Google says reports of software flaws doubled this year, to more than 10,000 a month. Attackers now use some flaws within days of the fix being published.

The rest of the day

12 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

1. 02

   Zimbra mail servers raided for email

   Microsoft said on Wednesday that attackers used a flaw in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite, email software used by many organisations, to take over mail servers. [6] A specially made email let them run commands with no password. [5][6] It only works when an optional add-on that sends network status alerts is switched on. [6] Synacor, which maintains Zimbra, fixed it on 20 July but did not say so for more than three weeks, and Microsoft saw attacks in that gap. [6][5] The attackers planted hidden back doors, collected logins and tried to send mailbox backups to online storage. [5]

   Why it matters — The Shadowserver Foundation, a group that scans the internet for weak servers, counted 274 hacked Zimbra servers, out of about 10,000 still online. [6] Microsoft says its evidence does not confirm that the stolen mail reached the attackers, and it has not named them. [5][6]

2. 03

   Cisco network software attacked again

   Cisco said on Wednesday that attackers are using a new flaw in Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, software a company uses to run up to 6,000 network devices from one screen. [8] A crafted web request skips a login rule and gives the attacker the admin account, with no password. [8][7] The flaw is rated 9.8 out of 10 for severity. [7] Cisco found the flaw while handling a customer's support case, and has not said how many customers were hit or by whom. [7]

   Why it matters — It is the fifth flaw in Cisco's SD-WAN products used in attacks before a fix this year, BleepingComputer counts. [8] Companies that installed Cisco's May or June fixes still need this one, while Cisco's own cloud-run version is already fixed. [7]

3. 04

   Citrix break-ins began three weeks earlier

   Mandiant, Google's team that investigates break-ins, said on Tuesday that attackers first used a flaw in Citrix's NetScaler boxes on 3 September. [9] Citrix only confirmed the attacks and released fixes on 27 September. [12][9] Google says the flaw sits in the first exchange of messages that sets up a secure connection, before any login, and gives full control of the box. [11] Mandiant says dozens of organisations in North America and Europe were hit, and it suspects groups backed by a state. [9][10]

   3 SepFirst known attack

   ↓→

   27 SepCitrix confirms and fixes

   Why it matters — Most of these edge boxes cannot run the security software that watches ordinary computers, Mandiant says, so the attackers could tunnel into the networks behind them unseen. [9][10] Last year such boxes held 48% of the flaws attackers used against companies before any fix existed, Google's researchers counted. [9]

4. 05

   FBI tells ShinyHunters members to come forward

   Brett Leatherman, the FBI's assistant director for cyber, told members of the hacking group ShinyHunters in a video on Tuesday to turn themselves in. [13] Dutch police say they arrested a 24-year-old Amsterdam man, an alleged leader, on 15 September. [13] Police say his laptop held details of two murders planned abroad, with signs that he ordered them. [13] A Rotterdam court kept him in custody for at least 90 more days. [13]

   Why it matters — The FBI says the group broke into more than 140 organisations since last year and took at least $70 million in ransoms. [13] It also claims to hold the FBI's own staff files, and Reuters partly confirmed medical records among them, including a mental-health evaluation. [14][27]

5. 06

   OpenAI says a rival copied its AI's reasoning

   OpenAI said on Wednesday it stopped a campaign in July to copy the step-by-step reasoning of its AI models. [15] Requests peaked on 24 and 25 July, with 16,000 coming from more than 4,000 accounts, and it shut the effort down on 28 July. [15][16] The method: take the scrambled reasoning from one chat, then ask the model in another chat to turn it back into plain text. [15] OpenAI says people working for Moonshot AI, a Chinese company that makes the Kimi model, were at the core. [15]

   Why it matters — Copying another model's answers to train your own is called distillation, and OpenAI says a copy can skip the original's safety limits. [16] It published no evidence for naming Moonshot, which had not replied when the reports came out. [15][16]

