Citizen Lab says ads from an Israeli firm, Discover-Tech, put Candiru spyware on at least 45 Al Jazeera devices without a single click, and Google cuts the firm off

The rest of the day

30 more stories on this beat.

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

1. 02

   Hack stops every US bankruptcy notice

   A cyberattack on BAE Systems, a British defence company, has shut the system that sends notices for every federal bankruptcy court in the US. [9] The Administrative Office of the US Courts said on Thursday that all of the Bankruptcy Noticing Center's websites were down. [9] BAE runs the system for the courts, and no notices are being produced. [9] BAE says the problem is limited to that one system. [9] The courts did not say whether any data was taken. [9]

   Why it matters — Creditors, the people and firms owed money in a bankruptcy, have also lost the service they register with to get these notices. [9] It follows a breach of Arizona's state courts that leaked the details of more than 1.3 million people. [9]

2. 03

   Remote-help tool attacked since August

   BeyondTrust told customers on Thursday to fix a serious flaw in Remote Support, software help desks use to take control of a worker's computer from afar. [10] Attackers used it from late August, before any fix existed. [10] Mandiant, a Google-owned security firm, links the attacks to a China-linked spying group it calls Armory Castle. [10] The attackers took full control of the boxes, wiped the logs and used stolen administrator logins to move deeper. [10] BeyondTrust fixed its cloud version on 8 October, but customers who run their own copy must update by hand. [10]

   Why it matters — Mandiant says any box that was online and unfixed during those weeks should be treated as broken into until checked. [10] Shadowserver, a group that watches the internet, sees more than 1,400 of these boxes online. [10]

3. 04

   UK legal aid files stolen back to 1978

   The UK Legal Aid Agency, part of the Ministry of Justice, pays for lawyers for people who cannot afford one. [11] It said this week that the files hackers took in April 2025 go back as far as 1978. [11] It had first said they covered people who applied from 2010. [12] About 250,000 stolen records are older than 2007. [13] The files also hold names of judges and lawyers in Crown Court trials, and some probation records from 2010 to 2017. [12][13]

   123

   1,9752,0012,026

   1. 1Oldest stolen record1,978
   2. 2First stated start2,010
   3. 3The break-in2,025

   Why it matters — Charities had warned the files may hold details of women who escaped domestic abuse. [12] The agency says it has no evidence the data has been published or sold. [13]

4. 05

   French shops pull fridge controls offline

   Censys, a company that scans the internet, counted 1,825 Danfoss fridge control panels open to the internet in France on 11 October, the day of the attack on supermarket fridges. [14] Three days later it found 537, a drop of 71%. [14] Censys says owners unplugged the panels instead of updating them. [14] US cyber defenders had warned about flaws in Danfoss and Copeland fridge controls in May 2025 and February 2026. [15] The attack hit nearly 700 French supermarkets. [15]

   Why it matters — Outside France, the count fell only from 1,166 to 966. [14] On 11 October, most exposed panels in Poland, Romania and Belgium were also running unfixed versions. [14]

5. 06

   Texas utility confirms a million people hit

   CenterPoint Energy, a power and gas company based in Houston, has told Texas officials that 1,062,060 people in the state had their details taken. [16] The stolen data includes names, addresses, Social Security numbers and driving licence numbers. [16] A hacker had boasted of 7.5 million records before the company said anything. [16] CenterPoint also serves Indiana, Minnesota and Ohio, and has not said how many people there were hit. [16]

   7.5 millionHacker's claim

   vsvs

   1.06 millionTexans counted so far

   Why it matters — On 12 September the hacker put a 2.5-gigabyte file online that seems to hold about 3 million phone numbers. [16] The company does not appear to have written to the people affected yet. [16]

6. 07

   UAE police arrest 33 in a crypto gang

   Police in Sharjah, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, said on Thursday they had arrested 33 people from 12 countries. [17] They say the network ran as four gangs. [17] One broke into companies and stole customer data, and one laundered money through crypto. [17] One tricked people out of their crypto wallets, and one attacked victims to force out wallet passcodes. [17] Police seized more than 200 million dirhams in cash, about $54 million. [17] They found the network through a 15-year-old with a large crypto wallet. [17]

   Why it matters — Police say more than 30 companies were targeted. [17] Every figure here comes from the police's own press conference. [17]

7. 08

   Spies target governments in Central Asia

   Cisco Talos and Insikt Group, two security research teams, say a spying group has targeted government offices in nine countries since January 2025, including Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. [18] The Record, which reported it, belongs to Insikt's owner, Recorded Future. [18] The group sends fake official emails, sometimes from real government accounts it has already broken into. [18] It hit a Tajik government office soon after treaty talks with Kazakhstan in March. [18] The researchers say, with medium confidence, that it has ties to Kazakhstan. [18]

