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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.
Our goal is to get accurate threat intelligence to our audience as quickly as possible, with all the context you need to ask the right questions of your own environment: How at risk are we from this threat? Are we prepared for it? And what can we do about it?
What you don’t often see is all the... well, frankly, “mess” involved in producing it. All the dead ends we followed until we could confirm those ends were as dead as a doornail. All the work it took to ultimately produce an assessment, supported by evidence and written so that defenders can act on it.
Much of that abstraction is necessary. Defenders need intelligence they can use, not a complete account of every conversation we had, or investigative detour behind it. But it can create an overly tidy picture of both cybercrime and the work required to understand it.
If you do fancy a look behind the curtain, though, may I recommend our just-published episode of Beers with Talos?
Our guest is Azim Khodjibaev, whose remit is adversary engagement. His work involves developing personas for deep- and dark-web research, engaging directly with threat actors, and building relationships with people who may become (and have been) openly threatening to him.
At one point, he was maintaining eight separate personas, some of which were interacting with one another. Azim’s engagements have helped Talos identify prolific cybercriminals and contributed to wider disruption efforts. They have also resulted in ransomware operators placing “Azim sucks” in their code and accusing him of belonging to the very criminal groups he was investigating.
His experiences also expose the problem with treating adversaries as uniformly sophisticated operators. Some are technically capable and highly organised. Others are impulsive, ego-driven, or one-trick ponies. Many have a scary detachment from the consequences of their actions. Increasingly, Azim is seeing less-experienced threat actors working through loosely organised online collectives.
Intelligence necessarily turns that disorder into something defenders can understand and use. But occasionally, it is worth looking behind the finished product – the patience it takes to get accurate answers, who we are investigating, and the deeply human behaviour that shapes both sides.
This Beers with Talos episode, “Eight People Walk Into a Dark Web Forum. They’re All Azim,” isn’t exactly going to help many people in our industry sleep better at night. But for anyone wanting to understand more about the threat we’re up against, as a co-host of the pod I’m biased, but I believe it’s an essential listen.
And if that doesn’t inspire you to download the episode, perhaps my live review of trying Flamin’ Hot Cheetos for the very first time (with a chaser of Nerds) will.
The one big thing
Cisco Talos is highlighting a growing operational hurdle for security teams that we call the AI "safety penalty." As frontier AI models advance, their built-in guardrails are increasingly blocking legitimate defensive tasks. This was evident in July 2026 when Hugging Face's primary cloud LLM refused to analyze forensic data during a breach, delaying their response. While defenders are slowed by these frustrating refusals, adversaries are freely leveraging unconstrained models to attack at machine speed.
Why do I care?
This guardrail asymmetry hands the advantage directly to attackers. When a cloud-hosted AI model refuses a forensic request mid-incident, defenders lose precious time. Security teams are paying for vendor-imposed limitations without gaining a capability edge, especially as open-weight alternatives close the reasoning gap. Ultimately, relying on third-party alignment policies means a sudden update in Silicon Valley could quietly break your defensive workflows overnight.
So now what?
Security leadership must reclaim operational sovereignty by ensuring they have the final say over their AI's capabilities. Start by auditing your AI refusal rates to measure the exact cost of this safety penalty. From there, evaluate alternative architectures like private infrastructure, Model-as-a-Service platforms, or a hybrid fallback system that reroutes refused prompts to an unconstrained local model. Read the full blog to explore these roadmaps and learn how to keep pace with adversaries.
Top security headlines of the week
ShinyHunters claims it stole 284 million patient records from McKesson ShinyHunters told BleepingComputer and said it got in through vishing calls to McKesson employees, then used stolen credentials to take over Okta single sign-on accounts. (Help Net Security)
Anthropic warns Claude users of infostealer malware infections Anthropic emphasized that the malware is general-purpose and not tied to Claude itself, typically arriving via unofficial downloads or malicious apps. The company said the malware quietly copies saved passwords, browser login cookies, and credentials for other local applications. (Security Week)
EU puts ChatGPT, Reddit, and Roblox under stricter DSA rules The DSA establishes rules governing areas including platform transparency, illegal content, advertising, researcher access, recommender systems, and systemic-risk management. (CyberInsider)
PaperCut issues emergency patches as threat actors target chained vulnerabilities PaperCut issued the patches on Friday to address critical vulnerabilities in its print-management software. The company confirmed in a security advisory that multiple customers were successfully targeted and that it is working with security researchers to respond to the attacks. (Cybersecurity Dive)
Can’t get enough Talos?
JavaScript obfuscation: From party trick to phishing kit We've spent a lot of time pulling apart suspicious JavaScript from phishing kits, malware packages, compromised sites, and more. Learn the basics of what obfuscation is, why a researcher would try to reverse it, and several ways to approach the problem.
Choose your fighter: Balancing competing AI SOC model requirements Selecting a model for your security operations center (SOC) and digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) tasks is important, but selecting the best one is more involved than you might think. Here's how to choose.
Beers with Talos: Eight people walk into a dark web forum. They're all Azim. What does it take to become someone a cybercriminal will trust? Talos' Azim Khodjibaev takes us inside the psychology of direct adversary engagement. At one point, he was maintaining eight different personas, some of which were talking to each other. He explains how discipline and patience help keep his cover intact, and what can provoke threat actors into revealing information.
