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A domain used as harmless placeholder text showed up in roughly 1,700 repositories. Then somebody registered it and started serving malicious lures. That is the kind of week this was: forgotten assumptions turning into live attack surface. Elsewhere, weak service accounts, old bugs, exposed systems, phishing kits, and strangely easy exploit paths kept doing useful work for attackers. Nothing exotic. Mostly things nobody expected to matter anymore. Here’s the full recap of what mattered this week. ⚡ Threat of the Week Citrix Warns of Actively Exploited NetScaler ADC and Gateway Flaws — Citrix released patches to address multiple vulnerabilities, including CVE-2026-88771 and CVE-2026-88772, that have come under active exploitation. CVE-2026-88771 is an improper input validation vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands, while successful exploitation of CVE-2026-88772 could allow for remote code execution or denial-of-service. CISA...

AI agents are moving into production faster than security teams can govern them. They are connecting to apps, handling data, calling APIs, and acting across business systems—often without the same controls applied to human users. According to Okta’s Global CISO Insights 2026 report, only 47% of CISOs are confident they can identify every AI agent in their environment. Even among those who feel confident about visibility, roughly 80% still worry that excessive access may be going unreviewed. That is the real problem: seeing an agent is not the same as controlling what it can do. Join Matt Immler , Regional CSO at Okta, for a practical session on how to bring AI agents under stronger identity governance before excessive access becomes harder to contain.

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new botnet malware called Carbonato that's targeting exposed Docker daemons to deploy an open-source artificial intelligence (AI) agent framework called Hermes Agent . "The implant installs the framework unchanged, then overwrites its SOUL.md persona file," ThreatDown said . "The 39-line prompt directs it to execute tasks received through Telegram, maintain persistence, and collect credentials." At a high level, the botnet breaks into Docker daemons exposed without authentication on port 2375 and scans neighboring networks every five minutes to propagate further. On each host, it installs Hermes Agent with instructions to follow operators' Telegram commands. The cybersecurity company said it found the operation through an unauthenticated Docker registry that's been publicly accessible since May 2026. The staged data has been found to include details of the botnet and a separate campaign that d...

The threat actor known as JADEPUFFER has been observed orchestrating destructive actions within a Microsoft Azure environment using compromised service principals. Microsoft, which is tracking the activity under the name Storm-3168 , has called it an evolution of the threat actor's tradecraft. The attack took place in early June 2026 over a period of about 18 hours. "The destructive operations were facilitated by compromising service principals and targeted Azure Storage Accounts, SQL databases, Key Vaults, Function Apps, recovery protection locks, Virtual Machines, and App Services," researchers Yossi Weizman and Tushar Mudi, along with the Microsoft Security Research team, said . JADEPUFFER was first documented by Sysdig, describing it as the first-ever ransomware operation run end-to-end with the help of a large language model (LLM). The agentic attack exploited a known security flaw in Langflow (CVE-2025-3248) to break in, harvested credentials, burrowed deepe...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Sunday added two critical Citrix NetScaler ADC and Gateway flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, following reports of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2026-88771 (CVSS score: 9.5) - An improper input validation vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands.  CVE-2026-88772 (CVSS score: 9.5) - An improper restriction of operations within the bounds of a memory buffer vulnerability that could allow for remote code execution or denial-of-service. While CVE-2026-88771 affects all NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway deployments, CVE-2026-88772 requires the DTLS configuration to be enabled on NetScaler ADC or NetScaler Gateway, an option that is turned on by default on VPN virtual servers. The relevant configuration is as follows - add vpn vserver vpn1 SSL 10.0.0.0 443 -Listenpolicy NONE 

Two critical vulnerabilities in Citrix NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway that allow remote code execution have been exploited in the wild, Citrix confirmed on September 27. It released fixes for both, along with six other flaws. One of the two affects every deployment on an affected version, including those in the default configuration. The bulletin came a day after security firm watchTowr said two unpatched NetScaler RCE flaws had been exploited, and after some administrators said they had taken appliances offline. Citrix did not say whether its two flaws are the ones watchTowr described, but they match that account. NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway sit at the edge of enterprise networks, where they handle VPN and remote access, load balancing, and user authentication. Citrix said in its bulletin that the two exploited flaws are: CVE-2026-88771 (CVSS v4 score: 9.5) - An improper input validation flaw that lets an unauthenticated attacker run arbitrary commands. It a...

