All threats In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked continued to decrease, falling to 19.15%, its lowest level since 2022. Percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked, Q3 2023–Q2 2026 Regionally, the percentages ranged from 8.1% in Northern Europe to 27.9% in Africa. Regions ranked by percentage of attacked ICS computers The figures increased in five regions over the quarter, most notably in East Asia (by 2.0 pp) and Africa (by 0.5 pp). East Asia saw increases in percentages for all threats except miners. The region ranked first in terms of growth for malicious scripts and phishing pages, spyware, and viruses. East Asia also led in terms of growth in threats from the internet. The percentage of ICS computers on which email threats were blocked also increased. Selected industries The biometrics sector (26.44%) has traditionally led the rankings of industries and OT infrastructures surveyed in this report in terms of the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked. Biometric systems are characterized by the availability of internet access, extensive email use for data exchange and approvals (e.g. access granting), and, in many cases, minimal cybersecurity controls within the organizations that use them. Industries ranked by percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked The biometrics sector ranked first among industries in terms of the following threat categories: malicious scripts and phishing pages, malicious documents, spyware, ransomware, and worms. The sector is also leading among industries in terms of email threats. At the same time, unlike other industries, the percentage of affected ICS computers for email threats in biometrics exceeds that for internet threats. In all selected industries, the global average follows a downward trend. Threat categories In Q2 2026, Kaspersky security solutions blocked malware from 10,904 different malware families of various categories on industrial automation systems. Over the quarter, the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects of the following categories were blocked increased: denylisted internet resources, malicious documents, worms, ransomware, and malware for AutoCAD. Percentage of ICS computers on which the activity of malicious objects from various categories was blocked Malicious scripts and phishing pages (JS and HTML) Malicious scripts and phishing pages remained in first place in the threat category rankings based on the percentage of ICS computers on which the respective threats were blocked. In Q2 2026, the global average dropped to 5.42%. Over the quarter, the figure for this category only increased in East Asia, rising by 0.93 pp to 4.86%. This is the second-highest figure in the region in the last three years. In East Asia, the percentage of ICS computers affected by malicious scripts and phishing pages increased in all the industries surveyed, except construction. The highest figures were recorded for biometrics (9.01%) and building automation (6.49%). Denylisted internet resources In Q2 2026, denylisted internet resources rose in the threat category rankings from third to second place, displacing spyware. Globally, the percentage of ICS computers on which denylisted internet resources were blocked has been increasing for two quarters in row and reached 4.31%. The figures increased in all regions over the quarter, most notably in Russia (by 1.33 pp). Moreover, Russia ranked first (5.17%) among the regions in terms of denylisted internet resources. Since 2022, the region has topped these rankings twice before, both times in Q2: in 2022 and 2024. Among the selected industries in Russia, the highest figures for the denylisted internet resources were in the electric power (6.61%) and engineering and ICS integration (5.62%) industries. Malicious documents (MSOffice + PDF) Malicious documents ranked fourth in the threat category rankings by the percentage of ICS computers on which they were blocked. The percentage for this category decreased over the previous three quarters, reaching its lowest level in three years. However, in Q2 2026, it increased to 1.77%. Over the quarter, the figures for malicious documents increased in seven regions, most notably in South America (by 1.35 pp) and Southern Europe (by 0.48 pp). These two regions are among the top three in terms of malicious documents, malicious scripts and phishing pages, as well as threats from email clients. South America ranked second in the rankings of regions in terms of malicious documents. In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers in the region on which this threat was blocked was 3.56%, which was the fourth highest in three years. Among the selected industries in South America, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which malicious documents were blocked was in biometrics (6.67%). Southern Europe ranked first in the rankings of regions in terms of malicious documents. In the previous quarter, the percentage of ICS computers in the region on which this threat was blocked was the lowest in three years, but in Q2 2026 it increased to 3.63%. Among the selected industries in Southern Europe, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which malicious documents were blocked was once again in biometrics (11.48%). Spyware Spyware ranked third in the threat category rankings based on the percentage of ICS computers on which it was blocked. The percentage for this category (3.30%) is the lowest since 2022. Over the quarter, the figures increased in three regions, most notably in East Asia (by 0.53 pp) and Southeast Asia (by 0.42 pp). East Asia ranked third based on the figures for spyware (4.77%), behind Africa and Southeast Asia. This is the region’s highest rate since Q2 2025. Among the countries and territories in the region, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which spyware was blocked was in mainland China (6.61%). Among the selected industries in East Asia, the highest figures for spyware were in the electric power (11.75%) and manufacturing (5.87%) industries. In all the industries surveyed, the figures are higher than the regional average. Southeast Asia ranked second after Africa in the ranking of regions in terms of spyware, with 5.32%. Among the selected industries in Southeast Asia, the highest figures for spyware were in biometrics (8.93%) and manufacturing (7.32%). The figures increased in all industries over the quarter. Ransomware The percentage of ICS computers on which ransomware was blocked decreased in the previous three quarters but increased to 0.16% in Q2 2026. During the quarter, the percentage increased in all regions, except Western and Southern Europe and North America (Canada). Africa led the ranking in terms of growth for this metric. In Q2 2026, Africa ranked first among the regions in terms of the percentage of ICS computers on which ransomware was blocked (0.29%). The only time the figure in the region was higher in the past three years was Q2 2025 (0.31%). Among the selected industries in Africa, the highest figures for ransomware were in the electric power industry (0.72%) and biometrics (0.52%). Over the quarter, the figures increased in all industries, except manufacturing and construction. The biggest increase was recorded in the electric power industry. In Russia, the percentage of ICS computers on which ransomware was blocked in biometric systems has increased for three consecutive quarters, reaching 1.22%. This is the highest level of ransomware across all industries in all regions. Miners In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which miners were blocked was the lowest since 2021, for both miners in the form of executable files for Windows (0.48%) and web miners running in browsers (0.14%). The figures for both categories decreased in all regions, except for Africa where figures for miners in the form of executable files for Windows increased slightly. On average, the oil and gas industry led the rankings among the selected industries both in terms of miners in the form of executable files for the Windows OS (0.66%) and in terms of web miners (0.34%). Worms In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which worms were blocked increased to 1.43%. In Q2 2026, the Middle East (2.11%) was second (after Africa) in the rankings of regions in terms of worms, displacing Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Among the selected industries in the Middle East, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which worms were blocked was in building automation (2.90%). Over the quarter, the figures increased in all industries. Australia and New Zealand ranked 12th among the regions in terms of the percentage of ICS computers on which worms were blocked (0.41%). Over the past three years, the figure in this region was only higher in Q2 2024 (0.42%). The figures increased in all the surveyed industries in the region, most notably in manufacturing and electric power. As a result, for these industries they exceeded the regional average by 2.9 and 2.3 times, respectively. Viruses In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which viruses were blocked decreased to 1.29%. The top three regions for this metric remain unchanged: Southeast Asia (6.03%), Africa (4.22%), and East Asia (3.14%). These same regions lead the rankings in terms of malware for AutoCAD. The figures increased in three regions: East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and Africa, where it has been growing for four consecutive quarters and reached its highest value since 2022. Among the selected industries in Africa, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which viruses were blocked was in construction (5.47%). East Asia ranked third among the regions in terms of viruses, reaching the highest level in the region for the past three years. Among the countries and administrative regions of East Asia, mainland China is the clear leader in terms of viruses (5.07%). Among the selected industries in East Asia, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which viruses were blocked was in construction (5.93%). In Australia and New Zealand, the increase in the percentage of ICS computers on which viruses were blocked was primarily due to a 4.3-fold increase in the figure for the electric power industry: from 0.29% to 1.24%. For a region where the percentage of attacked ICS computers for all threats is 0.12%, this is a very high value. Malware for AutoCAD In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which malware for AutoCAD was blocked increased to 