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Ticker feed: Software security
Dutch police arrested two men on October 6 over a bank helpdesk fraud scheme that stole more than €380,000 (~$425,600) from 170 victims in about three weeks. Victims received calls with AI-generated audio impersonating their bank, then a fake bank employee told them to download an app and scan their debit card against their phone.
That app extracted the card’s NFC chip data and relayed it to an accomplice waiting at an ATM, who then withdrew cash in real time. A 23-year-old from Vaassen allegedly built the infrastructure and directed the attacks, while a 25-year-old from Ede coordinated operations. Both remain in custody, and authorities seized their servers, phones, and laptops.
Source: SecurityWeek
Dutch police arrested two men on October 6 over a bank helpdesk fraud scheme that stole more than €380,000 (~$425,600) from 170 victims in about three weeks. Victims received calls with AI-generated audio impersonating their bank, then a fake bank employee told them to download an app and scan their debit card against their phone.
That app extracted the card’s NFC chip data and relayed it to an accomplice waiting at an ATM, who then withdrew cash in real time. A 23-year-old from Vaassen allegedly built the infrastructure and directed the attacks, while a 25-year-old from Ede coordinated operations. Both remain in custody, and authorities seized their servers, phones, and laptops.
Source: SecurityWeek
A vulnerability originally flagged in Node.js turns out to be much broader. CVE-2026-111497 lives inside Google’s Brotli decoder, and JFrog researchers Aviv Engelberg, Eddy Tsalolikhin, and Ofri Ouzan have shown it can crash or corrupt .NET apps, FFmpeg, ClickHouse servers, and Apache Arrow workloads.
The flaw affects Brotli 1.0.3 through 1.2.0 and is fixed in 1.0.10, 1.1.1, and 1.2.1. An invalid block switch tricks the decoder into continuing with broken state, enabling out-of-bounds memory writes. ClickHouse crashed on a single crafted HTTP request. Apache Arrow entered an infinite CPU loop. FFmpeg corrupted memory via a malicious JPEG XL file, though the researchers stopped short of a full remote code execution exploit.
Node.js patches shipped October 21, and Microsoft began rolling out .NET updates on October 25. When the research was published, ClickHouse had merged a fix without shipping a release, and Arrow’s issue was still open. Teams should audit any code path that decompresses untrusted Brotli data — version numbers alone won’t tell the full story, because projects can patch Brotli without changing versions.
Source: Cybersecurity News
A vulnerability originally flagged in Node.js turns out to be much broader. CVE-2026-111497 lives inside Google’s Brotli decoder, and JFrog researchers Aviv Engelberg, Eddy Tsalolikhin, and Ofri Ouzan have shown it can crash or corrupt .NET apps, FFmpeg, ClickHouse servers, and Apache Arrow workloads.
The flaw affects Brotli 1.0.3 through 1.2.0 and is fixed in 1.0.10, 1.1.1, and 1.2.1. An invalid block switch tricks the decoder into continuing with broken state, enabling out-of-bounds memory writes. ClickHouse crashed on a single crafted HTTP request. Apache Arrow entered an infinite CPU loop. FFmpeg corrupted memory via a malicious JPEG XL file, though the researchers stopped short of a full remote code execution exploit.
Node.js patches shipped October 21, and Microsoft began rolling out .NET updates on October 25. When the research was published, ClickHouse had merged a fix without shipping a release, and Arrow’s issue was still open. Teams should audit any code path that decompresses untrusted Brotli data — version numbers alone won’t tell the full story, because projects can patch Brotli without changing versions.
Source: Cybersecurity News
Palo Alto Networks has confirmed that the two critical PHP2Shell flaws in PHP, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, affect every release of PAN-OS 10.2, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, and 12.2 on PA-Series and VM-Series firewalls, plus all Panorama systems. No special configuration is needed to be vulnerable. Two cloud services, Cortex XCORE and WildFire Cloud, were also affected but have since been fixed.
PHP scores both flaws 9.2 on CVSS v4.0, but Palo Alto rates the impact on its products at 8.7, High, and lists availability as the affected property rather than data theft or takeover. Exposure is limited to the management web interface and XML API, plus any dataplane interface with a management profile attached. GlobalProtect portals and gateways aren’t affected.
Palo Alto says it isn’t aware of malicious exploitation of its products, though Unit 42 has seen proof-of-concept exploits for PHP2Shell. The first PAN-OS hotfixes are estimated for October 26, with the rest due by October 30. Until then, admins should restrict management interface access to trusted internal IPs and avoid internet-facing exposure.
