Google has announced a new security measure that limits access to Android's accessibility services to verified applications classified as Accessibility Tools when Advanced Protection is enabled. With malicious Android applications abusing the API serving as the main conduit for malware and financial fraud, the tech giant said the move would block a major attack pathway. Advanced Protection is a
The Pentagon's Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) is notifying millions of military service members that hackers stole their data after breaching the Pentagon's human resources management system in October 2025. In data breach notification letters shared online by affected individuals, the DMDC told affected military personnel that "a small number of unauthorized users" had access to their sensitive data, including personally identifiable information (PII), between October 2025 and July 2026 after exploiting a vulnerability in its file-sharing systems. The stolen data varies by person and includes Social Security numbers (SSNs), names, dates of birth, contact information, sex, race, and military personnel information. Pentagon officials told Federal News Network that the data breach affects more than 3 million people, including nearly 2.8 million living individuals and 294,000 "deceased individuals."
Attackers are exploiting a new critical zero-day flaw in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, the system companies use to manage their Cisco SD-WAN networks, Cisco said in an advisory on September 30. The flaw, CVE-2026-76504, could allow a remote attacker with no login access to use the Manager's API as the admin user. Fixed releases are available, and there is no workaround. It carries a
Pentagon personnel agency breach exposed data of 3 million people after attackers accessed a file-sharing server for about nine months. The U.S. Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), which maintains personnel records for the Department of Defense, is notifying people that their personal information was exposed in a data breach. According to the agency, unauthorized users accessed one of its file-sharing servers for roughly nine months. The breach affects 2.76 million living people and 294,000 deceased individuals, according to a Department of War official. DMDC held at least 60 million records in fiscal year 2024, covering military and civilian personnel, contractors, family members, retirees and veterans. “The Pentagon has confirmed that the breach affects 2.76 million “living individuals,” a category that potentially includes current and former defense personnel or their dependents, and 294,000 “deceased individuals,” a Defense Department official told CNN on Monday, three days after this story was published.” CNN states. The Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) has notified individuals that a security vulnerability exposed personal information stored on one of its file-sharing systems. The vulnerability was discovered on July 16, 2026, and the US office quickly patched the system and restored it. An investigation found that a small number of unauthorized users had accessed files between October 2025 and the discovery date. The files contained unencrypted personal information. “On July 16, 2026, a security vulnerability in a DMDC file sharing system was discovered, which allowed unauthorized users to access files. DMDC immediately updated the file sharing system to patch the vulnerability and the system was restored.” reads a data breach notification letter sent to impacted individuals. “Analysis identified that between October 2025 and the date of discovery, a small number of unauthorized users accessed files on a server containing unencrypted PII. The types of PII involved vary by individual; however, in your case, they include social security number (SSN) and at least one additional identifier such as name, date of birth, contact information, sex, race, and military personnel information (such as occupational specialty).” US Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) notice of data breach (Source Reddit) The data exposed varies by person, but in this case included Social Security numbers (SSNs) and at least one other identifier, such as name, date of birth, contact details, sex, race or military personnel information, including occupational specialty. After discovering the vulnerability, the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) launched its privacy and cybersecurity incident response process in line with U.S. government policies and guidelines. The agency says it is assessing the affected system and taking steps to improve its security. DMDC is also offering 12 months of free credit monitoring through IDX, a company specializing in data breach and recovery services. Individuals affected by the breach are encouraged to contact IDX with any questions and enroll in the service. Enrollment is available through the dedicated IDX website using the enrollment code provided in the notification. The deadline to enroll is August 19, 2027. The credit monitoring is intended to help affected individuals identify potential misuse of their personal information following the breach. At this time, no known cybercrime group claimed responsibilty for the attack. DMDC says it launched privacy and cybersecurity incident response actions after finding the vulnerability. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, US Defense Manpower Data Center)
A malicious MCP server could trick an application built on the official MCP Python SDK into handing over the OAuth credentials it uses to log in to a real service, the SDK's maintainers said in a security advisory. Affected versions sent the client secret, the authorization code, and the PKCE proof key to a token endpoint the attacker controlled. The fix is in versions 1.30.0 and
Japanese car-sharing service Times Car has confirmed that approximately 6.6 million user accounts were compromised in a cyberattack disclosed late last week. The company announced the incident on September 25, saying that a third party had accessed its systems at the beginning of the month. Times Car took action to block the unauthorized access on September 26. At the time, the company said it was investigating whether the attackers accessed members' personal information, but confirmed the data theft in an update earlier today. The company says that the intrusion affects 6.6 million current and former Times Car members, and also current and former members of the Times Business Service corporate account program. According to the update, exposed information includes the following data: The company said that passwords were stored in “a form that cannot be restored,” suggesting they were encrypted or hashed, although it did not provide additional details.
