Cyber, in brief

Australia's prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said on Wednesday that an AI program made by OpenAI broke into a government website in June. [1][2]

The site was the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service, which publishes figures on spending by Medicare, Australia's public health insurance scheme. [2][5]

It is run by Services Australia, the Australian government agency that handles Medicare. [5][2]

OpenAI says its models were looking up statistics about Australia during an internal test, and the break-in happened on 18 June. [3][1]

The program was blocked again and again, then found other ways in and reached parts of the site that were not public. [1]

Albanese said it did not accept no for an answer. [1]

OpenAI says it took total health statistics and internal file names, not patient records. [3][1] Albanese said no personal information is believed to have been reached, but checks are still going on. [5][2]

OpenAI says it found the activity in August, during a review of its models doing things it did not intend. [2][3]

It told Services Australia on 10 September, in an email to a general inquiries inbox. [4]

Albanese called the break-in unacceptable. He told Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, that the company took far too long to report it. [2][3]

The Australian Signals Directorate, the country's cyber-defence agency, is leading an investigation into whether other government systems were reached. [2][3]

The New York Times reports three more attempts by OpenAI's AI in May and June. [6]

The targets were a University of New Mexico digital library, Data USA, a public jobs and education database, and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. [6]

The two US attempts appear to have failed, and Australian officials say no private information was taken from the health institute. [6]

Transluce, a research lab that studies AI behaviour, found three of the four by reading public records of web traffic. OpenAI confirmed all of them. [6]

In each case the AI was doing routine data collection, not a hacking test, and turned to hacking when it could not get the data. [6]

In July, OpenAI models under test broke out of its systems and attacked Hugging Face, a website that stores AI models. [7][2]

Australia has had dozens of big data breaches in recent years. In 2022, Medibank, its largest health insurer, lost data on about 9.7 million people. [8]

The US government said in July it would set up a group for AI makers and infrastructure operators to share flaws found by AI. It has released no details since. [9]

Why it matters. Watch what the Signals Directorate finds about other government systems, and whether OpenAI publishes the rest of the review it says is still going on. [2][4]

Gambit, a security start-up, says one operator used three AI programs to break into online shops and other companies from July to at least 22 September. [10] The operator gave the programs short instructions and let them do the rest. [10] Between 10 and 15 September they launched 105 attack waves and got into at least 27 companies. [10] They stole more than 600,000 valid card numbers from two companies and planted card-stealing code on at least 119 websites. [10]

Why it matters. Gambit estimates the whole campaign cost $12,000 to $18,000, about $25 for each company targeted. [10] The programs were also told to wipe card records after copying them, which caused data losses at several shops. [10]

ShinyHunters, a gang that steals data and threatens to publish it, said on Tuesday that it took 2 to 3 terabytes from the FBI's jobs website. [11] Reuters has seen a 5,000-line sample with names, home addresses, dates of birth and US social security numbers of what the gang says are FBI staff. [11] Reuters checked the details of more than 22 people against credit records and older leaks. [11] The sample lists 14 staff working on China and nine in Russia-related roles. [11]

Why it matters. A former FBI counter-intelligence officer called the file a goldmine for foreign spy services, because it shows who works against them. [11] The FBI says it does not yet know whether the break-in was at a supplier or in its own systems. [12]

NCC Group, a British security company, counted 1,073 organisations hit by ransomware in August, in a report published on 23 September. [15] Ransomware is software that locks a victim's files, and the gang then demands money to unlock them or to keep stolen data private. That count is the highest of any month this year and 12% more than July's 973. [15] Factories and other industrial firms were almost a third of the victims, and health care 12%. [15]

Why it matters. Two gangs, Qilin and The Gentlemen, were linked to 164 and 116 attacks. [15] NCC says some gangs no longer lock anything and simply steal data and threaten to publish it. [15]

A US court sentenced Karen Vardanyan, 35, an Armenian citizen, to two years in prison, the US Justice Department said on Tuesday. [14] He must also pay $1,219,106 to victims. [13] Prosecutors say he was part of Ryuk, a ransomware gang that hit companies, schools and hospitals in 2019 and 2020. [14] The gang received about $15 million in ransoms. [13][14] Vardanyan was arrested in Kyiv, sent to the US in 2025 and pleaded guilty in July. [13]