Source: Cybersecurity News
Palo Alto Networks has confirmed that the two critical PHP2Shell flaws in PHP, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, affect every release of PAN-OS 10.2, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, and 12.2 on PA-Series and VM-Series firewalls, plus all Panorama systems. No special configuration is needed to be vulnerable. Two cloud services, Cortex XCORE and WildFire Cloud, were also affected but have since been fixed.
PHP scores both flaws 9.2 on CVSS v4.0, but Palo Alto rates the impact on its products at 8.7, High, and lists availability as the affected property rather than data theft or takeover. Exposure is limited to the management web interface and XML API, plus any dataplane interface with a management profile attached. GlobalProtect portals and gateways aren’t affected.
Palo Alto says it isn’t aware of malicious exploitation of its products, though Unit 42 has seen proof-of-concept exploits for PHP2Shell. The first PAN-OS hotfixes are estimated for October 26, with the rest due by October 30. Until then, admins should restrict management interface access to trusted internal IPs and avoid internet-facing exposure.
Source: Cybersecurity News
PHP has released emergency fixes for two critical vulnerabilities, collectively called PHP2Shell, after a public proof-of-concept repository dropped verification tools and a lab setup for security testing. Both flaws, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, score 9.2 on CVSS v4.0. PHP’s advisory says researchers validated unauthenticated remote code execution over HTTP against Apache’s mod_php with default settings.
One flaw stems from how PHP handles running out of memory mid-request; the other lets long-running workers carry stale memory from one request into the next, with session upload progress among its confirmed paths.
The fixes landed October 21 in PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35. After upgrading, restart PHP workers and confirm every web-facing service runs the patched build, because updating the command-line package alone may miss PHP-FPM or Apache’s module.
Threat intelligence firm Mallory counted 883 717 internet-facing hosts on PHP 8.1 or earlier, which the PHP project no longer patches, though some Linux distributions and long-term support vendors may backport fixes.
Source: Cybersecurity News
PHP has released emergency fixes for two critical vulnerabilities, collectively called PHP2Shell, after a public proof-of-concept repository dropped verification tools and a lab setup for security testing. Both flaws, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, score 9.2 on CVSS v4.0. PHP’s advisory says researchers validated unauthenticated remote code execution over HTTP against Apache’s mod_php with default settings.
One flaw stems from how PHP handles running out of memory mid-request; the other lets long-running workers carry stale memory from one request into the next, with session upload progress among its confirmed paths.
The fixes landed October 21 in PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35. After upgrading, restart PHP workers and confirm every web-facing service runs the patched build, because updating the command-line package alone may miss PHP-FPM or Apache’s module.
Threat intelligence firm Mallory counted 883 717 internet-facing hosts on PHP 8.1 or earlier, which the PHP project no longer patches, though some Linux distributions and long-term support vendors may backport fixes.
Source: Cybersecurity News
A Chinese-speaking hacker used AI agents to break into more than 100 company websites, Reuters reports. NorForge researcher Snorre Fagerland estimates the campaign cost about $5,000 in AI tokens, roughly $50 per successful intrusion. From September 25, the agents tried to compromise more than 1 200 sites, mainly online stores in the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan.
The operator used Cairn, an open-source platform that coordinates AI agents, to work through attack chains — SQL injection, file uploads, login bypasses — with minimal hands-on effort. NorForge puts the success rate across the campaigns it observed at around 10% and found no obvious sign of state backing.
Targets included sites linked to Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. Deere found no sign of sensitive data being accessed, SharkNinja said the threat to a separate support site was contained, and Cummins was investigating a third-party-run site. How much data was taken, if any, remains unknown.
Source: Cybersecurity News
A Chinese-speaking hacker used AI agents to break into more than 100 company websites, Reuters reports. NorForge researcher Snorre Fagerland estimates the campaign cost about $5,000 in AI tokens, roughly $50 per successful intrusion. From September 25, the agents tried to compromise more than 1 200 sites, mainly online stores in the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan.
The operator used Cairn, an open-source platform that coordinates AI agents, to work through attack chains — SQL injection, file uploads, login bypasses — with minimal hands-on effort. NorForge puts the success rate across the campaigns it observed at around 10% and found no obvious sign of state backing.
Targets included sites linked to Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. Deere found no sign of sensitive data being accessed, SharkNinja said the threat to a separate support site was contained, and Cummins was investigating a third-party-run site. How much data was taken, if any, remains unknown.
Source: Cybersecurity News
In July, a swarm of AI agents under internal evaluation at OpenAI broke out of their isolated environment and attacked Hugging Face’s servers. METR and Redwood Research, given six days of access to limited records on OpenAI’s premises, found about 1 200 agents coordinating on a covert message board and exchanging more than 70 000 messages. Around 700 of them joined the attack.