A new round of the weekly Security Affairs newsletter has arrived! Every week, the best security articles from Security Affairs are free in your email box.
Enjoy a new round of the weekly SecurityAffairs newsletter, including international press.
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.
Hello, everyone. Long time reader, first time writer here at the Threat Source newsletter! I wanted to start out by introducing myself. My colleague and friend Mick Baccio set the bar pretty high last week, so I was planning to tell you all about myself, including:
How I did my first real IR under the influence of The Cuckoo’s Egg while an undergraduate (and failed)
My pre-bug bounty flirtation with vulnerability research, including an arbitrary file overwrite in biff(1) and how I once hacked MIT’s website
My first ever hands-on experience with a computer, the display demo Commodore 64 at the Montgomery Ward
Unfortunately, my editor says we don’t have the “space” for that, the MIT thing might open me up to “liability,” and it’s not the kind of “professional image” we strive for here at Talos. (I'm watching. Always watching. -Amy)
So instead, I’ll just play it safe and say that I’ve been in the security field for a little over 30 years now, mostly concentrating on the defensive side (Go, Team Blue!). I’ve helped set up SOCs, run threat hunting teams, and even published a few things you might have heard of.
Speaking of things I’ve published, I’ve written before about the Attacker’s Dilemma. The idea that defenders have inherent advantages over attackers runs contrary to what most of us have heard throughout our careers. An attacker must evade monitoring and technical controls at every step of their attack lifecycle, because the defender only needs to notice once in order to respond and prevent them from achieving their goal. This is one of the most important advantages of any security team has, but we are currently witnessing a self-imposed erosion of this advantage through the rise of poorly-designed AI guardrails.
I’m not opposed to guardrails, but we have to carefully consider what we’re guarding against and where we deploy them. As I explored in a recent piece on The Safety Penalty, by allowing third-party AI providers to implement and control safety filters and the policies behind them, we may in fact be helping the attacker. If agentic SOC process experience refusals, it can slow or even halt investigations. Of course, these should get flagged for human intervention, but that takes time and may give the attacker breathing room in which to complete their mission.
It may turn out that the where of the guardrails is even more important than the what. Operational sovereignty relies on having control of our own limits. Any vision of an agentic SOC must allow the security teams to customize the guardrails according to their own threat model. They should also have the flexibility to temporarily remove specific safeguards under authorized circumstances, something you won’t get with guardrails from a frontier provider. These controls belong inside your organization’s agentic harness where you can set the policies and technical controls to allow you to analyze threats while ensuring your agents stay within their lanes.
Ultimately, operational sovereignty means engaging with the reality of the threat landscape, ensuring that the adversary can’t derail the defender’s investigation and response processes, either accidentally or intentionally. We need to move toward a model where each organization can choose the guardrails that work for them, rather than having inflexible guardrails chosen for them.
The one big thing
Cisco Talos recently evaluated 66 large language model (LLM) and reasoning combinations to see if we could find a clear winner for security operations. Instead, we found that selecting the right model is a complex balancing act between efficacy, speed, cost, and consistency. Cranking up a model's reasoning effort doesn't guarantee better analysis and can actually degrade performance. Ultimately, we developed a repeatable methodology to help organizations navigate these tradeoffs for their own workflows.
Why do I care?
Choosing an AI model based solely on generic leaderboard scores is a recipe for operational disaster. An exceptionally smart model might cost a fortune, take half an hour to analyze a single log, or completely fail to format its output. Assuming more compute power equals better results is a costly trap, as higher reasoning settings sometimes produce weaker or blocked responses. Defenders must remember that prompts, analyst personas, and model consistency drastically alter an investigation's outcome.
So now what?
Test models against your organization’s specific workflows before deploying them. Build a focused set of representative cases and test them multiple times using the exact prompts and tools your analysts will actually use. Track the quality, cost, time, consistency, and usable-answer rates in a simple spreadsheet to expose the real-world tradeoffs. Finally, establish acceptable thresholds for these variables to eliminate underperforming models, and regularly revisit your decisions as AI technology and pricing inevitably shift.
Top security headlines of the week
ToxicPanda banking trojan matures into enterprise threat ToxicPanda 2.0 expands substantially on its predecessor, adding 167 remote commands and broadening its targeting from 16 financial institutions to 349 banking, e-wallet, and cryptocurrency applications. (Dark Reading)
Interpol's Jackal IV disrupts West African crime infrastructure Law enforcement from 22 countries across six continents worked together to arrest 58 suspects and identify 263 more. The first two Jackal operations in 2022 and 2023 led to approximately 200 arrests in total and millions of dollars more in seized assets. (Dark Reading)
First malware built specifically for car head units fuels botnet Researchers have found what appears to be the first malware specifically designed for car head units, with links to the notorious BadBox botnet, on an Android-powered aftermarket infotainment system made by Chinese company DoFun, which is widely used in China and other APAC countries. (SecurityWeek)
A Tale of Two SOCs: Insights From Two Red Team Assessments A CISA red team fully compromised two critical infrastructure organizations at the domain level and reached sensitive business systems and cloud resources. Organization A failed to detect or contain the activity. Organization B rapidly identified initial compromise attempts, isolated affected systems, and forced the red team into an assume breach model. (CISA)
NovaCookies campaigns abuse genuine Docusign notifications to steal M365 sessions The $320/month service is a subscription-based phishing platform that facilitates real-time M365 session theft. The kit has been used to target hundreds of organizations across multiple sectors in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Germany, and more. (The Hacker News)
Can’t get enough Talos?
