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Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a "human-operated phishing platform" that impersonates advertising products for artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI ChatGPT, Perplexity, Meta Muse, and Manus. The products, which claim to offer campaign optimization, spend audits, and business-account connections, are designed with one goal in mind: to capture credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes via spoofed login windows using the browser-in-the-browser ( BitB ) trick. "Each product was built around the same action: Connect," Island researchers Oleg Zaytsev and Ofek Ronen said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Clicking it opened a browser drawn inside the real browser. The fake address bar displayed trusted origins such as accounts.google.com or an Okta tenant, while the real browser remained on the phishing domain." "Behind the interface, the platform kept every passw...

Linux backdoors targeting telecom and network appliances in South Korea and Taiwan have been disguising their traffic as email services and seemingly legitimate processes to blend in and evade detection. Threat actors are known to name their malicious software after a legitimate operating system component or a process as a defense evasion measure. By borrowing the name of a real binary, it may make it appear less conspicuous among other Windows processes, lend it a false sense of trust, or be overlooked by an analyst during casual inspection. However, the backdoors examined by Rapid7 have been found to go beyond imitating file names by assuming the identities of email security products like SpamSniper and ShareTech that are widely used in enterprise environments in South Korea and Taiwan. According to vendor Jiran Group, SpamSniper is advertised as "Korea's leading email security solution" that defends organizations against spam, malware, and server attacks. T...

A malicious spreadsheet can make LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice run an attacker's code as soon as the file is opened, security researchers have shown. There is no warning first, of the kind either program shows before it runs a macro. The attack works only when the program's Java support is enabled. So far, it has only been shown as a proof of concept, and there are no reports of its use in real attacks. LibreOffice has already  fixed the flaw , which it tracks as CVE-2026-63277, in updates released on October 5. It recommends that users move to version 26.2.5 or 26.8.0. Versions before those are affected. Apache OpenOffice has not fixed the matching flaw, which it tracks as CVE-2026-59265. Every version up to and including its current release, 4.1.16, is affected, and the project  says a fix is expected  in version 4.1.17, which is still being tested. Until then, Apache OpenOffice users can block the attack by turning off Java in the program's settings, or by...

The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, has confirmed that it has discovered activity by rogue OpenAI agents on its platforms, including unsuccessful efforts to compromise Etherpad, a public note-taking tool, and edit Wikipedia pages. "The unauthorized bot activities included edits to our wikis, some unsuccessful attempts to exploit a public note-taking tool we host, and heavy traffic," the Foundation said in a post. The investigation, it added, was prompted by recent public reports involving Hugging Face and DseWiki where OpenAI's agents turned Artifactory and the German wiki forum into an unsanctioned bulletin board to communicate with each other, while taking steps to chained together online services to gain access to the internet and cover up evidence of their exploits. To that end, Wikimedia said it identified edits to Wikimedia wikis suspected to be from agents operated by OpenAI. The agents are said to have been testing edits in " sandbox ...

In 2024, MCP (Model Context Protocol) set out to become the USB-C of AI: one standard for connecting models, agents, and IDEs to tools and data. The protocol delivered. Thousands of developers built servers, and enterprises plugged them into agent workflows. The ecosystem around it fell short. Earlier this year, our team at OX Security ,  traced critical vulnerabilities in Anthropic's MCP source code, downloaded more than 150 million times. This time, we looked at what people actually install: community-published servers across the most popular MCP marketplaces. We found no guardrails and no review. Security is a recommendation, not a policy. A Marketplace With No Bouncer In 2012, Google ran Bouncer, an automated scanner that checked Android apps for malware before they reached users. It wasn't perfect: researchers slipped malware past it . But it existed. MCP marketplaces have no equivalent. Anyone can write a server, push it, and publish it. Even a review wouldn'...