The Psychedelic Stealer malware distributed via compromised Ukrainian websites using ClickFix-style Cloudflare verification checks is part of a wider malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platform called Lunex . The new findings come from Ontinue, which described the activity as a four-stage attack chain aimed at targeting Ukrainian-speaking users. "The attack chain begins with a fake CAPTCHA page and culminates in the deployment of a fully-featured C2 agent," Ontinue threat researcher Rhys Downing said in a technical report. "The stealer extracts credentials and data from seven Chromium-based browsers, exfiltrates cryptocurrency wallets, and establishes persistent remote filesystem access through a PowerShell-based Native Messaging Host installed within the victim's browser." The infection makes use of bogus MSI installers delivered via ClickFix to trigger a series of actions, including delivering a loader dubbed LunexLoader that's designed to bypass User Ac...

Google is warning of renewed mass exploitation of a known security vulnerability in Oracle PeopleSoft as part of a campaign targeting multiple sectors globally. The ShinyHunters-linked activity involves the weaponization of CVE-2026-35273 (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical security flaw that could result in unauthenticated remote code execution. The vulnerability was first exploited as a zero-day in attacks against academic institutions to conduct reconnaissance, deploy remote access software like MeshCentral agent for persistence, move laterally over SSH, run a shell script to connect via SSH to other internal PeopleSoft machines using known username/password combinations, and steal data. At that time, Google-owned Mandiant said it initiated notifications to over 100 global organizations whose IP addresses matched vulnerable endpoints, most of them located in the U.S. "This new wave of activity stems from UNC6240 modifying its exploit to bypass web application firewall (WAF...

Before an AI agent gets access to your environment, you should be able to answer a few basic questions. Who owns it? What is it allowed to do? What can it reach, and how will you know when it does something outside its assigned task? These are familiar questions in security architecture. Agents make them harder to answer because they can select tools, act on external content, and, in some deployments, delegate work to other agents. An attacker who hijacks an agent’s intent may be able to turn its legitimate access against you. The agent may still present valid credentials and call an expected API while acting outside its assigned task. Research from Veeam illustrates the visibility gap: 70% of organizations surveyed reported AI workflows interacting with sensitive corporate data without full oversight, and 67% reported that employees were creating autonomous workflows IT could not fully track. These workflows can acquire access to business systems before security teams know they...

Details have emerged about a high-severity security flaw in the Elementor Website Builder WordPress plugin that could be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to create rogue administrator accounts and take control of a site. The cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability, which has yet to be assigned a CVE identifier, carries a CVSS score of 8.8 out of 10.0. It only affects versions 4.3.0 and 4.3.1 of the plugin, which is active on over 10 million WordPress sites. Statistics from WordPress.org show that the two impacted versions alone have been installed on more than 2 million sites. "One link, opened by a logged-in WordPress user, makes that user carry out any REST API action their account is permitted to perform," Patchstack said . "On a stock installation, an administrator clicking the link creates a second administrator account for the attacker." The WordPress security company said the attack does not hinge on any prerequisite, such as JavaScrip...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added two security flaws impacting Microsoft SharePoint and Mikrotik RouterOS to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities in question are as follows - CVE-2026-65660 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A code injection vulnerability in Microsoft Office SharePoint that allows an authorized attacker to execute code over a network. CVE-2026-67279 (CVSS score: 6.9) - An improper enforcement of behavioral workflow vulnerability in  Mikrotik RouterOS that could allow an unauthenticated client to open a session channel and send an exec request. As reported by The Hacker News earlier this week, CVE-2026-65660 was originally described by Microsoft as a spoofing vulnerability impacting SharePoint Server. The tech giant has since updated the advisory to state that it could be abused to obtain remote code execution. "As of 9/25/2026, Microsoft ...