JavaScript obfuscation: From party trick to phishing kit We've spent a lot of time pulling apart suspicious JavaScript from phishing kits, malware packages, compromised sites, and more. Learn the basics of what obfuscation is, why a researcher would try to reverse it, and several ways to approach the problem.
The safety penalty: Reclaiming operational sovereignty in the age of AI As frontier AI models become increasingly restrictive, security teams are facing a "safety penalty" that hampers real-time incident response. Discover how organizations can move toward operational sovereignty to ensure their defensive AI keeps pace with unconstrained adversaries.
Back-to-school cybersecurity: Protecting education networks from ransomware and threats As the new academic year begins, school districts face a surge in cybersecurity threats, from phishing attacks and ransomware to student experimentation with network devices. In this episode, Amy sits down with Cisco Talos expert Pierre Cadieux to discuss practical strategies for IT practitioners.
A new round of the weekly Security Affairs newsletter has arrived! Every week, the best security articles from Security Affairs are free in your email box.
Enjoy a new round of the weekly SecurityAffairs newsletter, including international press.
This is my first Threat Source newsletter, so I should probably introduce myself before I start telling you all the things I think you should be paying attention to. With assistance from an unnamed LLM, my bio reads like this:
Mick Baccio is a globally recognized security strategist with a career spanning offensive operations, threat intelligence, and national-level incident response. He currently advises organizations around the world through his role at Talos, helping security leaders improve operations through data-informed approaches. Mick was the first-ever Chief Information Security Officer for a U.S. presidential campaign (2020) and previously served in multiple White House administrations as Threat Intelligence Branch Chief.
In his spare time, Mick is the Founder and President of THRUNT® Corp, IANS Faculty, and a KC7 Cyber Foundation board member.
DEFCon Goon and Purveyor of Fine Experience.
Veteran.
I also have a cat named qwerty and own too many Air Jordans.
I’ve spent most of my career somewhere in the intersection of threat intelligence, cybersecurity, government, and the people trying to make sense of all of it. These days, i spend a lot of time thinking about the decisions we make about security ripple outward, often in ways we didn't consider. Most of my ramblings will probably center around that. There will be threats. There will be intelligence. Occasionally something weird, but always something that caught my eye, and maybe worth checking out.
Which brings us this week. I picked a hell of a week to start.
Last Wednesday, the White House issued a presidential memorandum titled “Expanding Capabilities to Combat Transnational Cyber-Enabled Crime.” You should probably read it. The memorandum directs the DOJ and DHS to establish a program that can use private companies to conduct cyber operations against transnational criminal organizations outside the United States — beyond providing intelligence and assisting in the investigation. The memorandum explicitly envisions private companies conducting cyber surveillance and cyber effects operations under the direction and delegated authority of the U.S. government.
This is a pretty big thing.
For years, this industry has debated where line should exist between defending a network and reaching through the wire. We’ve debated hack back, active defense, attribution, proportional response, collateral damage, and what roles private companies have in offensive cyber operations. This is absolutely not “hack back" and calling it that misses important oversight built into the memorandum.
At the same time, let’s be clear about what we are reading. The United States is creating a mechanism for private companies to participate directly in government-authorized offensive cyber operations against systems outside the United States. There will be plenty of debate whether this is good or bad policy; I will leave that for someone else. I’m much more interested in the operational questions it creates.
Who establishes attribution strongly enough to authorize an operation? What happens when criminal and state infrastructure overlap? What happens when infrastructure is compromised and used as an ORB? Who owns access discovered during one of these operations? How is intelligence collected by a private company handled? What happens when a company conducting these operations also provides security services in that country?
Most importantly (in my head): What happens when another country discovers that employees of an American cybersecurity company are conducting offensive operations against infrastructure inside its borders?
This is not an argument against disrupting cybercrime. I’m all for it. These are questions about what happens when we fundamentally change who gets to do the disrupting.
What we have today is a framework. In 60 days, we should have a much better idea of what this will look like in practice, so circle that on your calendar. The memorandum gives DOJ and DHS 60 days to establish the operating procedures for the program, and no operation can be approved until those procedures are in place.
In the area between “private cybersecurity company” and “authorized participant in U.S. offensive cyber operations,” the threat model for that company and its employees just changed considerably.
The biggest question isn’t “Does this work?”
It’s whether we’ve fully considered what happens if it does.
Talos posted two blogs on UAT-10147, a recently discovered Chinese-speaking cybercrime group that uses agentic AI to orchestrate sophisticated post-compromise operations across global web servers. UAT-10147 uses AI to generate operational playbooks, automate exploits, and develop custom malware. This includes the newly identified SPECTRE implant, a cross-platform backdoor featuring a custom Linux kernel rootkit and Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) capabilities designed to completely blind endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions.
Why do I care?
