7 says North Korea-aligned actors use a new Linux espionage toolkit (ted HAProxy backdoor, CurlRAT) against South Korean automotive and media targets.

Rapid7 reports a stealthy Linux framework comprising a custom HAProxy backdoor ('ted'), trojanized system binaries (agetty, atd, crond, polkitd, sshd), an SSH keylogger, and CurlRAT that polls C&C every 12 hours. Initial access came via a Groupware login portal flaw, with credential harvesting enabling lateral movement to internal systems. The toolkit supports long-term surveillance, HTTP traffic interception/injection, and drive-by downloads, likely in use since late 2024. Infrastructure and artifacts overlap Operation SyncHole, suggesting Lazarus or APT37 involvement.

SecurityWeek · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild1

DPRK APTs: Ted backdoor and curlRAT target South Korean media and automotive sectors

Rapid7 uncovered a DPRK-linked Linux toolkit using a HAProxy-embedded ted backdoor, SSH keylogger, and curlRAT against South Korean media and automotive firms.

Rapid7 Labs identified a previously undocumented framework attributed with medium confidence to DPRK actors, targeting South Korean automotive and media organizations likely since early 2025. The toolkit embeds a backdoor compiled into HAProxy 2.8.12 using its filter API, plus trojanized crond, agetty, atd, sshd, and polkitd, an SSH keylogger storing credentials under /var/lib/sshd/, and a curl-based RAT with a watchdog thread. It enables remote command execution, malicious script injection into served webpages (a watering-hole loop), credential harvesting, and long-term surveillance. Hardcoded C2s are associated with APT37 via ThreatFox, and exposed groupware portals and mail servers align with Kimsuky tradecraft; the initial access vector and any CVE remain unconfirmed.

Rapid7 Blog · 11d agoThreat actor in the wild1

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

ToolHive: The open-source way to run any MCP server securely

Stacklok's open-source ToolHive runs Model Context Protocol servers in isolated containers with per-request identity enforcement, audit logging and a signed registry.

ToolHive, shipped under Apache 2.0, containersizes MCP servers locally via Docker or Podman or in clusters through a Kubernetes operator, applying permissions, network filtering, and secrets management. The platform includes a Registry Server implementing the official MCP Registry API with signing and provenance verification, a Virtual MCP Server gateway with OIDC/OAuth single sign-on and OpenTelemetry traces, and a desktop Portal for one-click installs. The browser-based cloud UI is retired, so the desktop app and CLI are the supported rollout paths.

Help Net Security · 9d agoAI tools & infra1

Heterogeneous Cross-Chain Transaction Tracing for Solana Bridges via Candidate-Set Selective Decision

SolTracer traces cross-chain transactions onto Solana bridges, improving open-world association F1 by 20.16% over the strongest baseline for illicit-fund tracing.

The paper formalizes four Solana-bound cross-chain transaction modes and proposes SolTracer, which maps heterogeneous execution semantics into a unified event space and uses candidate-set selective decision-making with abstention when valid targets are absent. In the challenging open-world setting with a 50% TA ratio, SolTracer improves F1 by 20.16% over the strongest baseline. An empirical study of real-world transfers examines count-value divergence across bridge mechanisms, cross-asset shifts, and decoupling between on-chain settlement and explorer visibility.

arXiv cs.CR · 5d agoResearch

New Passkey Attacks Can Recover Synced Private Keys or Bypass Phishing

Three research teams showed passkey bypasses: WebAuthn assertion replay in Microsoft Entra ID, synced-passkey key recovery in Google Password Manager, and Windows Hello key reuse.

SpecterOps' Pass-the-Passkey research showed Windows stored past YubiKey signatures in cleartext and chained this with Microsoft Entra ID passkey validation weaknesses to impersonate privileged users despite phishing-resistant MFA; the Windows Event Logging Service issue is tracked as CVE-2026-34348 (CVSS 6.5) and fixed in July 2026 updates. Unit 42's Golden Pass-ta-key attack recovered the 32-byte Security Domain Secret protecting Google Password Manager synced passkeys from Chrome on Windows via pre-existing malware. Dirk-jan Mollema showed in-session malware can use a hardware-bound Windows Hello for Business key without a fresh PIN or biometric check. Microsoft applied Entra-side mitigations for the relay assertion issue; no real-world exploitation has been reported.

The Hacker News · Aug 11, 2026VulnerabilityCVE-2026-34348

CertiFlash: A Formal Verification Framework for Flash Translation Layers in Computational Solid State Drives

CertiFlash provides machine-checked formal verification of SSD flash translation layers, proving isolation, integrity, and ownership invariants to prevent tenant data leaks.

CertiFlash is an open-source formal verification framework for Flash Translation Layers (FTL) in computational SSDs, mechanized in the Rocq proof assistant. It shows that a faulty FTL can corrupt device state at five surfaces (e.g., leaking data between tenants or dropping integrity tags), demonstrated on a DaisyPlus OpenSSD. Designers prove once that every operation of a general FTL model preserves a global invariant covering mapping, isolation, integrity, ownership, and allocation; new designs need only discharge five hypotheses. Across four case studies, added effort was 27-3,231 lines against a 16,489-line framework.

arXiv cs.CR · 6d agoResearch1

NIS2 compliance: Fixing IAM and access control before the 2026 audit

EU NIS2 enforcement deadlines approach; organizations are urged to prioritize service account inventory, lifecycle offboarding, and phishing-resistant MFA before audits.

EU member states are moving from NIS2 transposition into enforcement, with fines up to 10 million euros or 2% of global turnover for essential entities and personal liability for management bodies. The article argues access management is the fastest high-ROI starting point, estimating 2-4 weeks to enforce fine-grained password policy, vault shared credentials, and deploy phishing-resistant MFA versus 6-12 months for supply chain risk management. It flags three common pre-audit failures: unmanaged service accounts and API keys, dormant accounts from broken offboarding, and SMS OTP instead of phishing-resistant MFA under NIST SP 800-63B. The piece promotes Passwork as a single control plane for credential storage, RBAC, and WebAuthn.

Help Net Security · 15d agoIndustry