Google has stopped accepting product vulnerability reports through its bug bounty program for its open-source software. The change, in effect since October 1, means researchers can no longer submit security flaws in the code of projects such as Go, Angular, and Protocol Buffers there for a reward. Reports about supply chain compromises are still accepted, and reports filed before October 1 are not affected. Google called the stop temporary in a  post on X  on October 1 and said it was due to "a significant rise in automated submissions, the vast majority of which are not valid." The post gave no figures. It did not say whether the submissions were produced with AI tools. The  rules of the program , called the Open Source Software Vulnerability Reward Program (OSS VRP), now carry a notice of the stop. It commits Google to an update in the first quarter of 2027 while it reworks this part of the program. Neither the post nor the notice gives a date for accepting p...

A critical flaw in 8 Atlassian Data Center products, which customers host themselves, allows an attacker with no login access to read specific files in each product's web application root directory. The attacker must already know a file's exact name and path and cannot list what the directory holds. Atlassian  disclosed the flaw , CVE-2026-21589 , on October 5, rated it 9.3 out of 10, and listed a fixed version for each product. The web application root directory is the folder on the server that holds the web application itself. In some configurations, it may contain sensitive files, which raises the risk, according to Atlassian. Atlassian's cloud products affected by the flaw have already been patched, and cloud customers do not need to take any action. Atlassian advises customers who cannot upgrade all at once to take the instance offline if possible. Any instance reachable from the public internet, including one that requires a login, should be restricted from ...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has removed an Accenture contractor for their alleged role in a ShinyHunters-breach that led to the theft of personal details of thousands of bureau employees. That's according to a report from Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the matter. "To date, our review has determined that the incident occurred as the result of a security failure ​of a platform managed by a third-party organization — after a contractor failed to implement a security patch explicitly issued to secure the ​platform," Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, was quoted as saying to Reuters. "As such, the FBI has removed the contractor and taken all necessary steps to both mitigate any further risk and protect our workforce." Although the name of the third-party organization was not disclosed by the FBI, Reuters reported that it's Oracle PeopleSoft, which the ShinyHunters group said it exploited...

Unauthorized parties have gained access to the names, addresses, and personal identification numbers of about 8.8 million people, living and dead, in Denmark's national population register, the country's digitalization ministry  said on October 5 . They used a private Danish company's lawful right to look up records in the Central Person Register (CPR). The ministry has told people never to give passwords or other confidential information to anyone who calls or emails, even someone who seems to know those details. The register's administration has stopped the company's access and reported the case to Datatilsynet, Denmark's data protection authority. Police are investigating. A very large number of automated lookups were made in the register to identify valid personal identification numbers, known as CPR numbers, Datatilsynet  said in a notice  on October 5. Its account comes from the notification it received from the register a day earlier. It has not y...

A new type of ClickFix attack is using compromised websites to trick users into executing a malicious payload cached in a web browser's cache. "Instead of downloading and executing remote payloads like the typical attack pattern, in this attack, the websites pre-fetch a script payload into the browser cache disguised as a PNG file," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a post on X. Thus, when the victim is prompted to paste and execute a malicious command – as is the case with ClickFix attacks – it executes the cached website content that's already on the device.  What's notable about this browser cache smuggling approach is that it allows the attackers to conceal the payload script and bypass character limit restrictions imposed on Windows Run (aka the Run dialog). The Windows Run dialog, triggered by Win + R, truncates any input that exceeds approximately 260 characters. In the attack chain observed by Microsoft, the staged payload is a ...

Microsoft has released out-of-band security updates to address a high-severity flaw in Microsoft Exchange Server that could allow an attacker to escalate privileges under certain conditions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-96940 , is rated 8.8 on the CVSS scoring system. "Weak authorization in Microsoft Exchange Server allows an authenticated attacker to elevate privileges over a network," Microsoft said in an advisory released on October 2, 2026. The Windows maker said an authenticated attacker can exploit this flaw to gain unauthorized access to other users' mailboxes within the same organization and read email messages and attachments. However, the vulnerability does not allow cross-tenant access. Microsoft has already deployed a "related service-side fix" to Exchange Online to address the issue. As a result, Exchange Online customers are not required to take any action. Users of affected on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server products are a...