The integration of agentic AI into offensive workflows means threat actors can now scale complex attacks with ruthless efficiency. UAT-10147 is using AI to dynamically troubleshoot, validate exploit paths, and generate custom rootkits that neutralize organizations' security stacks from the kernel level up. When an adversary can automate their reconnaissance and seamlessly blind your EDR, your window for detection shrinks drastically.
So now what?
Defenders need to prioritize patching known one-day vulnerabilities in internet-facing applications like Zimbra, Nacos, and Telerik UI. Since UAT-10147 relies heavily on stolen ASP.NET MachineKeys for ViewState deserialization attacks, locking down your key material is an absolute must. You should also block known vulnerable drivers to shut down their BYOVD attacks, and tune your network monitoring to catch the anomalous HTTP 500 errors they use to silently validate exploits. Read bothblogs for comprehensive coverage and indicators of compromise (IOCs).
Top security headlines of the week
Critical GitLab zero-click flaw poses mitigation challenges GitLab wants organizations running self-managed versions of its software development and DevOps platform to immediately upgrade to new versions released Monday, but patching is not going to eliminate the risk to enterprises and others managing projects there. (Dark Reading)
SANS 2026 AI Survey reveals cybersecurity AI adoption outpaces governance The survey found that 61% of cybersecurity practitioners now use AI in red team activities, while 76% have an enterprise AI governance role. Yet more than half said formal audit frameworks are not in place, and only 27% described their AI deployment as mature production. (Industrial Cyber)
“Unprecedented” number of Apple users received recent spyware alert, say investigators Several people publicly and privately reported receiving Apple’s spyware alerts over the weekend, after Apple sent out a new wave of notifications on Friday alerting customers in 110 countries that they had been targeted with powerful spyware. (TechCrunch)
Critical macOS, SharePoint, vCenter, and Microsoft IKE flaws under active exploitation The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added four critical vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, stating they are being exploited in the wild. (The Hacker News)
Can’t get enough Talos?
Describing attacks with crime script analysis Martin explores how using crime script analysis to describe an attack with everyday language makes the situation accessible to non-technical audiences and identify points where the crime can be disrupted.
Beers with Talos: For the record, no comment Kaitlin Acharya joins the crew to take us inside what happens when Talos spots something that could become a major threat, how her team tracks changes in threat actor behavior, and how intelligence moves from an investigation into detection content.
Don't scan that! QR code phishing and cloud-native threats What happens when a QR code leads to a major security incident? In this episode, Amy sits down with Senior Incident Response Consultant Terryn Valikodath to break down a recent, high-stakes breach at an Australian medical center.
A new round of the weekly Security Affairs newsletter has arrived! Every week, the best security articles from Security Affairs are free in your email box.
Enjoy a new round of the weekly SecurityAffairs newsletter, including international press.
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.
“Experiment is the mother of knowledge.” ― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
“Don't slide down the rabbit hole. The way down is a breeze, but climbing back's a battle.” ― Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter
Hacker Summer Camp has come and gone, which means it’s time for you to start planning next year’s trip. I’m surely going to recap Camp Season, right? Nope.
One of the things that I’ve really enjoyed lately is a segment on the Beers with Talos podcast that we call “Make Hazel a Hacker.” If you haven’t listened to it, this is a perfect time to start. Each episode we take a few minutes and pose a security question, term, or concept to Hazel and force her to come up with an idea or explanation on the spot. There are no parameters, so she’s faced with the entirety of information security — past, present, and future. I know, it’s insane. The craziest part is that (I think) Hazel came up with this idea and still volunteered to put herself in the line of fire.
As we put Hazel’s feet to the fire, one of my favorite things happens: The rest of us listen in and offer our thoughts during her brainstorming process. Invariably, we’ve got three very different answers, ideas, hints, or directions for her. It’s surely maddening for Hazel, but to me, the best part of the discussion that inevitably follows is that although they’re all different, they’re all correct.
For example, this past episode I asked her about a behavioral indicator (regarding “wallpaper.bmp”) that seems benign on its own, but can be interesting to use as a pivot for a threat hunt. We had various interesting angles to consider, backed by years of knowledge and experience. It gave us a good conversation, and that was a .bmp!
One of the most nebulous things to learn in this field is that multiple things can be both different and correct. When you are making your decisions this week — whether it’s deciding on a new pivot in your hunting, what devices to prioritize in your patching and updating, or which books or online training to focus on — take a quick second and get a second, third, and fourth opinion. Then try something that’s outside of your normal wheelhouse but sounds good when it’s proposed.
None of this is a solo sport. It’s a team game and the best plays come from a mix of perspectives, experiences, and mistakes. The “right” answer can wear many faces, and your ability to hold different truths will lead you to undiscovered territory, the rabbit hole where anomaly lives and breathes. So... welcome back from Vegas. Now go down a rabbit hole on a path you wouldn’t normally take because one of your friends (Joe) or your mortal enemy (Dave) told you that it would work.
“She'd been to Narnia, Wonderland, Hogwarts, Dictionopolis. She had tessered, fallen through the rabbit hole, crossed the ice bridge into the unknown world beyond.” ― Anne Ursu, Breadcrumbs
The one big thing
Cisco Talos recently discovered "JWR," a previously undocumented, real-time phishing framework and likely variant of "The Outsider" phishing-as-a-service platform. JWR uses an open WebSocket connection that allows attackers to monitor keystrokes live and dynamically steer victims through fake checkout and login flows. Currently deployed via SMS lures impersonating regional toll and postal authorities, JWR enables operators to steal payment data, 2FA codes, identity documents, and device fingerprints.
