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.
First Galileo SAS Authenticated Time Solution
Researchers demonstrate the first timing solution computed from Galileo's new Signal Authentication Service, protecting receivers against GNSS spoofing.
Galileo's new Signal Authentication Service (SAS) on the E6-C signal directly authenticates ranging measurements, closing a gap left by OSNMA, which only protects navigation data. Researchers built a snapshot software receiver implementing a simplified SAS protocol and computed an authenticated receiver clock bias from recordings of both SAS-capable satellites, collected with a Septentrio SDR prototype. The results demonstrate feasible authenticated timing ahead of full SAS operational deployment.
The Top 4 Threats We Found by Investigating Every Alert for a Quarter
Prophet Security's quarterly threat report finds identity attacks made up roughly half of confirmed malicious activity, with stolen authenticated sessions bypassing conditional access controls.
Between May 1 and July 31, 2026, Prophet Security investigated every alert in customer environments immediately on arrival; about 7% of completed investigations were confirmed malicious. Direct account/session attacks made up roughly 18% of confirmed activity, with replayed authenticated sessions bypassing conditional access since no re-authentication occurs. Infostealer activity affected about a quarter of investigated organizations, mostly delivered via browsers through compromised websites, malicious ads, sponsored search results and ClickFix fake CAPTCHA gates, with payloads including Lumma Stealer, Vidar, HijackLoader and AsyncRAT. Credential phishing was the largest category at about 28%, with adversary-in-the-middle relays revealed by seconds-long MFA approvals from distant countries and MFA fatigue attacks exploiting automatic unlock policies.
MFA's Weakest Link: Account Recovery Is the New Attack Path
Help desk account recovery is increasingly the weakest link in MFA-protected identities, as Scattered Spider's impersonation-driven Marks & Spencer attack demonstrated.
As MFA, conditional access, and phishing-resistant factors raise the cost of direct account takeover, attackers increasingly target the recovery process, convincing service desk staff to reset passwords or re-register MFA on attacker-controlled devices. CISA, FBI, and partner advisories describe Scattered Spider posing as employees to trigger such resets; the 2025 Marks & Spencer attack began this way and led to ransomware with an estimated £300 million profit impact. Microsoft now describes Entra ID account recovery as a high-assurance process, and the article promotes Specops Secure Service Desk for verified identity workflows.