Nearly 400,000 DC Medicaid and Healthcare Alliance beneficiaries may have had personal data exposed through reports published on a public website. The District of Columbia Department of Health Care Finance is notifying nearly 400,000 Medicaid and DC Healthcare Alliance beneficiaries that their personal information may have been exposed. The incident affects people who enrolled between 2023 and 2026. A cyberattack did not cause the breach. DHCF reported the breach to the US Department of Health and Human Services, stating that 399,086 people were affected. In July, DHCF discovered that two reports published on its website contained hidden personal information that could be accessed by unauthorized individuals. The exposed data included Medicaid IDs and other beneficiary information. “On July 21, 2026, DHCF learned that two reports on DHCF’s website contained hidden personal information that could be accessed by people who did not have permission to view it. These reports were intended to display only summary information about groups of people, such as enrollment counts and other statistics, and did not show anyone’s personal details on the screen.” reads the incident notice published by DHCF. “However, underlying personal information that supported these reports may have been reachable by unauthorized users between 2023 and July 2026.” DHCF removed the affected reports after discovering the issue, launched a review and began strengthening its internal processes. Exposed data may have included Medicaid IDs, dates of birth, provider names, race, gender, ward and ethnicity, but not names, Social Security numbers or financial information. DHCF said the risk of misuse is lower because the exposed information did not include Social Security numbers or financial account details. “Because the information that could have been reached did not include Social Security numbers or financial account information, it is less likely that the information connected to you, your child, or your family member will be used in the wrong way,” reads the data breach otification letter. The agency said it has no evidence the exposed data was accessed or misused, but urged victims to remain alert for identity theft and fraud. DHCF removed the reports, launched an internal investigation and conducted system checks after discovering the exposure. “DHCF has no reason to believe anyone looked at or used any of this information in the wrong way, but it is always advisable to remain vigilant against the potential for identity theft and fraud and to monitor your accounts and credit reports for any suspicious activity.” states DC Healthcare Alliance. Under U.S. law, impacted users can get one free credit report each year from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. They can check their reports regularly for suspicious activity or signs of identity theft. They can request them through AnnualCreditReport.com or by phone. Users can also stagger requests to check one report every four months. Users can also place a free one-year fraud alert on their credit file. It asks lenders to verify your identity before opening new accounts or changing existing ones. Contacting any one of the three credit bureaus will automatically notify the other two. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, data breach)
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), on Thursday, added two critical security flaws impacting WSO2 and Adobe Commerce and Magento to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2026-5430 (CVS score: 9.8) - A path traversal vulnerability in WSO2 API Control Plane,
AI coding agents are changing how quickly developers can build and ship software as well as how quickly credentials can become exposed. According to GitGuardian’s 2026 State of Secrets Sprawl Report, commits identified as AI-assisted are leaking secrets at approximately twice the rate of human-written ones. Most of the fastest-growing categories of leaked credentials are now connected to AI
Cisco Talos finds CLOSEDQUORUM, malware that lets four commercial AI models vote on its next move, with no human operator required. Cisco Talos found malware, dubbed CLOSEDQUORUM, that holds a vote before deciding what to steal from you. Four AI models vote on its next move, without any human interaction. CLOSEDQUORUM is the first Windows malware they’ve seen that hands its tactical decisions to a panel of commercial AI models instead of a human operator. Once it lands on a machine, it doesn’t wait for instructions. It asks four different large language models what to do next, tallies their answers, and acts on whichever choice gets the most votes. “CLOSEDQUORUM is, to our knowledge, the first publicly documented Windows implant to apply this model to tactical command and control (C2). After deployment, it delegates the selection of its next action to a panel of commercial large language models (LLMs) and executes the resulting decision, with the intent of harvesting user credentials and crypto wallets.” reads the report published by Talos. “It does not require continued commands from a human operator or tasking from a dedicated, attacker-operated C2 server; the complete dynamic operation is delegated to the AI.” The name makes sense. A quorum needs a minimum number of people to make a decision, and this one has exactly four members: DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral, and Google Gemini. There is no human involved. Talos discovered the malware using CAIRN, a new open-source toolkit designed to find threats that use AI. This is the first case study from the