BuzzSec

OpenClaw has fixed a high-severity security issue that, if successfully exploited, could have allowed a malicious website to connect to a locally running artificial intelligence (AI) agent and take over control. "Our vulnerability lives in the core system itself – no plugins, no marketplace, no user-installed extensions – just the bare OpenClaw gateway, running exactly as documented," Oasis from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/clawjacked-flaw-lets-malicious-sites.html

New research has found that Google Cloud API keys, typically designated as project identifiers for billing purposes, could be abused to authenticate to sensitive Gemini endpoints and access private data. The findings come from Truffle Security, which discovered nearly 3,000 Google API keys (identified by the prefix "AIza") embedded in client-side code to provide Google-related services like from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/thousands-of-public-google-cloud-api.html

Anthropic on Friday hit back after U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed the Pentagon to designate the artificial intelligence (AI) upstart as a "supply chain risk." "This action follows months of negotiations that reached an impasse over two exceptions we requested to the lawful use of our AI model, Claude: the mass domestic surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons," the from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/pentagon-designates-anthropic-supply.html

Peru has increased its squid catch limit. The article says “giant squid,” but they can’t possibly mean that. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy. from Schneier on Security https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/friday-squid-blogging-squid-fishing-in-peru.html

A friend posted this on Facebook and it came up on my feed. from Human Risk Management Blog https://blog.knowbe4.com/common-facebook-scam-method

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) this week announced the seizure of $61 million worth of Tether that were allegedly associated with bogus cryptocurrency schemes known as pig butchering. The confiscated funds were traced to cryptocurrency addresses used for the laundering of criminally derived proceeds stolen from victims of cryptocurrency investment scams, the department added. "Criminal from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/doj-seizes-61-million-in-tether-linked.html

The Shadowserver Foundation has revealed that over 900 Sangoma FreePBX instances still remain infected with web shells as part of attacks that exploited a command injection vulnerability starting in December 2025. Of these, 401 instances are located in the U.S., followed by 51 in Brazil, 43 in Canada, 40 in Germany, and 36 in France. The non-profit entity said the compromises are likely from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/900-sangoma-freepbx-instances.html

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a malicious Go module that's designed to harvest passwords, create persistent access via SSH, and deliver a Linux backdoor named Rekoobe. The Go module, github[.]com/xinfeisoft/crypto, impersonates the legitimate "golang.org/x/crypto" codebase, but injects malicious code that's responsible for exfiltrating secrets entered via terminal password from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/malicious-go-crypto-module-steals.html

The North Korean threat actor known as ScarCruft has been attributed to a fresh set of tools, including a backdoor that uses Zoho WorkDrive for command-and-control (C2) communications to fetch more payloads and an implant that uses removable media to relay commands and breach air-gapped networks. The campaign, codenamed Ruby Jumper by Zscaler ThreatLabz, involves the deployment of malware from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/scarcruft-uses-zoho-workdrive-and-usb.html

Iran is slowly emerging from the most severe communications blackout in its history and one of the longest in the world. Triggered as part of January’s government crackdown against citizen protests nationwide, the regime implemented an internet shutdown that transcends the standard definition of internet censorship. This was not merely blocking social media or foreign websites; it was a total communications shutdown. Unlike previous Iranian internet shutdowns where Iran’s domestic intranet—the National Information Network (NIN)—remained functional to keep the banking and administrative sectors running, the 2026 blackout disrupted local infrastructure as well. Mobile networks, text messaging services, and landlines were disabled—even Starlink was blocked . And when a few domestic services became available, the state surgically removed social features, such as comment sections on news sites and chat boxes in online marketplaces. The objective seems clear. The Iranian government aime...