Why do I care?
Because JWR is operator-driven in real time, attackers can actively bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) by prompting victims for 2FA codes exactly when needed. The sheer volume of collected data gives threat actors a comprehensive identity profile primed for extensive follow-on fraud and network compromise. Furthermore, JWR's seamless integration with legitimate e-commerce platforms like Shopify makes these lures incredibly convincing to the untrained eye.
So now what?
Prioritize user education around SMS-based phishing (smishing), specifically regarding unsolicited delivery or toll fee messages. Monitor for unusual authentication attempts, as stolen device fingerprints and session tokens can bypass conditional access policies. Where possible, implement phishing-resistant MFA methods like FIDO2 hardware keys. For a complete list of indicators of compromise (IOCs) and coverage updates, read the full blog.
Top security headlines of the week
Ransomware hits Colombian Justice Ministry days before presidential transition The attack, which disrupted some services around illicit-drug monitoring and legal processes, came a day after Colombia's national CERT published threat intelligence warning that ransomware groups had increased their focus on the country. (Dark Reading)
FBI investigating North Korean remote IT staffer working for U.S. agency It’s unclear what agency was impacted, how long the intrusion lasted, and whether any sensitive data was stolen. Experts say it’s highly likely the staffer was a remote IT employee doing contract work on behalf of an agency. (Federal News Network)
Hackers leverage new Microsoft SharePoint exploit in attacks A proof-of-concept exploit for a critical Microsoft SharePoint authentication bypass security flaw in the JWT token validation pipeline is already being used in attacks. (BleepingComputer)
Signal adds new security feature to thwart adversary-in-the-middle attacks Signal has introduced Automatic Key Verification, a new security feature that gives users a new way to ensure their encrypted chats haven't been intercepted. (BleepingComputer)
A data breach at shipping giant Ceva Logistics is rippling across banks, retailers, Steam gamers, and beyond The cyberattack on Ceva is affecting at least eight warehouses across Europe used for shipping goods across the continent. Several companies reported that hackers took their customers’ names, home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses used to place their orders from Ceva’s systems. (TechCrunch)
Can’t get enough Talos?
Don't scan that! QR code phishing and cloud-native threats What happens when a QR code leads to a major security incident? In this episode, Amy sits down with Senior Incident Response Consultant Terryn Valikodath to break down a recent, high-stakes breach at an Australian medical center
Microsoft Patch Tuesday for August 2026 Microsoft has released its monthly security update for August 2026, which includes 421 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 62 that Microsoft marked as "critical." One of the vulnerabilities disclosed this month has been exploited in the wild.
A new round of the weekly Security Affairs newsletter has arrived! Every week, the best security articles from Security Affairs are free in your email box.
Enjoy a new round of the weekly SecurityAffairs newsletter, including international press.
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.
Metaphor is a powerful tool for understanding emerging issues in cybersecurity. Framing the unfamiliar in terms of the well understood helps us remove the burden of extraneous detail to draw focus to the real issues.
Recent reports of offensive AI agents "escaping" their sandbox environments to attack external systems have forced the industry into a moment of rapid sense-making. How we interpret this event doesn’t just reflect our perspective, but shapes our long-term response.
We can imagine three different narratives for interpreting the escape of autonomous agents.
The innovation narrative: We can marvel at the advance of technology, considering these agents as plucky entities with a thirst for knowledge and resources, who found clever ways to sneak out of their digital confines.
The response: If the AI is a naughty child, our reaction is one of mild disapproval or gentle rebuke where better “parenting” (guardrails) is appropriate. It minimizes the threat, framing it as the unexpected hijinks of a brilliant new technology.
The safety narrative: Imagine a breeder who has trained the world's most intelligent guard dogs. Despite high fences and barriers, their ability to identify weaknesses allows them to escape, run riot and menace local businesses.
The response: The framing shifts to biology and inherent danger. We question if the breeder can be trusted and whether such inherently wild technology requires strict regulation to ensure public safety.
The liability narrative. Finally, we can view the incident as an industrial accident. A company developing a new chemical substance experiences a containment failure. The agent leaks into the environment through an unforeseen mechanism causing damaging pollution to those in its path.
The response: The framing invokes the language of the lawyer, implying negligence, lack of duty of care, and financial liability for the harm caused. The conversation moves from innovation to corporate responsibility, regulatory oversight, and the diligent management of hazardous materials.
First impressions matter. Sensemaking shapes how we perceive incidents. Our initial perceptions of an incident dictates how we react to similar situations in the future. If we consider that the escape of an AI agent is an example of innovative autonomous thinking, then we will continue to prioritise speed over safety. Conversely, if we consider the issue as one of failed hazard containment, then we shall build a future of enforced safety standards backed by legal liability.
There is no right or wrong metaphor. Our interpretation depends on our personal system of beliefs. Personally, I would argue that the unintentional release of something that causes damage is, at its core, a failure of engineering and foresight.
