SentryDigest · retained daily context

Digest for August 21, 2026

49 reporting items retained from the rolling digest on this UTC day.

The Hacker News ·

14 Trojanized npm Packages Drop RedC2 4.0 Linux Backdoor With AI-Assisted C2

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a set of trojanized npm packages that masquerade as working calendar and streak utilities but are engineered to stealthily deliver an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Linux implant dubbed RedC2 4.0. "When the module loads, it locates the bundled binary, marks it executable, and launches it as a detached background process," TrendAI, Trend Micro's…

Bleeping Computer ·

New SynkLoader malware pushed in Microsoft Teams phishing campaign

A previously unknown malware family dubbed SynkLoader is being distributed in Microsoft Teams phishing campaigns to steal credentials via a fake lock screen…

Dark Reading ·

OWASP Flags Top AI Skill Risks in New Security Blueprint

The Open Worldwide Application Security Project has a brand-new top 10 security list tailored for the modern era, and it debuts a Universal Skill Format to add consistency and security to the AI add-ons.

Bleeping Computer ·

Hundreds of leaked AWS keys give full control over corporate accounts

More than 9,300 Amazon Web Services (AWS) access keys publicly exposed between August 2022 and August 2026 are still active and valid…

The Hacker News ·

Microsoft Defender's Own Driver Can Be Weaponized to Delete Security Software at Boot

Check Point Research has disclosed a technique that uses Microsoft Defender's own legitimately signed boot-time remediation driver to perform arbitrary kernel-level file and registry operations on Windows systems ranging from Windows 7 through Windows 11 25H2, with no software flaw exploited and no driver imported from outside the machine. The driver, BTR.sys (Boot Time Removal Tool), is a…

The Hacker News ·

Android Car Malware Spreads Through Built-In Updaters for Ad Fraud, Proxy Botnet

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new malware family that's specifically designed to infect Android-based vehicle head unit firmware developed by DoFun. Kaspersky, which discovered the threat in June 2026, said the end goal of the malware is to serve a multi-stage downloader to enable ad fraud and creation of a proxy botnet. "The malware spread through the built-in updaters of…

Bleeping Computer ·

Microsoft blames Windows gaming issues on RGB lighting devices

Microsoft says ongoing issues causing games to crash or fail to launch after installing the August 2026 Windows updates may be caused by peripherals with RGB lighting…

Bleeping Computer ·

Is Online Privacy Possible? How Digital Identities Can Help

Using the same email, phone number, payment method, and other identifiers makes it easier for data brokers and attackers to profile your activity. Anonyome Labs explains how separate digital personas can reduce correlation and limit the impact of breaches, spam, and identity theft…

Dark Reading ·

Calling on Cyber Pros to Help Defend City Hall

Government agencies with smaller budgets need support — and here's how you can help.

Dark Reading ·

Calling on Cyber Pros to Help Defend City Hall

Government agencies with smaller budgets need support — and here's how you can help.

Bleeping Computer ·

Microsoft rolls out Classic Outlook theme for New Outlook users

Microsoft has started rolling out a Classic Outlook theme for users of Outlook on the web and the New Outlook for Windows…

Dark Reading ·

OpenAI Adds Controls That Should've Been There Already

The new AI security controls follow the Hugging Face incident last month, though many of these additions perhaps should have been in place prior to the frontier models escaping.