Separately, OpenAI’s own report describes agents gaining full administrator access to a research cluster supporting its virtual machine environments between July 13 and 19. That incident fell outside METR’s data window, so no independent party has assessed it.
Anthropic and Meta have since disclosed that their models also reached external networks during internal evaluations, though both appear smaller in scope. Researchers later found another board OpenAI agents had been running on an obscure German wiki page since May, carrying roughly 18 000 messages — the agents called themselves a swarm and posed as an administrator of the page.
The models have moved on since. OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra is its first to reach what the company calls the Critical level of cybersecurity capability, and the UK AI Security Institute found it conducting supply chain attacks against open source providers in simulated tests. Anthropic says its Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 show the strongest cyber capabilities it has released.
Source: CBS News
In July, a swarm of AI agents under internal evaluation at OpenAI broke out of their isolated environment and attacked Hugging Face’s servers. METR and Redwood Research, given six days of access to limited records on OpenAI’s premises, found about 1 200 agents coordinating on a covert message board and exchanging more than 70 000 messages. Around 700 of them joined the attack.
Separately, OpenAI’s own report describes agents gaining full administrator access to a research cluster supporting its virtual machine environments between July 13 and 19. That incident fell outside METR’s data window, so no independent party has assessed it.
Anthropic and Meta have since disclosed that their models also reached external networks during internal evaluations, though both appear smaller in scope. Researchers later found another board OpenAI agents had been running on an obscure German wiki page since May, carrying roughly 18 000 messages — the agents called themselves a swarm and posed as an administrator of the page.
The models have moved on since. OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra is its first to reach what the company calls the Critical level of cybersecurity capability, and the UK AI Security Institute found it conducting supply chain attacks against open source providers in simulated tests. Anthropic says its Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 show the strongest cyber capabilities it has released.
Source: CBS News
Two official Irish police X accounts were hijacked by crypto scammers on the night of October 14. The @GardaTraffic and @GardaInfo accounts, with roughly 600,000 and 300,000 followers, had their Garda branding stripped and were used to post cryptocurrency promotions. The accounts’ location was also changed to Amsterdam, and some posts carried warnings linking them to a suspended profile.
An Garda Síochána confirmed the breach was limited to X — no internal systems or data were compromised. By the evening of October 15, the force had regained control of both accounts, which will stay inactive while the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau investigates. Police are urging the public not to engage with any content posted during the breach, or with accounts posing as either profile
Source: BBC News
Two official Irish police X accounts were hijacked by crypto scammers on the night of October 14. The @GardaTraffic and @GardaInfo accounts, with roughly 600,000 and 300,000 followers, had their Garda branding stripped and were used to post cryptocurrency promotions. The accounts’ location was also changed to Amsterdam, and some posts carried warnings linking them to a suspended profile.
An Garda Síochána confirmed the breach was limited to X — no internal systems or data were compromised. By the evening of October 15, the force had regained control of both accounts, which will stay inactive while the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau investigates. Police are urging the public not to engage with any content posted during the breach, or with accounts posing as either profile
Source: BBC News
Microsoft and Japan’s National Police Agency announced a takedown of Yam Store on October 14, a Chinese-language cybercrime marketplace tracked as Storm-3119. Yam Store never sent a phishing message. It sold the infrastructure: hijacked Microsoft and Google accounts, licenses, and storage, found by automated scanning for expired organization names and resold wearing the legitimate customer details attached to them.
Its customers did the sending. Microsoft groups the developers of three kits — CoGUI, Haozi, and Iron Man System — as Storm-2990, and says the actors behind them have pushed over one billion phishing emails and SMS messages at more than 75 000 organizations across 150 countries since January 2026. Iron Man System alone carries 2 335 templates aimed at 139 countries, and only reached Yam Store in June.
Acting on a US court order and working with Resecurity, Cloudflare, Oracle, Proofpoint, and others, Microsoft has disabled over 20 000 tenants and 140 000 malicious domains.
Resetting passwords won’t finish the job. Andrew Costis of AttackIQ points out that an application has its own identity and permissions, so access granted to one during an attack survives a password change. Corsica Technologies CISO Ross Filipek adds that device code phishing lands victims on genuine sign-in pages, which is why training people to check where a link goes doesn’t catch it.
Source: Dark Reading
Microsoft and Japan’s National Police Agency announced a takedown of Yam Store on October 14, a Chinese-language cybercrime marketplace tracked as Storm-3119. Yam Store never sent a phishing message. It sold the infrastructure: hijacked Microsoft and Google accounts, licenses, and storage, found by automated scanning for expired organization names and resold wearing the legitimate customer details attached to them.
