Trump authorizes vetted US cybersecurity firms to conduct government-approved cyber operations against transnational criminal networks. President Trump signed a national security memorandum on August 13 establishing a formal program that allows vetted private US cybersecurity companies to conduct offensive cyber operations against transnational criminal organizations under government direction and oversight. The program, managed by the National Coordination Center, covers both intelligence collection, described as Cyber Surveillance Operations, and active disruption of criminal infrastructure, described as Cyber Effects Operations. It’s the formal implementation of what the White House’s Cyber Strategy for America promised in March: unleashing the private sector as an offensive cyber instrument. “The American private sector is the most innovative and technologically advanced in the world, and its scale, speed, and capacity secure a critical offensive cyber advantage for the United States. Yet, American businesses’ innovative capabilities have historically been underutilized in efforts to identify and disrupt criminal networks operating in cyberspace. Thus, it is the policy of the United States to use all instruments of national power, including the innovative capabilities of the private sector, to combat cybercrime.” states the memorandum. “By partnering with vetted United States companies subject to the direction and oversight of the Federal Government, we will enhance our ability to counter TCO threats and combat transnational cybercrime, fraud, and other predatory schemes against American citizens.” The program targets what the memo defines as Cyber-Enabled Transnational Criminal Organizations, any foreign group conducting cyber-enabled crime against US interests, explicitly excluding entities that are institutional parts of foreign governments or wholly operated under foreign government direction. That carve-out matters: this program is aimed at criminal networks, not nation-state adversaries. The line between the two is often blurry in practice, but the memo establishes the presumption that a group is not government-directed unless clear intelligence says otherwise. ““Cyber Effects Operation” means activity conducted in or through the interdependent network of information technology infrastructure that includes the Internet, telecommunications networks, computers, information systems, industrial control systems, networks, and embedded processors and controllers that results in the manipulation, disruption, denial, degradation, or destruction of information systems, networks, physical or virtual infrastructure controlled by information systems, or information resident thereon.” continues the memorandum. Program executive directors from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security must co-approve every operation in writing before any action is taken. Operations that could produce those Critical Outcomes require additional authorization beyond the program executive directors, an explicit acknowledgment that some cyber actions cross into territory governed by the laws of armed conflict. Companies wanting to participate must clear rigorous vetting, demonstrate technical capability, submit to annual evaluations, and maintain a bond or escrow of at least $1 million that is forfeited if they violate their contract terms. The operational procedures are to be finalized within 60 days, and the Justice Department will review any operation that touches a US person or raises domestic constitutional questions. The legal question hovering over the whole program is whether the CFAA exemption for lawfully authorized government investigative activities extends to private companies acting under government contracts, a question no US court has yet answered. Jenner & Block lawyers noted the exemption likely applies when companies operate under direct government direction, but wouldn’t cover independent offensive operations without that oversight. That’s precisely why the memo makes government control explicit at every step: every operation needs written approval before action, every unintended contact with a US person or system must trigger an immediate stop and notification, and the Justice Department stays in the loop throughout. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Transnational Criminal Networks)
Threat actors are acquiring expired domains to inherit website traffic and reputation to redirect victims to scams and malware on a large scale. DNS threat intelligence firm Infoblox has given the name dropcatch domains to those that get a second chance, where an expired domain becomes available for registration and is then snapped up by another party. During the first half of 2026, 50,400
An Akira ransomware affiliate disabled the endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution on a compromised system by restarting the machine into Safe Mode with Networking. The attack occurred on August 4 after the hacker obtained initial access through an exposed SonicWall VPN device without multi-factor authentication (MFA). Managed detection and response (MDR) services company Huntress says that roughly two hours after a successful VPN login, the attacker connected to the domain controller via RDP, enumerated Active Directory users and computers, and then moved to an application server. They used WinRAR to archive mapped file shares and the s5cmd command-line tool to upload the stolen data to an attacker-controlled S3 bucket, before installing AnyDesk for remote access. At that stage, the attacker used AnyDesk to force the compromised host to boot into Safe Mode with Networking and disable both the Huntress agent and Microsoft Defender’s real-time protection.
Hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor disclosed a data breach affecting nearly 14,000 of its customers after ShipMonk, its shipping and logistics provider, was hacked. During the incident, the attackers gained access to customers' order data, including their full names, shipping addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. As the company explained in a Thursday blog post, the resulting data breach affects customers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal who received orders between May 10th and August 8th, 2026. "On Monday, August 10, 2026, one of our shipping providers, ShipMonk, informed us of unauthorized access to their systems containing customer data," Trezor said. "The incident affects 11,742 customers with full exposure (name, email, phone number, shipping address) and 1,947 customers with partial exposure (name, city, email)."
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new macOS-oriented, Rust-based information stealer called AmnesiaStealer that's capable of hijacking Chromium web browsers to steal session data. The multi-stage stealer is spread via a counterfeit GitHub download page titled "Download for macOS" and claims to be from a verified publisher. The page employs a ClickFix-style lure that
Attempts to exploit a critical vulnerability (CVE-2026-71362) in Adobe's Commerce and Magento e-commerce platforms have been detected, potentially allowing attackers to hijack customer accounts. The flaw is described as an incorrect authorization vulnerability that could be leveraged to "gain elevated access to sensitive resources" without authentication and is one of the seven issues that Adobe addressed in a security update yesterday. Although the software vendor states in the advisory that it is not aware of exploits in the wild for any of the fixed flaws, eCommerce security company Sansec says that its Shield web application firewall (WAF) is already blocking CVE-2026-71362 exploitation attempts. According to Sansec, exploiting the vulnerability requires "no existing account, administrator privileges or user interaction."
CEVA Logistics suffered a cyberattack disrupting European operations, with eight warehouses affected and shipments halted at impacted sites. CEVA Logistics suffered a cyberattack on July 29 that disrupted parts of its European operations. The incident impacted impacted eight warehouses, and the company is still working to restore impacted services. CEVA Logistics operates in more than 170 countries and is part of the CMA CGM Group, one of the world’s largest shipping and logistics companies. On August 1, CEVA notified affected customers that goods stored at the disrupted facilities could not be shipped, highlighting the attack’s direct impact on logistics and supply chain operations. The company did not disclose technical details about the attack or the threat actor behind the incident. At this time, no ransomware group claimed the responsibility. The Register reported that the attack exposed customer data linked to major clients, including Valve and Ajax. Valve said payment details, passwords and Steam Guard codes were not exposed because CEVA does not have access to them. However, the stolen customer data could still be used by cybercriminals to craft convincing phishing campaigns. Valve warned users to be cautious of suspicious emails or messages that may exploit information obtained in the breach to impersonate trusted services and trick victims into revealing sensitive information. Some affected organizations warned that personal information may have been exposed, in addition to the delays affecting order shipments. Dutch premium department store chain De Bijenkorf , which was also impacted, reported that the securoty breach may have exposed names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, and online order details. No financial data was impacted. “Based on the current information, the following data may be involved: -Name and contact details, such as email address, address, and telephone number. -Data regarding online orders, such as products, prices, discounts, delivery information, and a description of the payment method used.” reported the company. “For business customers, the company name and VAT number may also be involved if these have been entered in My Account. In the case of severely outdated VAT numbers for freelancers and sole proprietorships, a VAT number may be composed of a citizen service number.” In November, a hacker reportedly offered the company’s database for sale on a dark web marketplace, claiming it contains customer lists, shipping records, contracts, pricing information and banking details. Such data could enable fraud, impersonation and attacks against global supply chain operations. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, logistics)