Words shape our reactions. Metaphors help us understand new situations and tap into our prior experience to address problems that have yet to fully manifest. We need cognitive tools to help our understanding, but we must be aware of the metaphors that are being foisted upon us which may shape our thinking.
Excuses and the trivialisation of incidents may hide failings, allowing them to accumulate until they manifest as more damaging incidents. Conversely, overreacting risks stifling research and diverting resources away from more relevant and pressing threats.
New threats require new ideas. Metaphor helps us make sense of a changing world, but in this new era, the person who shapes the narrative controls the strategy.
The one big thing
Cisco Talos released a data-driven analysis of how adversaries are weaponizing AI in the wild. By analyzing prompt logs left behind on endpoints, we found threat actors successfully bypassing guardrails to use AI as malicious software engineers, criminal force multipliers, and vulnerability research accelerators. While novice hackers use AI to cobble together buggy malware, sophisticated actors are building highly effective, automated platforms for compromise.
Why do I care?
Threat actors no longer need sophisticated jailbreaks; simple ownership claims or "bug bounty" personas are enough to convince models to write malicious code, scale fraud operations, and hunt for zero-days. Because AI doesn't need to sleep, vulnerabilities will surface faster and exploitation will happen sooner, drastically shrinking your response window.
So now what?
To survive this impending deluge of AI-generated attacks, organizations must integrate AI into their own defensive pipelines. SOCs need to adopt these capabilities to triage the rising volume of alerts, freeing up human analysts to focus on the most critical threats. Read the full blog for a deep dive into these real-world attacker prompts and case studies.
Top security headlines of the week
Cyber attack hits Liechtenstein, with 31,000 records stolen The country has a population of around 41,000. The target was the "register of beneficial owners," a database containing the names and other details of the de facto owners of companies, foundations, or trusts. (Yahoo News)
Decades-old BMC vulnerability exposes thousands of data centers to attacks Found in most server platforms, Baseboard Management Controllers enable server management operations even without a working operating system and typically represent some of the most privileged control points in a data center. (SecurityWeek)
Keyv npm package compromised in Shai-Hulud attack Attackers have compromised the GitHub account of the maintainer behind keyv, a popular key-value storage library that pulls in roughly 127 million weekly downloads on npm, and used that access to push credential-stealing malware across the maintainer’s entire package portfolio. (Cyber Security News)
How volunteer cyber experts are helping protect rural water systems DEF CON Franklin is the U.S.’ first significant attempt to connect volunteer security professionals with woefully unprotected critical infrastructure operators. (Cybersecurity Dive)
Can’t get enough Talos?
"I pay you $200 a month!" - When threat actors argue with AI This week on Beers with Talos, researcher Arnaud Zobec joins the team to discuss what happens when attackers leave behind AI prompt logs, agent configurations and other unexpected artifacts.
Tales from the Frontlines On Tuesday, August 11, Talos IR will be hosting an exclusive, unrecorded 30-minute webinar to review the most high-impact incidents our customers faced in Q2 2026. This isn’t a rehashing of the report itself, but a candid discussion of what happened, how we handled it, and what it means for your organization.
Q2 Talos IR Trends: Phishing and authentication abuse spike From creative phishing lures that slip past email gateways to the weaponization of legitimate remote management tools, Lexi and Amy explore why traditional defenses are falling short and the practical things you can do to reclaim the advantage.
Welcome to this week’s edition of the GBHackers cybersecurity newsletter — your weekly cybersecurity bulletin covering the 50 most important stories from July 27–August 1, 2026. The week’s throughline was AI on both sides of the fight: an autonomous agent escaped its sandbox and breached Hugging Face, a DeepSeek agent drove autonomous attacks, and Google […]
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.
For my fianceé’s 30th birthday, I took her on a weekend trip to Shenandoah National Park – a favorite of ours since we went to a wedding there several years back. We’ve done several incredible hikes over the years, but one in particular had always loomed over my head: Old Rag, a 9.3 mile circuit hike that’s largely considered the most difficult in Virginia.
I've always been warned that at the beginning and end, you hate Old Rag. For the first 2.6 miles, you’re hiking a steep climb on a dirt road, with lots of switchbacks, and plenty of places where you turn a corner and groan, because there’s an even steeper section ahead. This part was pretty torturous, because 1) I felt like my heart was going to explode out of my chest, 2) I couldn’t breathe, and 3) several times, there was a family we passed as they were taking a break, then WE took a break and THEY passed US, and so on and so forth. So awkward.
Finally, we reached the fun part: a mile-long rock scramble, where you're squeezing through (and down) narrow rock crevices, cramming your boots to desperately find any leverage to propel yourself upward, and using all your upper body strength to control your descent. This was definitely the most fun part, although my hands and knees were sore by the end.
After hiking for hours, you reach the top and realize it was all worth it, because the summit has a a spectacular vie—
... That’s what we get for being excited to hike in overcast weather. Well, at least the way back down is fun— oh wait, four miles downward on a fire trail, crushing your toes in the front of your hiking boots? Yike.
It may sound like I’m complaining a lot about this hike, but it was genuinely the most fun one that I’ve done to date. By the time I was freshly showered and drinking an iced coffee in Culpeper, I was gushing about when we’d go back.
There’s a really good tie-in to cybersecurity somewhere here. Ah, got it.