   Why it matters — The group goes after offices that handle foreign affairs, energy and shared rivers. [18] In April it used a flaw in WinRAR, a common file tool, against Armenia's foreign ministry. [18]

8. 09

   Hidden spy tool found on firewalls

   Unit 42, the research team at Palo Alto Networks, found new hidden malware on Fortinet firewalls, the boxes that guard a company's network. [19] It turned up in a long break-in, starting in September 2024, at a firm that runs telecom networks for clients. [19] The attackers first stole settings and keys for more than 500 firewalls. [19] The malware, called PEERSTITCH, lives only in memory and talks through the firewall's own programs, so it opens no new connections. [19] It lets the attackers' marked VPN logins skip the firewall's checks. [19]

   Why it matters — Most tools that look for intruders watch for new files and new connections, and this one makes neither. [19] Fortinet fixed the flaw it used in April. [19]

9. 10

   Cloud computers could read their hosts

   A researcher found a flaw in Linux, the system most cloud servers run, that let a virtual machine read the memory of the computer it runs on. [20] A virtual machine is a computer made in software, and many customers share one real machine this way. [20] Paulos Yibelo of pwn.ai showed it against Vercel's live cloud sandboxes in a $1 million challenge. [20] Each packet he sent carried back about 32 bytes of the host's memory. [20] A fix from Red Hat is now in Linux. [20]

   Why it matters — Almost every big cloud keeps customers apart on this same layer of Linux, so a flaw here reaches beyond one company. [20] Vercel says no customer's files or secrets were read, and nobody has used it in an attack. [20]

10. 11

    Urgent fixes for a popular web toolkit

    Vercel released an emergency update on 14 October for Next.js, a free toolkit that many websites are built with. [21] It fixes two flaws rated 9.5 out of 10 that could let an attacker run code on a website's server with no login. [21] One sits in a caching feature and one in the code that handles SVG images. [21] The fixed versions are 16.4.1 and 15.5.28. [21] As of 15 October, two of the three warnings had no official flaw number, so common checking tools may not flag them. [21]

    Why it matters — Last December a worse flaw in the same toolkit was attacked on a large scale. [21] Netlify, a hosting firm, says its setup is less exposed, but it still asks customers to update. [21]

11. 12

    A serious Drupal flaw, and many sites without a fix

    Drupal, free software that runs hundreds of thousands of websites, fixed a critical flaw on 14 October. [22] It can let an attacker run code on a site's server, through add-ons, and one known way needs no login. [22] In early October, 151,442 of the 531,499 sites that report their version to Drupal were on old versions that get no fix. [22] Drupal had warned sites two days early to set time aside. [22] No attacks had been seen by 15 October. [22]

    • Old versions with no fix151,442 sites · 28%
    • Versions that got a fix380,057 sites · 72%

    Why it matters — Sites that cannot update yet can uninstall the affected part, Field UI, until they do, the advisory says. [22] Two of the branches that did get a fix lose support in December. [22]

12. 13

    Flaw numbers now arrive weeks after fixes

    Second Security, a security company, studied open-source flaws and found that the official ID number now comes long after the fix. [23] The usual gap grew from 5.1 days in January to 39 days in August. [23] Without that number, called a CVE, administrators find it harder to spot which fix they need. [23] Attack code often appears within hours of a fix, the study found. [23] Collabora fixed a document-editing flaw on 11 September, but its number came only on 14 October, after attacks began. [23]

    Why it matters — Collabora blames a backlog in GitHub's handling of these numbers, swollen by security reports found with AI. [23] Two of this week's Next.js warnings also had no number yet. [21]

13. 14

    Backup software gets the fix it lacked

    Ahsay Backup, a Singapore company, released new fixes for two flaws in AhsayCBS, software that firms use to run backups for their customers. [24] Attackers had joined the two flaws to get in without a password and plant hidden control pages and crypto-mining programs. [24] Ahsay now admits its August fixes did not fully close them. [24] Huntress, the security firm that found the attacks, says the new fix blocks the way in. [24]

    Why it matters — US cyber defenders have added both flaws to their list of attacked flaws. [24] US government offices must fix them by 17 October. [24]

14. 15

    GitHub blocks a key-stealing campaign

    GitGuardian, a company that hunts leaked passwords in code, says a campaign called GhostAction used about 1,900 hijacked GitHub accounts on 8 and 9 October. [25] It used them to plant a fake security step in more than 30,000 projects, which tried to copy out 3,174 secret keys. [25] GitHub began stopping the fake step from running on 9 October. [25] Two later waves, on 10 and 12 October, took nothing. [25]