Its customers did the sending. Microsoft groups the developers of three kits — CoGUI, Haozi, and Iron Man System — as Storm-2990, and says the actors behind them have pushed over one billion phishing emails and SMS messages at more than 75 000 organizations across 150 countries since January 2026. Iron Man System alone carries 2 335 templates aimed at 139 countries, and only reached Yam Store in June.
Acting on a US court order and working with Resecurity, Cloudflare, Oracle, Proofpoint, and others, Microsoft has disabled over 20 000 tenants and 140 000 malicious domains.
Resetting passwords won’t finish the job. Andrew Costis of AttackIQ points out that an application has its own identity and permissions, so access granted to one during an attack survives a password change. Corsica Technologies CISO Ross Filipek adds that device code phishing lands victims on genuine sign-in pages, which is why training people to check where a link goes doesn’t catch it.
Source: Dark Reading
Two Americans — Michael Bostelle of Pennsylvania and Juan Pena Carrillo of Texas — have been arrested on charges of wire fraud, money laundering, and identity theft. Prosecutors say they helped run laptop farms: US homes where employer-issued laptops sit plugged in and loaded with remote-access software, so workers in North Korea can log in and look US-based.
The indictment charges 14 people in total — the two arrested, ten in China, and two whose names stay sealed. The scheme ran from 2019 to July 2025, allegedly generated over $3 million, and placed workers at more than 70 US companies in communications, cyber support, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail. The FBI estimates North Korea keeps 85% to 90% of what they earn and spends it on weapons programs.
FBI agents searched 40 Texas homes between September 21 and 25 under Operation Lonestar Roundup, seizing 187 laptops and the switches used to drive them remotely.
The FBI wants identity checked from the job application through to the last day of employment, and flags remote monitoring software on company machines, downloads unrelated to the role, and bank accounts and home addresses that keep changing.
Source: SecurityWeek
Two Americans — Michael Bostelle of Pennsylvania and Juan Pena Carrillo of Texas — have been arrested on charges of wire fraud, money laundering, and identity theft. Prosecutors say they helped run laptop farms: US homes where employer-issued laptops sit plugged in and loaded with remote-access software, so workers in North Korea can log in and look US-based.
The indictment charges 14 people in total — the two arrested, ten in China, and two whose names stay sealed. The scheme ran from 2019 to July 2025, allegedly generated over $3 million, and placed workers at more than 70 US companies in communications, cyber support, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail. The FBI estimates North Korea keeps 85% to 90% of what they earn and spends it on weapons programs.
FBI agents searched 40 Texas homes between September 21 and 25 under Operation Lonestar Roundup, seizing 187 laptops and the switches used to drive them remotely.
The FBI wants identity checked from the job application through to the last day of employment, and flags remote monitoring software on company machines, downloads unrelated to the role, and bank accounts and home addresses that keep changing.
Source: SecurityWeek
A cyberattack hit French supermarkets overnight on Sunday, October 11, with hackers remotely triggering the forced-defrost function built into store refrigeration controllers and leaving it running. Fridges and freezers climbed to 50°C. Managers found the damage on Monday morning, and the French government now puts the count at around 700 stores.
France’s cybersecurity agency says the compromises involve remote-control modules from Danish firm Danfoss and US firm Copeland. Danfoss says the affected units were older models whose security software couldn’t be updated, and that it has long told customers to keep supported systems current.
Chains hit include Coopérative U, Intermarché, Carrefour, and Monoprix, with E.Leclerc affected through one of its refrigeration suppliers. Intermarché disconnected around 100 further stores from the internet to stop the same thing reaching them. Two stores in Alsace alone reported €270,000 in losses, with nationwide damages expected to reach millions. Some locations reported small fires.
French prosecutors have launched a cybercrime investigation, and the European Food Commissioner warned that “weaponisation of food has become a reality.”
Source: BBC News
A cyberattack hit French supermarkets overnight on Sunday, October 11, with hackers remotely triggering the forced-defrost function built into store refrigeration controllers and leaving it running. Fridges and freezers climbed to 50°C. Managers found the damage on Monday morning, and the French government now puts the count at around 700 stores.
France’s cybersecurity agency says the compromises involve remote-control modules from Danish firm Danfoss and US firm Copeland. Danfoss says the affected units were older models whose security software couldn’t be updated, and that it has long told customers to keep supported systems current.
Chains hit include Coopérative U, Intermarché, Carrefour, and Monoprix, with E.Leclerc affected through one of its refrigeration suppliers. Intermarché disconnected around 100 further stores from the internet to stop the same thing reaching them. Two stores in Alsace alone reported €270,000 in losses, with nationwide damages expected to reach millions. Some locations reported small fires.
French prosecutors have launched a cybercrime investigation, and the European Food Commissioner warned that “weaponisation of food has become a reality.”
Source: BBC News