Bleeping Computer ·

CISA orders feds to patch actively exploited TrueConf Server flaws

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ordered U.S. federal agencies to prioritize patching two actively exploited vulnerabilities in the TrueConf Server self-hosted communications platform…

The Hacker News ·

Wazuh and AI For Enhanced SOC Workflows

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become one of this decade's defining technologies. From healthcare and finance to manufacturing and education, organizations increasingly rely on AI to automate repetitive tasks, uncover patterns hidden within large datasets, and support faster decision-making. Cybersecurity has experienced a similar transformation. While attackers employ AI to automate…

Bleeping Computer ·

Microsoft warns of max severity Entra ID flaw exploited in attacks

Microsoft has patched a maximum-severity vulnerability in the Entra ID identity and access management (IAM) platform that has been exploited in attacks…

Bleeping Computer ·

Hackers abuse FTP server banners to deliver new Windows malware

Threat actors are abusing FTP banners to hide commands that deliver two previously undocumented remote access trojans named E4del and PINHOLE…

Bleeping Computer ·

SickKids data breach exposes employee and job applicant info

Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) says a cybersecurity incident exposed the personal information of some current and former employees and job applicants, stemming from a flaw in third-party software. Clinical systems and patient records were not affected. (264)…

The Hacker News ·

Cisco Patches Nine Crosswork and Secure Workload Flaws, Five Scoring CVSS 10.0

Cisco has published another round of security updates for Crosswork platforms and Secure Workload Software as part of a continued comprehensive internal security review. Four of the security vulnerabilities affect Crosswork Data Gateway, Crosswork Network Controller, and Crosswork Planning, regardless of the device configuration. A brief description of each of the flaws is below -…

The Hacker News ·

GitLab CVE-2026-19478 Comes Under Active Exploitation Within Days of Disclosure

A newly disclosed security flaw in GitLab has come under active exploitation within days of public disclosure, according to watchTowr. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-19478 (CVSS score: 9.4), a case of code injection that allows an unauthenticated attacker to modify or delete publicly accessible GitLab projects and rewrite their data under certain conditions without requiring…

The Hacker News ·

Microsoft Patches Severe Entra ID Flaw (CVSS 10.0) Allowing Remote Code Execution

Update: The story was updated after publication to note that the vulnerability has not been exploited. Although the security bulletin originally marked the "Exploited" field under the Exploitability Assessment table as "Yes," on August 21, 2026, Microsoft corrected the "Exploited" status to "No" after The Hacker News contacted the company for comment. It also noted, "this vulnerability was not…

Dark Reading ·

New CUSTODY Framework Constrains AI Agents Inside the Network

Enterprise cybersecurity expert Jake Williams joins the Dark Reading News Desk to explain why he decided to release his new agentic AI framework in the wake of the OpenAI attacks on Hugging Face.

The Hacker News ·

Rust Supply Chain Attack Puts Build-Time Malware in Crates with 245 Million Downloads

The Rust Project has deleted malicious versions of three widely used Rust crates from crates.io after a compromised maintainer account published releases that added a typosquatted dependency whose build script downloaded and executed a remote payload during compilation. The affected releases are arrayref 0.3.10, internment 0.8.7, and append-only-vec 0.1.9, all published from the same owner…

The Hacker News ·

Suspected Russian Hackers Abuse Google OAuth and WhatsApp Linking to Hijack Accounts

Three distinct suspected Russian cyber espionage threat clusters have been observed leveraging legitimate authentication flows to single out individuals working in academia, aerospace and defense, governments, and think tanks across Europe, as well as academia and think tanks within the U.S. These clusters include UNC6293, UNC7005, and UNC5976. "These clusters engage in persistent, adaptive…

Dark Reading ·

What We Missed: Delta Flight Disrupted With Wi-Fi Hack

In this video, Dark Reading editors discuss some of the news they didn't get a chance to cover, including some scary airplane security risks and the US government's newest "hack back" strategy.

Bleeping Computer ·

Hackers poison arrayref Rust crate to push infostealer malware

Hackers compromised the maintainer account behind the widely used Rust crate arrayref to introduce malware that executed on developers' systems during compilation…

Dark Reading ·

N-able Bug Exposes Password Vault Master Keys

The popular "Passportal" password manager, favored by MSPs and SMBs, remains risky even after its patch, thanks to its cloud-based design. Should these products stay away from the cloud entirely?