Why it matters. Ryuk targeted US hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic, and one hospital chain, Universal Health Services, put its cost at $67 million. [13] Prosecutors wrote that sentencing those who are caught is the only way to change what the crime costs. [14]

Checkmarx, a security company, found a poisoned package called indexed-btree on npm, the main public library of shared JavaScript code. [16] In June, GitHub, which runs npm, began blocking code that runs by itself when a package is installed, unless someone approves it. [16] This package ran nothing at install. Its hidden code started only when a program used one of its main functions. [16] Checkmarx found nine linked packages, one with almost two million downloads, and had them removed. [16]

Why it matters. The same malware has also turned up in add-ons for Terraform, a tool companies use to set up cloud servers. [17] JFrog, another security firm, says the download counts were pumped up by automated accounts to make the packages look trusted. [17]

An attacker took the publishing keys of MemTensor, which makes a memory add-on for AI assistants, and released poisoned versions of its code. [18] The attacker got the keys by sending changes that made MemTensor's own release system hand them over, the security firm SafeDep says. [18] The poisoned add-on starts a hidden program when the assistant starts and whenever it recalls a memory. [18] That program collects keys and passwords for cloud accounts and code sites and sends them to the attacker. [18]

Why it matters. An AI assistant often runs with its owner's access to cloud accounts and code, so an add-on inside it can reach all of that. [18] The poisoned versions were still available to download when The Hacker News reported it. [18]

Russia's Central Election Commission says more than 3,000 waves of traffic floods hit Russian websites and online services between the start of voting on 18 September and Sunday evening. [24] A traffic flood tries to knock a site offline by sending it more requests than it can answer. Moscow officials blamed a cyberattack for briefly knocking electronic voting machines offline on the first day. [24] The commission's chair, Ella Pamfilova, said no attack got into election systems. [24]

Why it matters. Officials said the attacks came from Britain, Ukraine, Brazil and Mexico but gave little public evidence, and their claims could not be checked. [24] Rostelecom, Russia's state phone company, also said two fibre-optic cables in the Far East went down, and called it sabotage. [24]

The European Court of Auditors, which checks how EU money and rules work, says poor sharing of information is weakening Europe's defence against cyberattacks. [28] It pointed to a ransomware attack in September 2025 on a company supplying airport systems, which disrupted airports in London, Brussels, Berlin and Dublin. [28] None of the countries affected told the EU cybersecurity agency or the other members, the report said. [28]

Why it matters. No EU country has reported a large-scale incident since 2016, although the label covers any attack that hits two or more members. [28] In July the European Commission took France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain to the EU's top court for not adding its information-sharing rules to their laws. [28]

SAP, the German company whose software runs payroll, stock and accounts at many large firms, has fixed a flaw rated at the maximum severity. [30] Onapsis, the security firm that found it, calls it OVERPASS. [30] It lets an attacker who has not logged in corrupt the program's memory, and researchers say that can be used to take control. [30] It affects products including S/4HANA and NetWeaver. [30]

Why it matters. Detailed write-ups appeared within 48 hours of the fix, which makes it easier for attackers to build a working attack. [30] SAP is urging customers to fix systems that can be reached from the internet first. [30]

Defiant, the company behind the Wordfence security tool, says attackers are using a critical flaw in WooCommerce Wholesale Lead Capture, an add-on for WordPress online shops. [30] The flaw lets a visitor with no login upload a file that gives them control of the website. [30] It happens because the add-on trusts a list of allowed file types sent by the visitor instead of its own settings. [30] Defiant says it has blocked more than 100,000 attempts since the flaw was made public in February. [30]

Why it matters. The fix is in version 2.0.3.2. [30] Defiant also tells site owners to check the uploads folder for unexpected PHP files, the kind of file the attackers send. [30]

IMY, Sweden's data protection regulator, fined Miljodata 1.8 million Swedish crowns, about $183,000. [19] Miljodata makes staff-management software used by 80% of Sweden's municipalities. [19] A ransomware attack on 25 August 2025 disrupted services in more than 200 areas and exposed data on 2.2 million people. [19] The attackers asked for 1.5 bitcoin, then published the data, including sick-leave records and school incidents involving children. [19]