    Why it matters — Some victims had been hit before, in September 2025 and August 2026. [25] The attackers were counting on owners not changing keys that had already leaked. [25]

15. 16

    Proofpoint to buy Varonis for $6.3 billion

    Proofpoint, which blocks scam emails for companies, agreed on Thursday to buy Varonis for about $6.3 billion in cash. [26] Varonis maps where a company's sensitive files sit and who can open them. [26] Proofpoint is owned by Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm that buys companies. [26] Proofpoint's chief says AI programs with wide access to company data have made data security the top concern. [26] The deal should close in the first half of 2027 if shareholders and regulators agree. [26]

    Why it matters — It continues a buying spree. [26] Proofpoint bought Hornetsecurity, a German email security firm, for a reported $1 billion or more, and an AI security start-up in February. [26]

16. 17

    X removes 13,000 accounts before US vote

    X, the social network owned by Elon Musk, said on Wednesday it had removed more than 13,000 accounts. [27] It linked them to three influence campaigns run from Iran, Russia and China. [27] X says the accounts posted and boosted political posts about candidates across the political spectrum. [27] The US midterm elections are on 3 November. [27] X did not publish the evidence behind its claim. [27]

    Why it matters — X cut its moderation staff after Musk bought it, and now leans on Community Notes, where users add context to posts. [27] The European Commission has questioned how well that works. [27]

17. 18

    Fake local news written for chatbots

    VisionHeight, an Israeli research firm, found networks of fake local news sites in at least 14 US states, with names like Peach State Bulletin. [28] The 460 pages repeat lines such as one candidate being the stronger choice on housing. [28] They read badly to people, because they were written for AI chatbots that search the web to answer questions. [28] Thirty-six of the first 37 sites were registered within eight minutes. [28] Perplexity, an AI search tool, cited one as its first source. [28]

    Why it matters — VisionHeight does not know who is behind it. [28] It says this is cheap enough to aim at small local races that nobody used to bother with. [28]

18. 19

    Hidden orders for AI in web pages

    Signals Corps, a security company, checked 217 million web page responses for hidden notes aimed at AI programs. [29] Almost 8,000 sites sent such notes in the page's background data, called headers. [29] Thirty tried prompt injection, which means slipping orders to an AI inside text it reads for someone else. [29] Most were jokes, but one told AI hiring tools that an applicant was a 94% match. [29]

    Why it matters — An AI reads its instructions and the page in one stream of text, so it cannot easily tell which part may give orders. [29] The researchers think it very unlikely that anyone was actually affected. [29]

19. 20

    Fake price button fooled a shopping AI

    HiddenLayer, a security company, tested Jev, an AI model that its maker, TypeSafe AI, says cannot invent answers. [30] The team built a pretend online shop and told an AI shopping helper to buy only what was in the cart. [30] It then added a fake ad saying the discount had not been applied, with a Confirm Price button. [30] The helper clicked the button instead of finishing the order. [30] The trick worked on a second model too, though Jev fell for it less often. [30]

    Why it matters — Chaining such tricks across pages could give an attacker full control of the helper, HiddenLayer says. [30]

20. 21

    UK still unsure on AI in its cyber law

    UK officials told members of Parliament this week that the UK government is still considering AI rules for its Cyber Security and Resilience Bill. [31] Liam Byrne, who chairs the committee, replied that a bill must contain rules, not things being considered. [31] On Monday, Anthropic, an AI company, warned that small AI models may soon be able to copy themselves across weak smart devices. [31]

    Why it matters — The UK has no single AI law and regulates AI sector by sector. [31] Its AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, says the UK government will legislate wherever necessary. [31]

21. 22

    UK watchdog rebukes London police

    The ICO, the UK's data protection watchdog, has formally rebuked London's Metropolitan Police and ordered it to fix its checks. [32][33] From March 2023 officers opened about 500 accounts on Auror, a platform shops use to report shoplifting, without approval. [32] They uploaded details of 179 people, three of them children. [33] The force's web blocks were never tested, and no alert fired for 18 months. [32] Access was cut on 26 September 2024. [32]

    Why it matters — The ICO says the failures are ongoing, because the force has not shown its safeguards now work. [32] The Met has since approved Auror and uses it in 14 London boroughs. [32]

22. 23

    Password thief now takes AI coding keys

    Symantec, a security company, says new versions of a password-stealing program called Aoki now take the login files of AI coding helpers. [34] These include Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's Codex, Cursor, Gemini and GitHub Copilot. [34] The newest version also takes Amazon cloud keys. [34] A stolen AI key can be sold, or used to run up bills on the owner's account. [34] It can also open the code and cloud systems linked to that account. [34]