This is new. North Korean hackers are posing as company recruiters, enticing job candidates to participate in coding challenges. When they run the code they are supposed to work on, it installs malware on their system. News article . from Schneier on Security https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/phishing-attacks-against-people-seeking-programming-jobs.html

Threat actors are luring unsuspecting users into running trojanized gaming utilities that are distributed via browsers and chat platforms to distribute a remote access trojan (RAT). "A malicious downloader staged a portable Java runtime and executed a malicious Java archive (JAR) file named jd-gui.jar," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a post on X. "This downloader used PowerShell from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/trojanized-gaming-tools-spread-java.html

Meta on Thursday said it's taking legal action to tackle scams on its platforms by filing lawsuits against what it calls deceptive advertisers based in Brazil, China, and Vietnam. As part of the effort, the advertisers' methods of payment have been suspended, related accounts have been disabled, and the website domain names used to pull off the scams have been blocked. Concurrently, the social from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/meta-files-lawsuits-against-brazil.html

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new botnet loader called Aeternum C2 that uses a blockchain-based command-and-control (C2) infrastructure to make it resilient to takedown efforts. "Instead of relying on traditional servers or domains for command-and-control, Aeternum stores its instructions on the public Polygon blockchain," Qrator Labs said in a report shared with The from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/aeternum-c2-botnet-stores-encrypted.html

Introduction: Steal It Today, Break It in a Decade Digital evolution is unstoppable, and though the pace may vary, things tend to fall into place sooner rather than later. That, of course, applies to adversaries as well. The rise of ransomware and cyber extortion generated funding for a complex and highly professional criminal ecosystem. The era of the cloud brought general availability of from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/expert-recommends-prepare-for-pqc-right.html

LLMs are bad at generating passwords: There are strong noticeable patterns among these 50 passwords that can be seen easily: All of the passwords start with a letter, usually uppercase G, almost always followed by the digit 7. Character choices are highly uneven ­ for example, L , 9, m, 2, $ and # appeared in all 50 passwords, but 5 and @ only appeared in one password each, and most of the letters in the alphabet never appeared at all. There are no repeating characters within any password. Probabilistically, this would be very unlikely if the passwords were truly random ­ but Claude preferred to avoid repeating characters, possibly because it “looks like it’s less random”. Claude avoided the symbol *. This could be because Claude’s output format is Markdown, where * has a special meaning. Even entire passwords repeat: In the above 50 attempts, there are actually only 30 unique passwords. The most common password was G7$kL9#mQ2&xP4!w, which repeated 18 times, giving this sp...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new malicious package discovered on the NuGet Gallery, impersonating a library from financial services firm Stripe in an attempt to target the financial sector. The package, codenamed StripeApi.Net, attempts to masquerade as Stripe.net, a legitimate library from Stripe that has over 75 million downloads. It was uploaded by a user named from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/malicious-stripeapi-nuget-package.html

A newly disclosed maximum-severity security flaw in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller (formerly vSmart) and Catalyst SD-WAN Manager (formerly vManage) has come under active exploitation in the wild as part of malicious activity that dates back to 2023. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20127 (CVSS score: 10.0), allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to bypass authentication and obtain from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/cisco-sd-wan-zero-day-cve-2026-20127.html

Google on Wednesday disclosed that it worked with industry partners to disrupt the infrastructure of a suspected China-nexus cyber espionage group tracked as UNC2814 that breached at least 53 organizations across 42 countries. "This prolific, elusive actor has a long history of targeting international governments and global telecommunications organizations across Africa, Asia, and the Americas," from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/google-disrupts-unc2814-gridtide.html

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple security vulnerabilities in Anthropic's Claude Code, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered coding assistant, that could result in remote code execution and theft of API credentials. "The vulnerabilities exploit various configuration mechanisms, including Hooks, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and environment variables – executing from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/claude-code-flaws-allow-remote-code.html

All it takes to poison AI training data is to create a website: I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled “The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs.” Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn’t exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission…. Less than 24 hours later, the world’s leading chatbots were blabbering about my world-class hot dog skills. When I asked about the best hot-dog-eating tech journalists, Google parroted the gibberish from my website, both in the Gemini app and AI Overviews, the AI responses at the top of Google Search. ChatGPT did the same thing, though Claude, a chatbot made by the company Anthropic, wasn’t fooled. Sometimes, the chatbots noted this might be a joke. I updated my a...