China-linked hackers reportedly used eight AI agents to breach a government network, steal data and compromise accounts with minimal human oversight. Israeli cybersecurity firm Dream documented what looks like the first fully autonomous, end-to-end AI hacking operation against a government target. Over four days at the start of July, according to the Financial Times, suspected Chinese hackers ran a tool built entirely from publicly available AI agents that mapped 21 government systems, hunted for vulnerabilities, and switched tactics on its own whenever it hit a wall. “Suspected Chinese hackers used publicly available AI tools to compromise government websites in Taiwan in a first-of-a-kind breach, highlighting how artificial intelligence is transforming cyber warfare.” reported the Financial Times. The tool wasn’t a single script running one attack. It deployed up to eight autonomous agents simultaneously, each working a different angle, more like a coordinated hacking team than a piece of malware. By the time researchers found it, the operation had compromised at least 85 government accounts, pulled over 2,500 personnel records, and expanded to hit a nuclear safety agency and at least seven energy companies. Dream’s chief strategy officer, Amir Becker, spent years running cyber operations for Israel’s Unit 8200 before this, and he’s not easily rattled by new attack tooling. He said flatly he’d never seen anything like this level of autonomy directed at a government before. “This must be the basic assumption of every government around the globe,” Becker said. He argued that permanent, assumed compromise is now the only realistic starting posture. Dream won’t officially name the target government, citing company policy, though a person familiar with the matter told the FT it was Taiwan. The clues inside the data point the same direction: internal communications tied to the hacking tool were written in Simplified Chinese, while the data actually stolen from the target came back in Traditional Chinese, the script used almost exclusively by government systems in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs declined to confirm anything specific, saying only that incidents involving government agencies follow established response procedures. What makes this different from an AI model going rogue during a lab test, something Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta have all separately reported in recent weeks, is that this wasn’t an accident inside a sandbox. Researchers found the toolkit sitting in a 160MB archive, 1,395 files built around two open-source AI agent frameworks, Hermes and OpenClaw, both freely downloadable and designed to let AI models act autonomously on real tasks. Whoever built this deliberately assembled it as a weapon. Getting the underlying AI model to cooperate took a specific trick rather than brute force. The operators had bypassed the model’s safety guardrails simply by framing the entire hacking campaign as an authorized penetration test, a scenario the model apparently had no reliable way to verify or reject. That’s a strange kind of vulnerability: not a flaw in the code, but a flaw in how convincingly you can lie to a system that’s trying to be helpful. The part Dream’s researchers found most striking wasn’t the scale, it was the decision-making. The tool kept ranking and reprioritizing possible attack paths as new evidence came in, and when one route hit a dead end, it spun up another agent to search the internet for fresh information and try a different approach, the same iterative process a human red-teamer would run, just without anyone sleeping. “The most striking feature of the July attack was how the tool continuously ranked and reprioritised possible attack paths based on available evidence, Dream said.” reported the FT. “When one attack path failed, the tool deployed another agent to scour the internet for information and devise a new approach as a human hacker would.” Taiwan’s National Security Bureau already logged an average of 2.6 million Chinese cyberattacks a day in 2025, up 6% year over year; if a meaningful fraction of that volume starts running with this kind of autonomy, the math on defending against it gets a lot uglier very quickly. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, AI Agents)
Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock (LockA locked padlock) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Staying Secure at Eventsno-cost Cyber Servicessecure your businessKnown Exploited Vulnerabilities CatalogReport A Cyber Issue WASHINGTON - The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) today released the K-12 Cybersecurity Foundations Resource Package, a comprehensive collection of guides, videos and supplemental materials to help K‑12 schools and districts prevent, mitigate and respond to prevalent cyber threats. Based on current cybersecurity best practices and frameworks, the resource package outlines cost-effective, actionable and customizable steps that K-12 institutions can take to develop and maintain effective cybersecurity programs.
A newly disclosed flaw in the way OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google carried hidden AI reasoning between API calls let researchers recover internal reasoning and secrets from session logs, including API keys and passwords. The weakness affected encrypted reasoning objects used by the providers' reasoning APIs, where a block created in one session could be replayed into another and, during testing,
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