0.31%. The most notable increase over the quarter was observed in Africa. After more than doubling in the previous quarter, the figure for the region continued to rise (although not so dramatically), reaching 1.02%. Among the selected industries across all regions, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which malware for AutoCAD was blocked was in construction in East Asia (6.38%) and in Southeast Asia (4.05%). Main threat sources In Q2 2026, of all the threat sources, the percentage increased only for email. Percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects from various sources were blocked Internet The percentage of ICS computers on which threats from the internet were blocked decreased to 7.61%, reaching its lowest level since 2021. Over the quarter, the percentage increased in three regions: East Asia by 0.8 pp (to 6.3%), South Asia by 0.3 pp (to 10.4%), and Russia by 0.3 pp (to 6.4%). Among the selected industries across all regions, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which threats from the internet were blocked was in biometrics (13.03%) and engineering and ICS integration (12.16%) in South Asia. Email The percentage of ICS computers on which email threats were blocked increased to 2.84%. In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which email threats were blocked increased in South America by 1.0 pp (to 5.2%) and in Africa by 0.7 pp (to 4.3%). Among the selected industries across all regions, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which email threats were blocked was in biometrics (19.14%) and building automation (12.49%) in Southern Europe. Removable media The percentage of ICS computers on which threats from removable media were blocked continued to decrease, reaching 0.24%, the lowest value for the period under review. Among the selected industries across all regions, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which threats from removable media were blocked was in the electric power industry in East Asia (1.34%) and biometrics in Africa (1.29%). Network folders The percentage of ICS computers on which threats from network folders were blocked continued to decrease. In Q2 2026, it was the lowest for the period under review, at 0.023%. The only region to see an increase in the percentage of ICS computers on which threats from network folders were blocked during the quarter was Africa. This was mainly due to an increase in the building automation figure to 0.05%. Among the selected industries across all regions, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which threats from network folders were blocked was in biometrics (0.23%), building automation (0.17%), and engineering and ICS integration (0.13%) in East Asia. For more information on industrial threats see the full version of the report.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ordered government agencies to patch their Citrix NetScaler appliances against an actively exploited vulnerability by Saturday. Tracked as CVE-2026-8452, this high-severity security flaw stems from a memory overflow weakness affecting NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway appliances configured with Gateway VPN or AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Auditing) virtual servers. While Citrix said in June that threat actors could only exploit the flaw in denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, cybersecurity firm watchTowr showed in August that successful exploitation can also allow attackers to gain remote code execution as root on unpatched NetScaler instances. "This is a memory overflow vulnerability that may lead to unpredictable behavior or denial of service and impacts NetScaler Gateway or AAA virtual server," Citrix said at the time. "We have not observed any unmitigated exploitation of this vulnerability as well."
Meta will pay up to $18B and cap teen Facebook and Instagram use at two hours daily after nearly all US states sued over child safety. Meta will pay up to $18 billion over the next decade and impose real usage limits on teenagers using Facebook and Instagram, settling claims that the company deliberately designed its platforms to addict children. The deal ended a federal trial mid-stream, right as Instagram head Adam Mosseri had begun testifying and Mark Zuckerberg was expected to take the stand next. The timing made sense given the huge potential penalties. Four states, California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey, were seeking up to $200 billion in damages. Before the trial, Meta said they could demand as much as $1.4 trillion. Against those figures, the $18 billion settlement looks relatively small, although it still equals about three to four months of Meta’s profits. The most important part of the deal is what Meta agreed to change. Teenagers will be limited to two hours a day on Facebook and Instagram. Meta will also block access between midnight and 6 a.m. unless a parent gives permission, and it will turn off most push notifications during school hours. “The focus of this case was to protect our kids,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement reported by Reuters. “The relief we are getting in this settlement is very meaningful and well beyond what any court has ordered or is likely to order.”” What