Why automating sensitive data transfers is now a mission-critical priority More than half of national security organizations still rely on manual processes to transfer sensitive data, according to The CYBER360: Defending the Digital Battlespace report. This should alarm every defense and government leader because manual handling of sensitive data is not just inefficient, it is a systemic from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/manual-processes-are-putting-national.html

A 39-year-old Australian national who was previously employed at U.S. defense contractor L3Harris has been sentenced to a little over seven years in prison for selling eight zero-day exploits to Russian exploit broker Operation Zero in exchange for millions of dollars. Peter Williams pleaded guilty to two counts of theft of trade secrets in October 2025. In addition to the jail term, Williams from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/defense-contractor-employee-jailed-for.html

SolarWinds has released updates to address four critical security flaws in its Serv-U file transfer software that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution. The vulnerabilities, all rated 9.1 on the CVSS scoring system, are listed below - CVE-2025-40538 - A broken access control vulnerability that allows an attacker to create a system admin user and execute arbitrary from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/solarwinds-patches-4-critical-serv-u.html

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added a recently disclosed vulnerability in FileZen to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-25108 (CVSS v4 score: 8.7), is a case of operating system (OS) command injection that could allow an authenticated user to execute from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/cisa-confirms-active-exploitation-of.html

Threat actors are using phony meeting invites for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and other video conferencing applications to trick users into installing remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools, according to researchers at Netskope. from Human Risk Management Blog https://blog.knowbe4.com/fake-video-meeting-invites-trick-users-into-installing-rmm-tools

A vulnerability in GitHub Codespaces could have been exploited by bad actors to seize control of repositories by injecting malicious Copilot instructions in a GitHub issue. The artificial intelligence (AI)-driven vulnerability has been codenamed RoguePilot by Orca Security. It has since been patched by Microsoft following responsible disclosure. "Attackers can craft hidden instructions inside a from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/roguepilot-flaw-in-github-codespaces.html

Politicians fixate on the global race for technological supremacy between US and China. They debate geopolitical implications of chip exports, latest model releases from each country, and military applications of AI. Someday, they believe, we might see advancements in AI tip the scales in a superpower conflict. But the most important arms race of the 21st century is already happening elsewhere and, while AI is definitely the weapon of choice, combatants are distributed across dozens of domains. Academic journals are flooded with AI-generated papers, and are turning to AI to help review submissions. Brazil’s court system started using AI to triage cases, only to face an increasing volume of cases filed with AI help. Open source software developers are being overwhelmed with code contributions from bots. Newspapers , music , social media , education , investigative journalism , hiring , and procurement are all being disrupted by a massive expansion of AI use. Each of these is an a...

The North Korea-linked Lazarus Group (aka Diamond Sleet and Pompilus) has been observed using Medusa ransomware in an attack targeting an unnamed entity in the Middle East, according to a new report by the Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunter Team. Broadcom's threat intelligence division said it also identified the same threat actors mounting an unsuccessful attack against a healthcare from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/lazarus-group-uses-medusa-ransomware-in.html

The threat activity cluster known as UnsolicitedBooker has been observed targeting telecommunications companies in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, marking a shift from prior attacks aimed at Saudi Arabian entities. The attacks involve the deployment of two distinct backdoors codenamed LuciDoor and MarsSnake, according to a report published by Positive Technologies last week. "The group used several from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/unsolicitedbooker-targets-central-asian.html

This scenario simultaneously tests identity confirmation tooling (SSPR, MFA, Conditional Access), how users act under pressure, and the organization's ability to detect and follow-up on social engineering attacks. The post Social Engineering and Microsoft SSPR: The Road to Pwnage is Paved with Good Intentions  Copy appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc. . from Black Hills Information Security, Inc. https://www.blackhillsinfosec.com/social-engineering-and-microsoft-sspr-2/

Anthropic on Monday said it identified "industrial-scale campaigns" mounted by three artificial intelligence (AI) companies, DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax, to illegally extract Claude's capabilities to improve their own models. The distillation attacks generated over 16 million exchanges with its large language model (LLM) through about 24,000 fraudulent accounts in violation of its terms from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/anthropic-says-chinese-ai-firms-used-16.html

The Russia-linked state-sponsored threat actor tracked as APT28 has been attributed to a new campaign targeting specific entities in Western and Central Europe. The activity, per S2 Grupo's LAB52 threat intelligence team, was active between September 2025 and January 2026. It has been codenamed Operation MacroMaze. "The campaign relies on basic tooling and the exploitation of legitimate services from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/apt28-targeted-european-entities-using.html