    Why it matters — Symantec says criminals now value AI keys as highly as card numbers and crypto wallets. [34]

23. 24

    Flaws in a tool that holds AI keys

    Check Point, a security company, found two serious flaws in LiteLLM, free software that sits between a company's apps and AI services such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. [35] It is downloaded almost 100,000 times a month. [35] One flaw let any user with an account become an administrator and run their own code. [35] The other could expose the keys the company uses for its AI services. [35] Version 1.83.9 fixes both. [35]

    Why it matters — A tool like this holds the keys for every AI service a company uses, so one break-in reaches all of them. [35]

24. 25

    Robot toy left children's chats open

    The Verge reports that Eiliko, a small robot pet made by Energize Lab, stored what owners told it on servers with almost no protection. [36] A researcher, Sammy Azdoufal, could read 13 million conversations and reach about 68,000 toys. [36] More than 31,000 profiles in the US belong to children. [36] The company built a profile of each user from their chats, and kept voice clips and some photos at public web addresses. [36] Azdoufal also took over a toy's AI from abroad. [36]

    Why it matters — Energize Lab did not reply to more than a month of messages. [36] Azdoufal is filing nine official flaw reports. [36]

25. 26

    Fake Windows alerts on 20,000 web pages

    Infoblox, a security company, has tied Help TDS, a system that sends visitors from hacked websites to fake Windows support warnings, to Hotejka, a Russian-language scheme that pays partners for traffic. [37] The warnings tell people to call a support number. [37] Call centre staff then talk victims into installing remote-control tools. [37] Since April the pages sit on Cloudflare Pages, a free hosting service, at about 300 new pages a day. [37] More than 20,000 have been found. [37]

    Why it matters — Remote control lets the scammers come back to the same victim again and again, Infoblox says. [37]

26. 27

    Hijacked boxes rent out owners' internet

    GreyNoise, a company that watches internet attacks, found an attacker breaking into old D-Link storage boxes, Ubiquiti video recorders and some business servers. [38] On each, it installed Pawns.app, a real app that pays people for sharing their internet connection. [38] The attacker collected the pay. [38] At least 143 devices in 34 countries were hit. [38] All the flaws it used were already public, one of them since 2021. [38]

    Why it matters — Strangers' traffic then runs through the owner's connection. [38] That can get the owner's address blocked, or blamed for what the strangers did. [38]

27. 28

    Fake Linux tools in a community store

    On 13 October an account uploaded fake copies of two popular helper tools, yay and paru, to the AUR, a community store of install recipes for Arch Linux. [39] The copies held the real code plus a hidden step that ran an outside script with full control of the computer. [39] Community members spotted it within minutes, and the AUR team banned the account and removed the copies. [39] The same store was hit in June, when 400 packages carried password-stealing code. [39]

    Why it matters — Anyone who installed the fake copies should treat the computer as broken into, BleepingComputer says. [39] A link to a similar attack on another code store is suspected but not confirmed. [39]

28. 29

    Spy tool takes orders through Discord

    Darktrace, a security company, found a new program for spying on Windows computers that takes its orders through Discord, a popular chat app. [40] It arrives as a PDF holding a shortcut dressed up as a Word file. [40] Opening it shows a harmless decoy while the program installs in the background. [40] Each victim gets its own Discord channel, and the program can take screenshots, use the camera and send out files. [40]

    Why it matters — Darktrace says it shows how ordinary online services can be turned into tools for crime. [40] The program can also ask for particular documents from the victim's computer. [40]

29. 30

    Police in 17 countries arrest 95

    Police in 17 countries in Latin America and Europe arrested 95 people in an operation run with INTERPOL, the international police network. [41] It targeted groups on messaging apps that shared and sold images of child sexual abuse. [41] Officers carried out 127 searches between March and September. [41] They rescued a five-year-old whose parent had been selling such material. [41] In Panama, police arrested the administrator of a group with more than 700 members. [41]

    Why it matters — INTERPOL says the material seized should lead to more children at risk being found. [41]

30. 31

    India orders caller names on phone screens

    India's telecoms department has told phone companies to show the registered name of the caller on every incoming call from 1 November. [42] It covers 4G and newer networks, and older networks come later. [42] A name saved in the phone's contacts still shows first. [42] Calls from abroad will be labelled International Call. [42] The receiving company must not keep the name after the call ends. [42]

    Why it matters — The rule is aimed at spam and fraud calls from unknown numbers. [42] Callers can still choose to hide their identity. [42]