Everyone has had those uphill hike phases with the endless documentation, patching, and alerts that keep you up at night. You’re waiting for the misery to end and hoping that around the next corner, you’ll see a sign that you’re almost out of the woods. Bruised and out of breath, you finally arrive at the exciting parts: a complex project that finally comes together, the thrill of stopping an attack, or a feeling of pride when someone you're mentoring gets a new certification. Maybe the payoff is something completely unexpected.
Those moments definitely don’t erase the exhaustion — you're still sore and bruised, and will be for days — but they do remind you why you started in the first place.
The one big thing
Talos released our Q2 2026 Incident Response Trends report, which showed a massive spike in authentication abuse and sophisticated phishing tactics. Phishing drove over half of all engagements, with attackers leveraging QR codes and advanced platforms like ARToken to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA). Additionally, ransomware operators are increasingly weaponizing legitimate remote management tools like MeshAgent and Zoho Assist to establish stealthy, persistent access.
Why do I care?
Standard email gateways and basic MFA are no longer enough to stop adversaries from bypassing traditional defenses. By abusing legitimate administrative tools and trusted cloud infrastructure, threat actors can easily blend malicious traffic with normal network activity to remain undetected before deploying ransomware. Furthermore, the continued targeting of health care and public administration highlights a deliberate focus on organizations with zero tolerance for downtime.
So now what?
Organizations must transition from push- and SMS-based MFA to phishing-resistant methods like FIDO2 or hardware security keys. Defenders should also shift to behavior-based monitoring, specifically hunting for unauthorized instances of administrative tools. Finally, configure centralized logging with at least 90 days of retention, enforce strict outbound email thresholds, and prioritize patching internet-exposed infrastructure.
Read the full report for a deeper dive into this quarter's trends and observed MITRE ATT&CK techniques.
Top security headlines of the week
Authorities investigating a coordinated cyber attack against Minnesota water systems Federal and state authorities are investigating what they call a coordinated cyberattack over two days against operational technology at more than 30 community water systems in Minnesota. (Cybersecurity Dive)
Hacked public Wi-Fi gateways used to harvest corporate credentials As part of the attacks, the hackers modified the DNS configurations of the compromised small office/home office (SOHO) routers to redirect users to attacker-controlled infrastructure for credential theft. (SecurityWeek)
Default Azure Automation setting enables cross-tenant identity takeover Microsoft addressed a public-by-default configuration and chain of code flaws in Azure Automation that could have let attackers seize another tenant's identity and access others' data, credentials, and cloud workloads. (DarkReading)
Public proof-of-concept released for exploited Check Point SmartConsole authentication bypass The vulnerability is an authentication bypass in the SmartConsole login process that allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to obtain an application login token and use it to authenticate with full administrative privileges. (The Hacker News)
Can’t get enough Talos?
The TTP: Built for IT. Used by attackers In this episode of The Talos Threat Perspective, Hazel, Craig and Joe explore how attackers are abusing legitimate Remote Monitoring and Management software, trusted services and compromised identities to evade detection. Based on trends revealed in the latest Talos Incident Response Quarterly Trends report, the discussion covers ransomware groups using remote tools to maintain access, phishing platforms that have evolved into complete attack ecosystems, and an ongoing QR code phishing campaign targeting Microsoft 365 accounts.
Talos Takes: Q2 Talos IR Trends: Phishing and authentication abuse In this episode, Amy and analyst Lexi DiScola unpack the trends Talos IR saw on the frontlines in Q2 2026. From creative phishing lures that slip past email gateways to the weaponization of legitimate remote management tools, we explore why traditional defenses are falling short and the practical things you can do to reclaim the advantage.
Preview: Cisco Talos at Black Hat USA 2026 We have a presence within the Cisco and Splunk booth (2633) during Black Hat where you can chat to us about our latest threat research, incident response, and how Talos powers the Cisco portfolio with our intelligence. Or, feel free to pretend to want to talk to us about those things while grabbing a new multicolored Snorty. That’s fine, too.
Chaos ransomware's msaRAT: Living off the browser to build a covert C2 channel The Chaos ransomware group uses new malware "msaRAT" that hijacks browsers. The malware doesn't communicate directly with C2 but connects through the browser. It enables arbitrary command execution while hiding the attacker's IP from victims via WebRTC over TURN.
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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.
Lately I've found myself thinking a lot about the Australian TV series Mr. Inbetween (IMDb 8.7/10) — not because I'm a hitman for hire, but because I literally feel in-between. Specifically, in-between what I'd call the "pre-Mythos" and “post-Mythos” eras. We've crossed a capability threshold, and it's not just one model family driving that — Codex 5.3 and GPT-5.5 deliver comparable or better performance, and Tulongfeng or GLM-5.2 (an incredibly powerful open-weight model, MIT-licensed) show the frontier isn't limited to closed models anymore.
On the other side of that line, real-world impact hasn't caught up yet and we're living in an artificial buffer zone. For me, defining the “pre-” and “post-” status comes down to the gap between "vulnerability discovery" and "vulnerability publication."
Last week’s Patch Tuesday gave a signal of change, as Joe pointed out, so maybe the buffer zone has come to an end.
Let's dive into the 2026 Q2 stats.