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new cryptojacking campaign that uses pirated software bundles as lures to deploy a bespoke XMRig miner program on compromised hosts. "Analysis of the recovered dropper, persistence triggers, and mining payload reveals a sophisticated, multi-stage infection prioritizing maximum cryptocurrency mining hashrate, often destabilizing the victim from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/wormable-xmrig-campaign-uses-byovd.html

Security news rarely moves in a straight line. This week, it feels more like a series of sharp turns, some happening quietly in the background, others playing out in public view. The details are different, but the pressure points are familiar. Across devices, cloud services, research labs, and even everyday apps, the line between normal behavior and hidden risk keeps getting thinner. Tools from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/weekly-recap-double-tap-skimmers.html

As more organizations run their own Large Language Models (LLMs), they are also deploying more internal services and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to support those models. Modern security risks are being introduced less from the models themselves and more from the infrastructure that serves, connects and automates the model. Each new LLM endpoint expands the attack surface, often in from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/how-exposed-endpoints-increase-risk.html

Good article on password managers that secretly have a backdoor. New research shows that these claims aren’t true in all cases, particularly when account recovery is in place or password managers are set to share vaults or organize users into groups. The researchers reverse-engineered or closely analyzed Bitwarden, Dashlane, and LastPass and identified ways that someone with control over the server­—either administrative or the result of a compromise­—can, in fact, steal data and, in some cases, entire vaults. The researchers also devised other attacks that can weaken the encryption to the point that ciphertext can be converted to plaintext. This is where I plug my own Password Safe . It isn’t as full-featured as the others and it doesn’t use the cloud at all, but it’s actual encryption with no recovery features. from Schneier on Security https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/on-the-security-of-password-managers.html

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed what they say is an active "Shai-Hulud-like" supply chain worm campaign that has leveraged a cluster of at least 19 malicious npm packages to enable credential harvesting and cryptocurrency key theft. The campaign has been codenamed SANDWORM_MODE by supply chain security company Socket. As with prior Shai-Hulud attack waves, the malicious code embedded from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/malicious-npm-packages-harvest-crypto.html

The Iranian hacking group known as MuddyWater (aka Earth Vetala, Mango Sandstorm, and MUDDYCOAST) has targeted several organizations and individuals mainly located across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as part of a new campaign codenamed Operation Olalampo. The activity, first observed on January 26, 2026, has resulted in the deployment of new malware families that share from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/muddywater-targets-mena-organizations.html

Cybercriminals continually evolve their techniques, leading to more successful phishing attacks. Using techniques such as text-based attacks that utilize social engineering and highly targeted spear phishing, bad actors are able to bypass traditional email security and land in their target’s inbox. from Human Risk Management Blog https://blog.knowbe4.com/ices-vs-seg-email-security

Phishing is the most prominent form of cyber-attack, regularly prompting email recipients into disclosing their personal information, credentials, downloading malware, or paying fraudulent invoices . Phishing can result in cybercriminals gaining unauthorized access to organizations’ data, network systems, or applications. from Human Risk Management Blog https://blog.knowbe4.com/what-happens-click-phishing-link

A Russian-speaking, financially motivated threat actor has been observed taking advantage of commercial generative artificial intelligence (AI) services to compromise over 600 FortiGate devices located in 55 countries. That's according to new findings from Amazon Threat Intelligence, which said it observed the activity between January 11 and February 18, 2026. "No exploitation of FortiGate from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/ai-assisted-threat-actor-compromises.html

With $5.5 trillion in global AI risk exposure and 700,000 U.S. workers needing reskilling, four new AI certifications and Certified CISO v4 help close the gap between AI adoption and workforce readiness. EC-Council, creator of the world-renowned Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) credential and a global leader in applied cybersecurity education, today launched its Enterprise AI Credential Suite, from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/ec-council-expands-ai-certification.html

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added two security flaws impacting Roundcube webmail software to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities in question are listed below - CVE-2025-49113 (CVSS score: 9.9) - A deserialization of untrusted data vulnerability that allows remote code from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/cisa-adds-two-actively-exploited.html

In yet another software supply chain attack, the open-source, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered coding assistant Cline CLI was updated to stealthily install OpenClaw, a self-hosted autonomous AI agent that has become exceedingly popular in the past few months. "On February 17, 2026, at 3:26 AM PT, an unauthorized party used a compromised npm publish token to publish an update to Cline CLI from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/cline-cli-230-supply-chain-attack.html