A blank field. A public repo. One reply to an email. A box left exposed. None of this sounds dramatic, which is partly the problem. This week’s threats keep finding leverage in small things that were easy to overlook. There are actively exploited bugs in the mix, cleaner intrusion paths, smarter automation, and a long patch list waiting behind them. Some attacks are getting more capable. Others are still getting in because the basics gave way first. Here’s what mattered this week. ⚡ Threat of the Week Citrix Warns of Newly Exploited NetScaler ADC and Gateway Flaw — Citrix released security updates for a high-severity security flaw in NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway that has been exploited as part of targeted zero-day attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-88779, carries a CVSS score of 8.7 out of 10.0. "CVE-2026-88779 is a memory overflow vulnerability in Citrix NetScaler ADC and Citrix NetScaler Gateway that can lead to denial-of-service under specific depl...

Every modern enterprise depends on credentials. This is how humans, systems, and now AI, all connect to data, services, and each other securely. GitGuardian helps secure that credential layer through three connected capabilities: Detect, Remediate, and Prevent. The journey starts with detection, because organizations first need to understand what credentials exist, where they live, and what they can access. This is the first of three articles we are releasing that explain the reason behind our mission.  — Software production is accelerating beyond the growth assumptions that shaped many of today's security controls. GitHub COO Kyle Daigle said the platform had gone from roughly 1 billion commits during all of 2025 to 2.9 billion commits in August 2026, an annualized pace of over 14 billion for the 2026 reporting year. GitHub's own engineering team has gone further in its capacity planning, saying it moved from preparing for 10x scale to designing for a future that require...

Threat actors have been observed attempting to exploit a now-patched critical security flaw impacting the Realtek Jungle software development kit (SDK) to deploy a botnet malware called Cling . "Cling is notable not because it introduces a new propagation technique, but because it repurposes ordinary STUN behavior into a practical command-and-control channel," Nozomi Networks said in a report published last week. "The result is a botnet whose traffic can resemble legitimate NAT-traversal activity while still supporting propagation, proxying, tunneling and denial-of-service commands." The operational technology (OT) security company said it observed a spike in attempts to exploit CVE-2021-35394 (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical remote code execution (RCE) flaw in Realtek Jungle SDK starting around September 5, 2026, with a subset of the activity delivering Cling. An analysis of the malware sample has found it to embed exploit logic for various command injectio...

Apple has announced that it's taking steps to tighten controls around a macOS setting called Full Disk Access (FDA) due to security risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI) agents. "Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems—including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history – without users' full knowledge and understanding," Apple said in a post. "For communication apps, this can also compromise the privacy of the people users are communicating with." Full Disk Access , accessed via Privacy & Security in the Settings app, was introduced by Apple in macOS Mojave (version 10.14), offers users greater control over which applications can access their entire system and data from apps like Mail, Messages, Safari, and Time Machine backups. Once the setting is enabled for an application, it allows that program to bypass certain security restrictions and read and writ...

A critical security flaw impacting Rejetto HTTP File Server (HFS) is witnessing active exploitation attempts, according to VulnCheck. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-61500 (CVSS score: 9.3), a case of session forgery stemming from the use of a weak pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) that can lead to a predictable key, which an attacker can then use to gain unauthorized access and seize control of affected systems. "Rejetto HFS 3.0.0 through 3.2.0 derives its session-cookie signing key from the non-cryptographic Math.random() generator and discloses outputs of the same generator to unauthenticated clients during login," according to an advisory for the flaw. "A remote attacker can collect a small number of login responses, reconstruct the generator's state, recover the signing key, and forge a valid administrator session cookie, leading to full administrative access and remote code execution via the server_code configuration feature." Hori...