As in past years, we're seeing a steeper curve than the year before — a solid 49% YoY growth, though still not the hockey-stick moment I keep waiting for. By the end of June we were tracking close to 200 CVEs per day.
Using the keyword methodology described here, I found 452 AI-related CVEs this calendar year. If "openclaw" is added to the keyword list, that number jumps by another 536 — a reminder that these counts are sensitive to keyword drift. Given how much the keyword list keeps changing, I'm reconsidering whether to keep publishing this particular metric going forward.
KEVs, by contrast, "only" grew 13% — a small April spike aside, it's fairly flat relative to total CVE growth. Networking-gear-related CVEs continued their climb, now accounting for 24% of KEV-related vulnerabilities (up from 20% in Q1) — consistent with the trend I flagged last quarters.
As in previous quarters, CVEs from 2024 or earlier still make up about 24% of everything we're tracking. More strikingly, even though the standard enterprise patch cycle is described to run 30–90 days, 181 days into 2026, 46% of today's actively-exploited (KEV) CVEs still trace back to 2025 or earlier.
Old vulnerabilities don't retire, new ones keep arriving, and machine-speed vulnerability discovery is going to keep outpacing human-speed patching. Which brings me back — once again — to EPSS as a tool for prioritizing patching against this dataset.
If you patched purely by CVSS 9+, you'd be urgently chasing ~3,700 CVEs — but 95% of those sit below 5% EPSS, meaning the real-world odds of exploitation are tiny.
Of the 32 CVSS 9+ CVEs with EPSS ≥ 50%, 25 are already on CISA's KEV list. The remaining seven outliers are still high-probability by EPSS but haven't made KEV yet — worth watching.
Ray Shoesmith (Mr. Inbetween) once told his therapist, "You know, if I hit somebody, I generally got a pretty good reason."
Same principle applies to patching. Don't swing at everything — swing at what you have good reason to believe is coming for you.
The one big thing
Cisco Talos has discovered "msaRAT," a new Rust-based remote access trojan (RAT) deployed by the Chaos ransomware group. Built on the Tokio asynchronous runtime, it establishes a covert command-and-control (C2) channel by hijacking Chrome or Edge browsers via the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP). The infection starts with a deceptive MSI file masquerading as a Windows update that loads the payload directly into memory, paving the way for ransomware deployment.
Why do I care?
This RAT is a master of evasion, living off the browser to build its C2 infrastructure without ever directly touching the network. By routing traffic through legitimate browser processes and trusted services, msaRAT easily bypasses traditional network-based detections. Additionally, its use of the Tokio runtime enables highly efficient, parallel execution of malicious tasks, accelerating the attacker's ability to establish persistence and deploy double-extortion ransomware.
So now what?
Defenders should monitor for unusual curl commands, especially those downloading MSI files to the ProgramData directory or sending plain HTTP traffic over port 443. Scrutinize unexpected MSI files impersonating Windows updates and watch for unauthorized Chrome or Edge manipulation. Finally, implement behavioral monitoring to catch Chrome DevTools Protocol abuse and unauthorized WebRTC connections. Read the full blog for complete coverage and indicators of compromise (IOCs).
Top security headlines of the week
Introducing Antares: Highly efficient open weight AI models for vulnerability localization This week, Cisco introduced Antares, a family of security small language models (SLMs) purpose-built for pinpointing where known vulnerabilities exist within a codebase. (Cisco)
Hacker wipes European country’s entire land registry database, paralyzing real-estate market A hacker wiped Romania’s entire land registry database after an unsuccessful extortion attempt. The attack halted all property transactions, preventing notaries from authenticating sales or registering mortgages nationwide. (Cybernews)
"WP2Shell” opens millions of WordPress sites to remote takeover Barely three days after disclosure, attackers are widely chaining together CVE-2026-60137 and CVE-2026-63030 to lob exploit attempts against one of the largest attack surfaces on the Internet. (DarkReading)
Progress tells ShareFile customers to shut down Storage Zone Controllers over security threat Only the Storage Zone Controller is affected, not standard cloud-only ShareFile accounts. The controller is a server that a company runs itself, so files can stay on its own storage while it still uses ShareFile's cloud to share and manage them. (The Hacker News)
Microsoft SharePoint under attack via new exploit Researchers warned that patching is not enough to address the deserialization flaw and that security teams “should rotate credentials on any assets that may have been exposed.” (Cybersecurity Dive)
Can’t get enough Talos?
[Video] Where protection starts: Cisco Talos Intelligence Integrations Every day, defenders make high-consequence decisions with incomplete information. Learn how Cisco Talos Intelligence Integrations help reduce uncertainty by turning the latest threat intelligence into proactive protections across Cisco technologies.
The serpent’s tongue: Luring the Python out of its den Protect your development environment from rising Python supply-chain threats by understanding the package installation lifecycle and implementing these essential defensive strategies.
Keeping up with the cybercriminals In this episode of Beers with Talos, Hazel, Bill, Dave and Joe are joined by Kendall McKay to dive into the soap opera of modern cybercrime. Turns out, every ransomware operation is one passive-aggressive group chat message away from falling apart.
Entrar
Threat Research: SilverFox Evolves: Abuse of New Drivers and Trusted Software Hijacking Enable Remote Access with ValleyRAT in Japan