There's a beautiful moment happening right now, and by "beautiful" I mean "horrifying in that can't-look-away-from-the-car-crash sense”. from Human Risk Management Blog https://blog.knowbe4.com/humans-will-give-ai-anything-if-you-make-it-sound-cool-enough

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new ClickFix campaign that abuses compromised legitimate sites to deliver a previously undocumented remote access trojan (RAT) called MIMICRAT (aka AstarionRAT). "The campaign demonstrates a high level of operational sophistication: compromised sites spanning multiple industries and geographies serve as delivery infrastructure, a multi-stage from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/clickfix-campaign-abuses-compromised.html

It’s a demonstration of how toxic the surveillance-tech company Flock has become when Amazon’s Ring cancels the partnership between the two companies. As Hamilton Nolan advises, remove your Ring doorbell. from Schneier on Security https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/ring-cancels-its-partnership-with-flock.html

A 29-year-old Ukrainian national has been sentenced to five years in prison in the U.S. for his role in facilitating North Korea's fraudulent information technology (IT) worker scheme. In November 2025, Oleksandr "Alexander" Didenko pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft for stealing the identities of U.S. citizens and selling them to IT workers to help them land from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/ukrainian-national-sentenced-to-5-years.html

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned of an increase in ATM jackpotting incidents across the country, leading to losses of more than $20 million in 2025. The agency said 1,900 ATM jackpotting incidents have been reported since 2020, out of which 700 took place last year. In December 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said about $40.73 million has been collectively from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/fbi-reports-1900-atm-jackpotting.html

AI-driven fraud attacks spiked by more than 1200% in December 2025, according to a new report by Pindrop Security. Threat actors are using AI to assist in every stage of the attack, from deploying bots to conduct reconnaissance to using deepfakes to trick humans. from Human Risk Management Blog https://blog.knowbe4.com/report-ai-driven-fraud-surged-by-1200-in-december-2025

The cyber threat space doesn’t pause, and this week makes that clear. New risks, new tactics, and new security gaps are showing up across platforms, tools, and industries — often all at the same time. Some developments are headline-level. Others sit in the background but carry long-term impact. Together, they shape how defenders need to think about exposure, response, and preparedness right now from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/threatsday-bulletin-openssl-rce-foxit-0.html

Interesting : Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library. This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats. Part 2 of the story. And a Wall Street Journal article . from Schneier on Security https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/malicious-ai.html

We’ve all seen this before: a developer deploys a new cloud workload and grants overly broad permissions just to keep the sprint moving. An engineer generates a "temporary" API key for testing and forgets to revoke it. In the past, these were minor operational risks, debts you’d eventually pay down during a slower cycle. In 2026, “Eventually” is Now But today, within minutes, AI-powered from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/from-exposure-to-exploitation-how-ai.html

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new Android trojan called Massiv that's designed to facilitate device takeover (DTO) attacks for financial theft. The malware, according to ThreatFabric, masquerades as seemingly harmless IPTV apps to deceive victims, indicating that the activity is primarily singling out users looking for the online TV applications. "This new threat, while from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/fake-iptv-apps-spread-massiv-android.html

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign dubbed CRESCENTHARVEST, likely targeting supporters of Iran's ongoing protests to conduct information theft and long-term espionage. The Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU) said it observed the activity after January 9, with the attacks designed to deliver a malicious payload that serves as a remote access trojan (RAT) and from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/crescentharvest-campaign-targets-iran.html

OSINT stands for open-source intelligence, and it refers to all publicly available information on the open internet which has been obtained without any special requirements (paywalls, invitations, etc.). The post OSINT: How to Find, Use, and Control Open-Source Intelligence appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc. . from Black Hills Information Security, Inc. https://www.blackhillsinfosec.com/osint-how-to-find-use-and-control-open-source-intelligence/

In 2025, navigating the digital seas still felt like a matter of direction. Organizations charted routes, watched the horizon, and adjusted course to reach safe harbors of resilience, trust, and compliance. In 2026, the seas are no longer calm between storms. Cybersecurity now unfolds in a state of continuous atmospheric instability: AI-driven threats that adapt in real time, expanding from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/cybersecurity-tech-predictions-for-2026.html

