TECHZONE™

OpenAI's Next AI Model Astra Shows Cyber Performance Strong Enough to Trigger Pause https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/openais-next-ai-model-astra-shows-cyber.html OpenAI has announced that it's pausing some "internal activities" involving its upcoming artificial intelligence (AI) model Astra after an internal evaluation found it had made significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity. In response to the discovery, the AI upstart said it's implementing security controls for higher-capability models and associated activities, such as isolated

Atlassian Rovo Can Be Tricked Into Sending Jira and Confluence Data to Attackers https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/atlassian-rovo-can-be-tricked-into.html Attacker-controlled instructions can make Atlassian's Rovo assistant collect Jira or Confluence data that a signed-in user can access, then send it to an outside server. Two security firms found that behavior independently, by different routes. Only one of those routes is confirmed closed. PromptArmor, an AI security firm, hid the instructions in content Rovo reads. It said an uploaded file was

New CSS Attacks Can Break Webmail Defenses to Steal Passwords and Tokens https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/new-css-attacks-can-break-webmail.html New research shows content inside an email can escape its message boundary and interfere with the webmail interface. Across attack chains spanning Outlook, Gmail, Fastmail, Proton Mail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL Mail, the techniques can capture passwords, take over third-party accounts, leak tokens, hijack trusted UI actions, and manipulate AI tools that read email. PortSwigger researcher Gareth

Metabase Zero-Day Exploited in Wild Allows Admin Access Without Authentication https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/metabase-zero-day-exploited-in-wild.html Metabase has warned that a maximum-severity security flaw impacting its business intelligence and data visualization software package has been exploited in the wild as a zero-day. The vulnerability (CVSS score: 10.0), which does not carry a CVE identifier, allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to inject arbitrary SQL into the Metabase application database, enabling them to gain

N-able Issues N-central Hotfix 2 as Attackers Reach Managed Systems and Persist https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/n-central-attackers-reach-managed.html N-able has released a fresh round of hotfixes for N‑central as part of its investigation into ongoing exploitation of a recently disclosed security flaw in the Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) product. "We are proactively expanding protections in response to ongoing monitoring of threat actors as they evolve their attack techniques," the company said. "This is not a duplicate of our

Progress Kemp LoadMaster Flaw Hits CISA KEV After 792 Reported Exploit Attempts https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/progress-kemp-loadmaster-flaw-hits-cisa.html The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added a critical-severity security flaw impacting Progress Kemp LoadMaster to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, following reports of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-8037 (CVSS score: 9.6), is a command injection flaw that could be weaponized to achieve arbitrary

Nearly 800 Malicious npm Packages Deliver Cross-Platform RAT and Infostealer https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/nearly-800-malicious-npm-packages.html A cluster of nearly 800 malicious packages has been published to the npm registry as part of a new campaign designed to deliver cross-platform malware targeting Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. "These packages appear to use AI slop squatted, or randomly generated typo-squatting package names, but all of them deliver a powerful RAT and infostealer payload," OpenSourceMalware researcher Paul

ClickFix Attacks Deliver macOS Stealer That Can Drain Crypto Wallets https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/clickfix-attacks-deliver-macos-stealer.html ClickFix-style attacks are being used to deliver a Go-based malware capable of stealing cryptocurrency assets, as well as browser-stored passwords, Apple iCloud Keychain data, and cached credentials. The macOS-focused infection chain is designed to deliver a shell script that profiles the host and then fetches a macOS malware payload that's compatible with the computer's CPU architecture. "

UNC6671 Vishing Attacks Target Personal Phones to Steal SaaS Data https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/unc6671-vishing-attacks-target-personal.html A recent wave of cyber attacks targeting financial services, private equity, and professional services is attributed to a data extortion group known as UNC6671. "UNC6671 continues to rely on voice phishing (vishing) to target enterprise employees, posing as IT help desk staff facilitating mandatory, urgent security migrations. Significantly, the threat actor often contacts employees via their

New WordPress Pre-Auth XSS Could Lead to PHP Code Execution - Patch ASAP https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/new-wordpress-pre-auth-xss-could-lead.html WordPress has fixed a pre-authentication reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in its login screen that affects every version of the content management system. Under additional conditions, the bug can be chained into PHP code execution on the server. Tracked as CVE-2026-64638 (CVSS score: 8.9), the High-severity vulnerability requires no attacker privileges. According to pwn.ai,