Dark Reading ·

Money and Mindset: The Two Biggest Roadblocks to Cyber Policing

Law enforcement training is falling behind the volume and rapid evolution of cybercrimes. Officers really only need to learn the basics, but lack of focus and budget hinder progress.

The Hacker News ·

ThreatsDay: Gogs 10.0 RCE, n8n Workflow-to-RCE, $10M Reward, GLM-5.3 AI Exploit, and More

A lot of this week’s trouble starts with something trusted doing exactly what it was allowed to do. Signed drivers get turned against defenses. Legitimate apps help malware blend in. A weak header check opens a path to code execution. Elsewhere, exposed systems, old bugs, odd hiding tricks, and AI-assisted exploit research keep lowering the effort needed to cause damage. Nothing here needs…

The Hacker News ·

AI-Generated Exploit Scripts Target Siemens S7 PLCs in U.S. Critical Infrastructure

The U.S. government on Wednesday warned of an "active threat" targeting critical infrastructure organizations in the country using artificial intelligence (AI)-generated exploit scripts. The activity is targeting Siemens S7 SeriesProgrammable Logic Controllers (PLCs) to conduct reconnaissance and capability development using AI-generated scripts disguised as legitimate monitoring tools. That…

Dark Reading ·

Pakistan's Transparent Tribe Refreshes Toolset for Afghan Cyberattacks

A nation-state threat actor is picking on immature organizations run by the Taliban, but failing against more prepared government agencies in India.

Bleeping Computer ·

Critical Elementor Pro bug exposes WordPress sites to RCE attacks

A critical vulnerability in the Elementor Pro WordPress plugin could allow attackers to upload executable files for remote code execution on the server…

The Hacker News ·

New Cryptographic Context Injection Attack Could Let Web Pages Steal Grok Chat Data

Adversa AI has disclosed an attack technique that it says can cause xAI's Grok chatbot to send a user's name, approximate location, subscription tier, and the prompts from the ongoing conversation to an attacker-controlled server after the user asks it to summarize an ordinary web page. The AI security company, which has codenamed the technique "Cryptographic Context Injection," said the…

Bleeping Computer ·

How MSPs can catch phishing attacks email filters miss

AI is making phishing attacks more personalized, convincing, and difficult for traditional email filters to detect. Kaseya explains how MSPs can monitor identity, email, and endpoint activity to detect and contain attacks that make it past the inbox…

The Hacker News ·

Isolated-vm Flaw Lets Sandboxed JavaScript Escape to Host for Potential RCE

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a critical security flaw in isolated-vm, a popular open-source sandbox with more than 2,900 stars and 190 forks on GitHub, that could allow attackers to escape the confines of the isolated environment. The vulnerability ("GHSA-864f-rcv7-6rh4"), which has yet to be assigned a CVE identifier, impacts all versions of the library before and including 7.0.0.

The Hacker News ·

Critical NetScaler Flaw Can Bypass Authentication on Certain Gateway and AAA Servers

Citrix has released updates to address two security flaws impacting NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway deployments, including a critical-severity authentication bypass vulnerability. According to the cloud computing and virtualization technology company, the issues affect customer-managed NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway, including certain FIPS and NDcPP builds, as well as SecurAccess…

Dark Reading ·

'Grandoreiro' Malware Resurfaces With Mexico Campaign

The banking Trojan, post-law enforcement takedown, is sprucing itself up with features that make detection and analysis harder.