the settlement leaves unchanged matters too. Meta does not have to stop using personalized recommendations or targeted ads for teenagers. It also does not have to remove specific types of content that researchers have linked to negative effects, such as posts that can make users feel worse about their bodies. A two-hour limit is still a meaningful restriction, but Meta can continue trying to maximize engagement during those two hours. The deal also creates an interesting financial incentive. Of the roughly $16.7 billion going to 47 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and other territories, about $12.7 billion is guaranteed. The remaining $5 billion depends on whether Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube introduce similar protections for teenagers. This gives Meta a financial reason to push its competitors to adopt the same rules, which is why the company reportedly plans to use newspaper ads to encourage TikTok and YouTube to follow suit. Separately, Wednesday’s settlement also resolved lingering state privacy claims tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, with Meta agreeing to pay $459 million on top of everything else. That’s an old wound getting stitched up alongside a much newer one, in the same afternoon. Not every state joined the settlement. New Mexico stayed out after winning a $567 million public nuisance ruling against Meta earlier this month, on top of a separate $375 million jury verdict. Attorney General Raul Torrez said the settlement didn’t include some changes his case had pushed for, including stronger protection against adults targeting children and a ban on sexualized AI chatbot interactions with minors. Still, he called the deal a step forward. Florida rejected the settlement altogether. Attorney General James Uthmeier said the payouts amount to “peanuts” compared with the harm caused and said Florida would take Meta to trial instead. Legal experts already see the settlement as a possible model for future cases. Northwestern law professor James Speta said Meta and other tech companies faced growing pressure to change anyway, from Congress, state lawmakers and the public. That makes the settlement more than a single case: it could set a standard that courts and regulators use when judging other platforms. Thousands of similar lawsuits from individuals, school districts and municipalities are still moving through courts across the U.S. If those cases follow the same pattern, we haven’t seen the last of these headlines. “Today, we are announcing an agreement with a bipartisan group of 52 attorneys general across US states, territories, and the District of Columbia, building on our longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens.” reads the statement published by Meta. “Over the years, we have consistently partnered with parents and experts — listening, learning, and building. That’s why we launched Teen Accounts in 2024, to bring automatic protections to teens, and more control for parents.” The agreement aims to push YouTube, TikTok and other platforms to adopt similar protections for teenagers. “While this is an important step, the fact is that teens move fluidly between dozens of apps a day. All platforms should empower parents and support teens by putting the same measures in place, because we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another.” concludes Meta. “For meaningful progress to happen, we urge TikTok and YouTube to join us and state attorneys general in adopting this new standard, to ensure teens use social media in a healthy and responsible way.” Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Facebook)
ATF, the regulatory agency that enforces federal laws governing firearms and explosives in the United States, has confirmed that one of its systems was compromised after breach claims made by the Qilin ransomware gang. This follows Qilin adding the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to its dark web data leak portal on Wednesday, without saying whether it had stolen files from ATF's systems or demanded a ransom. The same day, the ATF published a press release saying that a standalone system was breached in what it described as a "major incident," which is now being investigated in collaboration with the Department of Justice. "The impacted system operates separately from the ATF enterprise network, and there is no indication that the incident has affected the ATF enterprise network, the ATF eForms system, or any other ATF system," the federal law enforcement agency said.