project. Most discussions about AI and cybercrime have focused on speed and scale. Attackers can write phishing emails faster, create more malware variants, and carry out more attacks with less effort. That’s true, but in these cases, a human is still in control, choosing the targets and deciding when to attack. Talos calls what CLOSEDQUORUM does something different: effort displacement. It’s not making an operator faster at their job. It’s removing them from an entire phase of the job. “A third dimension has received less attention in the malware space: effort displacement. This is not merely augmenting what an operator can accomplish in a session but transferring an entire phase of the attack from the operator to the system. Effort displacement compounds the effects of speed and scale because the human-in-the-loop is no longer the bottleneck.” Talos continues. “Human operators are bound by attention, working hours, and cognitive load. An AI system capable of executing a phase of the attack chain can continue when the operator is no longer watching. It does not go offline when the attacker sleeps.” On execution, the malware gathers basic host information, hostname, OS version, admin status, and folds it into a prompt sent to each of the four models in turn. Each model has to answer with one of exactly four options: steal, inject, persist, or move. Anything that doesn’t match the format gets thrown out. Steal runs three things at once: dumping credentials from LSASS memory, pulling saved passwords out of Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, and scanning for crypto wallets like MetaMask and Exodus. Inject writes shellcode and picks a delivery method depending on what the model recommends. Persist sets up the usual mechanisms to survive a reboot. Move is defined in the code but has no actual function behind it yet, so calling it does nothing. If the four models disagree and end up tied, there is a fixed order for breaking the tie: DeepSeek first, followed by Qwen, Mistral, and Gemini. It’s not a sophisticated system. The model that loads first in the code simply gets the final say. The malware encrypts everything it steals and sends it out through a Discord webhook instead of a traditional command-and-control server. That’s the interesting part. Security teams can block domains, IP addresses, or certificates, but a Windows process quietly connecting to four AI APIs and a chat service can look like normal application traffic, at least until its other activity raises a red flag. “Stolen material arrives AES-256-GCM encrypted in the operator’s Discord channel as base64 code blocks.” continues the report. “CLOSEDQUORUM replaces a dedicated C2 endpoint with a chain of correlated behaviors. No single indicator fully identifies the architecture, but the combination is distinct: Repeated execution at randomized 5 – 15-minute intervals; AI-provider API traffic originating from an unexpected Windows executable; Similar requests potentially sent to several model providers within a short interval; Structured prompts containing host context or offensive capability language (Note: This would likely only visible through TLS inspection or provider-side telemetry); Numerous known malware techniques for process injection, LSASS access, or persistence creation; Discord webhook communication from the same process or host.” The encryption is worth a second look too, mostly because it’s weaker than it sounds. The key comes from the current date, not a proper secret, which means the malware’s own developer could decrypt any operator’s stolen data just by knowing what day it is. That’s obfuscation dressed up as security, and it’s a detail that says something about how this whole operation was actually built. The public sample Talos pulled apart is inert. It ships with placeholder API keys and a dummy webhook, so nobody’s running the live version through this exact binary. Development builds tell a different story though, with real credentials baked in at compile time, which points to a model where a developer builds custom versions for paying operators, credentials-as-a-service, basically, with the AI orchestration as the selling point. There is also a trail pointing to the developer. Artifacts found in the malware connect the person behind it to carding forum posts dating back to 2025. That suggests this is not just an academic proof of concept created in a lab. It appears to come from someone already involved in cybercrime and testing how much autonomy AI can add to their existing activities. That doesn’t make the malware impossible to stop. It relies on commercial AI APIs, which can rate-limit requests, reject them, or return responses that don’t match the expected format. Its predictable tie-breaking also makes it easier to identify. Talos recommends watching for Windows binaries that contact several AI providers and Discord within a short period while also accessing LSASS or creating suspended processes. None of these signs is enough on its own, but seeing them together is highly unusual. “CLOSEDQUORUM is an early and limited example, but it makes an emerging threat model concrete and gives defenders an outline of the observable signals they can begin addressing today.” concludes the report. “As effort displacement expands across more phases of an intrusion, its effects will compound with the speed and scale already afforded by modern AI. “ Talos technical writeup includes the YARA rule and the MITRE ATT&CK mapping. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, malware)
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