Kiteworks (formerly Accellion) is urging customers to shut down their systems as a precautionary measure for nine hours over the weekend after it received threat intelligence about an imminent cyber attack. "Kiteworks received credible threat intelligence from federal intelligence authorities indicating that a threat actor may attempt to target some Kiteworks systems," said Frank Balonis, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Kiteworks. "Out of an abundance of caution, we notified customers directly and recommended a precautionary shutdown window while we continue to work through the matter with federal intelligence authorities." The company said it has not found any evidence that its customers' systems have been compromised, emphasizing the advisory is preventative rather than a response to a confirmed hack. The development was first reported by German news publication Heise. Kiteworks did not disclose which law enforcement agency alerted the ...

Two actions-cool GitHub Actions have been disabled for a second time after the repositories became accessible last week, months after they were compromised during the May 2026 Mini Shai-Hulud campaign . The affected GitHub Actions are listed below - actions-cool/issues-helper actions-cool/maintain-one-comment Visiting either of the repositories now shows the message: "Access to this repository has been disabled by GitHub Staff due to a violation of GitHub's terms of service. If you are the owner of the repository, you may reach out to GitHub Support for more information." "On September 16, 2026, both repositories became accessible again," Socket researcher Karlo Zanki said . "Their release tags were not cleaned up first. They still point to the malicious content introduced on May 18, so any workflow that references either action by a version tag resumed downloading and executing the payload on its next run." The two GitHub Actions work...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new version of PamStealer that ensures that the main payload can only be recovered using a server-side decryption chain. The latest artifacts, per Jamf Threat Labs, continue to rely on the same JavaScript for Automation (JXA) dropper mechanism, but modify the lure and the delivery method. "Where earlier variants embedded their payload key material directly in the JXA source, it now fetches a purpose-built decryption utility and completes a key exchange with the server before the payload can be unwrapped," security researcher Thijs Xhaflaire said in an analysis. "Without the server's cooperation, the payload cannot be recovered statically." A second major change is the choice of the decoy itself. While previous versions observed in July and August 2026 were observed using fake websites masquerading as Maccy, Scoppr, and Nancy Clipboard, victims are now lured through a bogus website ("wavel[.]app") advert...

Security leaders keep debating whether AI will produce an entirely new class of cyberattack. The nearer change is quieter and already visible: AI has made a failed attack cheap to retry. The routine version looks like this. An attacker lands on a low-privilege cloud account, and the first try at privilege escalation goes nowhere. That dead end used to cost hours of documentation reading, permission checks, and script debugging, and plenty of operators simply got stuck. With a model in the loop, the error gets explained, the script gets fixed, and a fresh enumeration path is under test within minutes. No step in that sequence is a new capability. Together they strip time, skill, and cost out of the unglamorous middle of an intrusion, the research and troubleshooting that sit between intent and outcome. What the threat reporting shows The public record traces the arc. In early 2025, Google's Threat Intelligence Group found state-backed actors treating generative AI as a prod...

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitget said suspected North Korean threat actors have stolen $351.6 million from its hot and warm wallets.  "At 18:31 UTC on September 24, 2026, Bitget's security systems identified unauthorized transfers involving a limited number of hot wallets," Bitget said in a post shared on X. "Bitget's cold wallets and the overwhelming majority of platform assets remain secure and unaffected." The company emphasized that customer account balances remain accurate, and deposits and trading continue to operate normally. However, withdrawals have been temporarily suspended out of an abundance of caution while a "comprehensive security review" is underway. Bitget did not disclose any details on how the attack took place, but said it has enlisted the help of Google-owned Mandiant and SlowMist for a third-party investigation. "Bitget Wallet operates as a self-custodial wallet on a completely separate and independent infrastruc...