Growing Up The Hard Way https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/growing-up-hard-way.html Open Source had a great childhood. For two decades it got to be a kid. It ran around barefoot, gave everything away, trusted strangers, and never once thought about who was watching. It ran the kind of lemonade stand that took IOUs from anyone who wandered up — take what you need, pay me back whenever, no need to leave a name. It was idyllic. It was also, in retrospect, a little feral. Then,

18-Year-Old Linux SCTP Flaw Could Let Local Users Gain Root and Escape Containers https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/18-year-old-linux-sctp-flaw-could-let.html A use-after-free bug in Linux's SCTP networking code can be turned into full root on a host, and Tencent researchers say they used it to escape a container and reach the machine underneath. The flaw has existed since 2008. The fix already shipped: stable kernels 7.1.6, 6.18.42, 6.12.101 and 6.6.148, released August 3, close it. Anyone running an older kernel with SCTP reachable should update.

Microsoft 365 AitM Phishing Hijacks Accounts to Collect Payroll and Finance Emails https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/microsoft-365-aitm-phishing-hijacks.html Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to an active "widespread email-driven phishing campaign" that employs adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) techniques to take control of Microsoft 365 accounts with an aim to identify key personnel involved in financial workflows and gather related email. "The campaign uses residential proxies to disguise malicious sign-ins as ordinary consumer traffic,

AI-Assisted HTTP Terminator Finds Novel HTTP Desync Techniques and Apache Zero-Day https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/ai-assisted-http-terminator-finds-novel.html PortSwigger says HTTP Terminator, an artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted research system built by James Kettle, generated and proved new HTTP desynchronization techniques after exploring 30,000 candidate attack vectors. PortSwigger said a separate human-guided discovery cascade also exposed a zero-day in Apache Traffic Server. Kettle said HTTP Terminator tested 30,000 websites where scanning

New NatJack Attacks Hijack TCP Sessions and Spoof DNS by Manipulating NAT Tables https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/new-natjack-attacks-hijack-tcp-sessions.html Security researcher Malcolm Stagg has disclosed a new attack class called NatJack that manipulates network address translation (NAT) connection state to hijack active TCP sessions, spoof DNS responses, expose mapped ports, and exhaust NAT tables. Presented at Black Hat USA 2026, the research found affected behavior across independently developed implementations, including Windows and

Malware Can Abuse Windows Hello for Business Keys for Persistent Entra ID Access https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/malware-can-abuse-windows-hello-for.html Security researcher Malcolm Stagg has disclosed a new attack class called NatJack that manipulates network address translation (NAT) connection state to hijack active TCP sessions, spoof DNS responses, disclose victim IP addresses and mapped ports, and exhaust NAT tables. Presented at Black Hat USA 2026, Stagg said the techniques were demonstrated across network infrastructure devices

Claude Code and Gemini CLI Flaws Let a GitHub Issue Reach CI Workflow Secrets https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/claude-code-and-gemini-cli-flaws-let.html A GitHub issue opened by an account with no repository privileges was enough to execute code on the CI runners behind Anthropic's and Google's own coding-agent repositories. On OpenAI's, it was enough to hijack the next agent run. Novee Security ran the attack against each vendor's agent in the configuration that the vendor ships by default, and presented the work at Black Hat USA on August 5.

TeamPCP Linked To Redis Attacks Dating Back To 2020 And Later Supply Chain Campaign https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/teampcp-linked-to-redis-attacks-dating.html A new analysis has uncovered that the threat actor tracked as TeamPCP has been active on the cybercrime scene as far back as 2020, indicating the group has been compromising internet-facing infrastructure for years before training their sights on the software supply chain. "The connection is supported by overlapping domains, malware deployment paths, staging techniques, backend infrastructure,

New Zapscape KVM Flaw Could Let Privileged L1 Guest Code Escape to Linux Hosts https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/new-zapscape-kvm-flaw-could-let.html Zapscape, a new Linux kernel vulnerability, could allow an attacker with kernel privileges inside an L1 guest virtual machine (VM) to escape KVM isolation and execute code on the host. The risk applies when nested virtualization is exposed to untrusted guests. The flaw is tracked as CVE-2026-64561 and affects KVM/x86's shadow memory management unit (MMU), which manages shadow page

Cisco Patches 12 SD-WAN and IOS XE Flaws, Including Three 9.8 CVSS Score Bugs https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/cisco-patches-12-sd-wan-and-ios-xe.html Cisco has rolled out updates to address multiple critical security vulnerabilities impacting Catalyst SD-WAN and IOS XE Software as part of a comprehensive internal security review. The security issues affect Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Software, regardless of device configuration, and Cisco IOS XE Software when it is running in autonomous or controller mode. "These vulnerabilities were found