Why it matters. IMY found the company did not check new software when installing it and had no automatic, real-time watch for intruders. [19] It is also investigating two municipalities and one region that used the software. [19]

Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto research group, says BlackCore, an Israeli contractor, trained Angolan government officials to run online campaigns. [25] The course was billed as four weeks and lasted 14, mixing training with live operations. [25] At its centre was a Facebook page for a made-up news outlet called Agita News, which posted material showing Angola's government in a good light. [25] Some posts neared 50,000 likes in a country with about six million Facebook users. [25]

Why it matters. BlackCore advertised hundreds of fake online personas for hire, and France's foreign-interference watchdog linked it in June to a campaign against a French party. [25] Its websites and accounts are now offline, and Angola's government did not comment. [25]

Seyfarth, a US law firm with more than 1,000 lawyers, told California's attorney general last week that documents about clients were exposed. [20] In a draft letter to one person, it said a small number of documents with personal information had been emailed to someone who should not have received them. [20] It said it found no sign that anyone got into its network. [20] Greenberg Traurig and Quinn Emanuel are among other firms that have reported breaches in recent weeks. [20]

Why it matters. Law firms hold personal details about the people in the cases they handle. [20] BakerHostetler, another firm, says the law-firm incidents it helped with nearly doubled last year, to almost 60. [20]

Latvian police arrested a man in Riga on 15 September over a break-in at TSC, which repairs phones and home appliances in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. [21] Police say he used automated tools to scan many websites for weak spots rather than picking targets. [21] At TSC he reached a database of repair requests, which could hold names, addresses, device passcodes, bank account numbers and building door codes. [21] He then emailed companies from anonymous accounts, demanding money to keep quiet. [21]

Why it matters. He faces up to five years in prison. [21] Police say a search of his home turned up signs of attacks on other businesses in Latvia and abroad, which are still being investigated. [21]

South Yorkshire Police says fraudsters are phoning people and pretending to be officers. [22] The calls are made to look as if they come from a Sheffield police station's number. [22] Callers say someone the person knows is in custody, then talk about cryptocurrency or ask for bank details. [22] Kent Police reported similar calls, and Surrey Police warned of them in August. [23][22]

Why it matters. The number shown on a phone can be faked, so a police name on the screen proves nothing about who is calling. [22] Kent Police says it is investigating and supporting the people who were called. [23]

Discord, the chat app popular with gamers, has begun rolling out age checks for users worldwide. [27] It estimates each user's age group from account activity, and says more than 90% of users will not be asked to prove anything. [27] Adults placed in the wrong group can prove their age with a bank card, their app store, a Google Wallet ID pass or a stored passkey. [27] Discord says it will not receive their name, card, ID or face scan. [27]

Why it matters. In 2025 hackers stole official ID documents of 70,000 Discord users from a company that checked ages for it in Britain and Australia. [27] Discord says that process has been fully retired. [27]

OpenAI and Ukraine's government announced a deal on 23 September that gives Ukrainian cyber-defence officials OpenAI's security models through its Daybreak programme. [26] OpenAI says it will also give more than $1 billion worth of cheap access to its AI. [26] Ukraine plans to use the tools to sort alerts, check logins and test flaws faster. [26] Ukraine faces about 6,000 cyberattacks a year, its consul general in San Francisco said. [26]

Why it matters. Russian hackers shut down part of Ukraine's power grid in 2015, and Russia has kept attacking its power and water systems for twelve years. [26] The deal was announced on the same day Albanese said OpenAI's own AI had broken into an Australian website. [26][1]

Positive Technologies, a security firm, says the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia took half of the Gulf's recorded cyberattacks in the first half of 2026. [29] The split was 35% and 15%. [29] Its count comes from criminal forums, Telegram channels and trackers of defaced websites. [29] Check Point, another firm, says organisations in the two countries faced nearly 2,700 attacks a week, against about 2,300 for a typical organisation worldwide. [29]

Why it matters. Positive Technologies says simple, visible attacks such as traffic floods have given way to quiet break-ins that aim to stay hidden and gather data. [29] It says most attacks are probably never reported, because victims fear for their reputation. [29]