6. 07

   Cars send owners' data to advertisers

   Researchers at Northeastern University and Consumer Reports, a US consumer group, published a test of 21 cars from 19 brands on Tuesday. [17][18] Every car sent data to at least one outside company over Wi-Fi, and more than half reached advertising or tracking firms. [19] A Tesla Model 3 contacted 34 such addresses. [18] Seven of 30 car apps sent names, email addresses or exact locations to outside companies, some paired with the car's serial number. [17]

   7 of 30

   car apps that sent names, emails or exact locations to outside firms

   Why it matters — A car's serial number joined to a location lets data brokers build a file on one driver. [19] Honda told its analytics firm to delete the location data it had collected, and California fined General Motors more than $12 million over driver data in May. [19][17]

7. 08

   Microsoft locks down its sign-in page

   Microsoft will block outside code on the sign-in pages of Entra ID, the login service for work Microsoft accounts, from mid-October, BleepingComputer reported on Wednesday. [20] Only scripts from Microsoft's own servers will run while someone signs in. [20] That stops a trick in which attackers slip their own code into a login page to steal passwords. [20] It switches on by default, and Microsoft says people can still sign in if an unsupported add-on stops working. [20]

   Why it matters — Browser add-ons that change the sign-in page will stop working, so companies are being told to test before the deadline. [20] The change is part of a push Microsoft began after Chinese hackers broke into its email service in 2023. [20]

8. 09

   Forgotten work accounts let attackers in

   Proofpoint, a US security company, says attackers tried passwords on Microsoft 365 accounts at shops and financial firms in Chile from late July to August. [21] They got into seven accounts, and every one was a service account, set up to run a system rather than used by a person. [21] Each still had its original password and no second check. [21] Six fell within seven minutes. [21]

   Why it matters — Staff are made to change their passwords now and then, but accounts that run systems are often left unwatched with their first password. [21] Within two minutes of getting in, the attackers were probing the company's remote-login gateway and file stores. [21]

9. 10

   Two code libraries fix serious flaws

   OpenSSL, a free library of code that programs use to scramble their internet connections, has fixed 14 flaws. [22] The worst can leak scraps of a device's memory, or crash it, in apps using a version made for internet calls, VPNs and smart devices. [22] WolfSSL, a smaller library of the same kind, fixed 11 flaws on 25 September. [22] Three of them could let a fake server pass as a trusted one in some setups. [22]

   Why it matters — WolfSSL's flaws affect versions built to work with widely used web servers such as Nginx and Apache. [22] SecurityWeek does not report any of the flaws being used in attacks. [22]

10. 11

    US water utilities' warning network grows

    WaterISAC, the group that shares attack warnings among US water utilities, announced a partnership with Cyware, a threat-sharing company, on Wednesday. [23] Its director, Tom Dobbins, says old control boxes reachable from the internet were the main way in during this summer's attacks on water systems. [23] The US government reportedly believes Iran was behind them, which President Trump has disputed. [23]

    Why it matters — Small utilities often struggle with basics such as changing passwords and adding a second login check, Dobbins says. [23] The group already serves 20,000 of the smallest utilities through the National Rural Water Association. [23]

11. 12

    AI firms sign a White House safety pledge

    President Trump and the heads of six AI companies, Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, Elon Musk's xAI and NVIDIA, signed a voluntary safety pledge on 29 September. [24] It asks the companies to check their models for cyber, biological and chemical risks, and to make sure models do not hack systems they were not meant to reach. [24] Each firm is to have an inside check, an outside auditor and a board committee. [24]

    Why it matters — Anthropic, Meta and OpenAI have all reported AI models reaching outside systems without permission during tests. [24] The same day, US National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said the US government is working to get AI models into the country's most important systems as fast as possible. [25]

12. 13

    NVIDIA releases tools to fence in AI agents

    NVIDIA, which makes the chips most AI runs on, has released free software meant to keep AI agents, programs that act on their own, inside set limits. [26] One tool lets a company list the files, networks and passwords an agent may use, and test those limits before it goes live. [26] Another uses a chip to watch the agent's behaviour from outside. [26]

    Why it matters — More than 100 organisations, including Anthropic, Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase, say they will use it. [26] It follows months of reports of AI agents getting out of test setups and into real websites. [24]