The title of the post is” What AI Security Research Looks Like When It Works ,” and I agree: In the latest OpenSSL security release> on January 27, 2026, twelve new zero-day vulnerabilities (meaning unknown to the maintainers at time of disclosure) were announced. Our AI system is responsible for the original discovery of all twelve, each found and responsibly disclosed to the OpenSSL team during the fall and winter of 2025. Of those, 10 were assigned CVE-2025 identifiers and 2 received CVE-2026 identifiers. Adding the 10 to the three we already found in the Fall 2025 release , AISLE is credited for surfacing 13 of 14 OpenSSL CVEs assigned in 2025, and 15 total across both releases. This is a historically unusual concentration for any single research team, let alone an AI-driven one. These weren’t trivial findings either. They included CVE-2025-15467 , a stack buffer overflow in CMS message parsing that’s potentially remotely exploitable without valid key material, and exploits ...

In the first half of February 2026 I collected 96 events (6.4 events/day) with a threat landscape dominated by malware with 33%, (it was 38% in the second half of last month, once again ahead of ransomware (up to 20% from 14%), and account takeovers, down to 8% from 14%. from HACKMAGEDDON https://www.hackmageddon.com/2026/02/18/1-15-february-2026-cyber-attacks-timeline/

Security, IT, and engineering teams today are under relentless pressure to accelerate outcomes, cut operational drag, and unlock the full potential of AI and automation. But simply investing in tools isn’t enough. 88% of AI proofs-of-concept never make it to production, even though 70% of workers cite freeing time for high-value work as the primary AI automation motivation. Real impact comes from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/3-ways-to-start-your-intelligent.html

Notepad++ has released a security fix to plug gaps that were exploited by an advanced threat actor from China to hijack the software update mechanism to selectively deliver malware to targets of interest. The version 8.9.2 update incorporates what maintainer Don Ho calls a "double lock" design that aims to make the update process "robust and effectively unexploitable." This includes verification from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/notepad-fixes-hijacked-update-mechanism.html

CyberheistNews Vol 16 #07  |   February 17th, 2026 Uncovering the Sophisticated Phishing Campaign Bypassing M365 MFA KnowBe4 Threat Labs has detected a sophisticated phishing campaign targeting North American businesses and professionals. This attack compromises Microsoft 365 accounts (Outlook, Teams, OneDrive) by abusing the OAuth 2.0 Device Authorization Grant flow, bypassing strong passwords and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). The victim is directed to a legitimate Microsoft domain to enter an attack supplied device code. This action authenticates the victim and issues a valid OAuth access token to the attacker's application. The real-time theft of these tokens grants the attacker persistent access to the victim's Microsoft 365 accounts and corporate data. Key Takeaways: Campaign at a Glance Novel Attack Mechanism: This campaign bypasses traditional security by not stealing credentials. Instead, it tricks the user into authenticating on the legitimate Microsoft...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new SmartLoader campaign that involves distributing a trojanized version of a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server associated with Oura Health to deliver an information stealer known as StealC. "The threat actors cloned a legitimate Oura MCP Server – a tool that connects AI assistants to Oura Ring health data – and built a deceptive from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/smartloader-attack-uses-trojanized-oura.html

My objectiveThe role of NDR in SOC workflowsStarting up the NDR systemHow AI complements the human responseWhat else did I try out?What could I see with NDR that I wouldn’t otherwise?Am I ready to be a network security analyst now? My objective As someone relatively inexperienced with network threat hunting, I wanted to get some hands-on experience using a network detection and response ( from The Hacker News https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/my-day-getting-my-hands-dirty-with-ndr.html

Here are three papers describing different side-channel attacks against LLMs. “ Remote Timing Attacks on Efficient Language Model Inference “: Abstract: Scaling up language models has significantly increased their capabilities. But larger models are slower models, and so there is now an extensive body of work (e.g., speculative sampling or parallel decoding) that improves the (average case) efficiency of language model generation. But these techniques introduce data-dependent timing characteristics. We show it is possible to exploit these timing differences to mount a timing attack. By monitoring the (encrypted) network traffic between a victim user and a remote language model, we can learn information about the content of messages by noting when responses are faster or slower. With complete black-box access, on open source systems we show how it is possible to learn the topic of a user’s conversation (e.g., medical advice vs. coding assistance) with 90%+ precision, and on producti...