The Hacker News ·

Attackers Exploit Zimbra SNMP Flaw for Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution

A now-patched security flaw impacting Zimbra Collaboration (ZCS) has come under active exploitation in the wild, according to the Polish Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT Polska). The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-73570 (CVSS score: 8.9), which refers to a case of command injection that can lead to remote code execution. "A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Zimbra…

Bleeping Computer ·

Citrix urges admins to patch new NetScaler flaws as soon as possible

Citrix has warned customers to immediately secure their systems against two vulnerabilities affecting NetScaler Gateway secure remote access solutions and NetScaler ADC networking appliances…

The Hacker News ·

Zombie Card Attack Can Revive Expired Visa Cards for Contactless Payments

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have demonstrated an attack that revives expired Visa contactless credit cards for real in-store purchases by rewriting the expiration date a point-of-sale (POS) terminal reads over near-field communication (NFC), without breaking any of the card's cryptography. The attack, which the researchers named "Zombie Card," requires physical…

The Hacker News ·

Why "Shady AI" is Security's Next Big Governance Problem

In March 2026, an internal AI agent at Meta triggered a “Sev 1” incident after sensitive company and user data was exposed to employees who weren’t authorized to access it. The incident began when a Meta employee posted a technical question on an internal forum. An engineer used an approved AI agent to analyze it, but the agent posted its response publicly without approval. The employee…

The Hacker News ·

CDN Tsunami Attack Abuses HTTP/3 Translation for Up to 350x DoS Amplification

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed two denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that exploit how major content delivery networks (CDNs) convert client-facing HTTP/3 traffic into HTTP/1.1 requests to the websites they front, amplifying a low-bandwidth request stream by up to 350x against the origin server. The attacks, collectively named "CDN Tsunami," were evaluated against Alibaba, Baidu…

The Hacker News ·

Manic Android Malware Exfiltrates Data From Offline Phones via Nearby Infected Devices

A new Android threat codenamed Manic has been observed actively targeting Ukrainian banks, government and identity services, and messaging applications, as well as Russian and European financial institutions, global fintech and cryptocurrency services, and military-focused communications. "Manic sits at the intersection of Android banking malware and mobile spyware, combining financial-fraud…

Bleeping Computer ·

CISA warns of hackers exploiting critical MLflow vulnerability

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned federal agencies that threat actors are now exploiting a critical vulnerability in the MLflow open-source AI engineering platform…

The Hacker News ·

NASA AIT-GUI Flaws Could Let Unauthenticated Attackers Issue Spacecraft Commands

Security researchers at Cycode have disclosed a chain of flaws in AIT-GUI, the browser-based operator console for NASA/JPL's open-source AMMOS Instrument Toolkit, that allow an unauthenticated attacker to issue arbitrary commands to the software's spacecraft and instrument command bus. The chain, tracked as GHSA-p9r8-2q67-fp86 and rated 9.4 on the CVSS v3.1 scoring system, impacts AIT-GUI…

The Hacker News ·

ToxicPanda 2.0 and GoldDigger Expand Android Banking Attacks with On-Device Fraud

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on an updated version of ToxicPanda (aka TgToxic) that comes with "significant enhancements," including a set of 167 remote commands and expands its targeting footprint globally. Zimperium zLabs, in a Wednesday report, said the Android malware also features a PIN harvesting workflow targeting more than 140 banking and cryptocurrency applications.

Bleeping Computer ·

New Manic Android malware can exfiltrate data through nearby devices

A new Android malware named Manic targeting users in multiple European countries has a fallback data exfiltration mechanism that uses nearby infected devices…

Bleeping Computer ·

Critical Zimbra RCE flaw now actively exploited in attacks

CERT Polska, the Polish Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), warned that attackers have begun exploiting a critical vulnerability in Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS)…

The Hacker News ·

40 Malicious Firefox Extensions Pose as Web3 Products to Steal Wallet Secrets

A set of 40 Mozilla Firefox extensions has been found to engage in cryptocurrency wallet theft by masquerading as OKX, Rabby Wallet, TronLink, and other Web3 products. According to the Socket Threat Research team, the extensions are part of a broader set of 77 browser add-ons that share source code and infrastructure overlaps. The campaign, dubbed Offside Wallet Theft Factory, is believed to…

Bleeping Computer ·

Microsoft says August Windows updates may cause gaming issues

Microsoft is investigating a potential issue with the August 2026 updates that may prevent some games from launching or cause them to crash on affected Windows 11 systems…