OpenAI banned Russian ChatGPT accounts backing a fake think tank, IBI, that used AI posts and a fake “sovereignty” index to push pro‑Russia narratives. OpenAI says it has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that likely originated in Russia and were used to support a covert influence operation. The campaign promoted an organisation called the International Burke Institute, or IBI, a supposed expert community that claimed to be based in Israel. The operation did not rely on dramatic deepfakes or a viral bot army. It used a more familiar method: build something that looks credible, fill it with enough content to seem legitimate, then use social media to push people toward it. Credibility is often cheaper to fake than to earn. OpenAI says the operators prompted ChatGPT in Russian to generate comments and posts, mostly in English, for X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram and Substack. They specifically asked the model to avoid linguistic signals that might reveal a Russian origin, and used VPNs to bypass OpenAI’s restriction on access from Russia. “We banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that very likely originated in Russia. The operators prompted in Russian to generate social media comments that were posted on Substack, Telegram, X, Facebook and LinkedIn.” reads the report published by OpenAI, “Most of the comments they generated were in English, and the operators instructe. ChatGPT to hide any linguistic clues that they were Russian. As we do not allow access to our models from Russia, they used VPNs to access our platform.” The social media content promoted IBI articles or urged readers to follow IBI-linked channels. Some posts came from accounts bearing the institute’s name and logo, while others appeared to come from ordinary users whose main activity was sharing the same material. The website behind the brand was registered in February 2025 and presented itself as an Israel-based community of international experts. It claimed links to well-known names such as Francis Fukuyama and Noam Chomsky, but OpenAI’s review found that 34 of 36 sampled articles published under expert profiles had been copied from elsewhere online. “Some of these articles were years old; others were attributed to the wrong authors. For example, one article on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor appears to have been copied from a Cambridge University Press original, but incorrectly attributed to a professor at the University of Nottingham whose expertise is in South Asian politics.” continues the report. This was not a case of ChatGPT writing every false article on the site. OpenAI says the website content itself was not generated by its models, and some material appeared to have been written by a Slavic-language speaker and machine-translated. The AI’s role was narrower but still useful: it helped create the promotional layer that sent people toward the site and made the operation appear more active and organic. openai “What began as an investigation into AI-generated social media posts led us to a much broader influence operation, built around a website containing copied and misattributed academic work, a “sovereignty” index that cast Russia in a favourable light, and efforts to disguise the operators’ Russian origins.” states OpenAI. “Although the campaign appears to have reached relatively small audiences, its elaborate construction distinguishes it from other Russia-linked(opens in a new window) influence(opens in a new window) operations(opens in a new window) we have disrupted(opens in a new window) since the start of the war in Ukraine.” The centrepiece was the so-called Sovereignty Index, also called the Burke Index. It ranked countries across political, economic, technological, information, cultural, cognitive and military dimensions, and consistently gave Russia a favourable place while criticising Western states, especially France, Germany, the European Union and the United States. openai A made-up index can be effective because numbers carry authority even when the method is vague, selective or impossible to audit. Add charts, expert profiles, academic-looking articles and a professional website, and a claim can travel much further than a Telegram post from an anonymous account. OpenAI found one Telegram channel, “Lahme Ente,” that published German-language posts attacking Ukraine, the EU and the German government while calling for closer ties with Russia. Another operator used ChatGPT to create logos for channels focused on Germany, France, Poland, Türkiye and the United States, then repeatedly asked for Russian-language summaries of their activity. “As well as generating content about IBI, one of the operators generated German-language posts that were posted on a Telegram channel called “Lahme Ente” (“lame duck”). These posts routinely criticized Ukraine, the EU and the German government, and advocated for better relations with Russia.” continues the report. “A second operator, alongside their IBI-related content, generated logos for a dozen Telegram channels (including Lahme Ente) focused on Germany, the USA, France, Poland and Türkiye. “ One American-facing channel called “American Observer” included awkward English that suggested it was not run by a native speaker. The operators were trying to hide their origin, but language remains a stubborn problem: a VPN can change an IP address, not always a sentence. The campaign’s immediate reach appears limited. OpenAI says most social posts received few views and the official IBI accounts had low subscriber counts, although its Telegram channels reportedly attracted around 10,000 to 20,000 followers each. Using the Brookings Breakout Scale, OpenAI rated the effort at the lower end of Category Three: activity across multiple platforms with some signs of reaching genuine audiences. That does not make it irrelevant. Influence operations are often built for scale, reuse and timing rather than instant virality. A network with a website, a recognisable brand, social accounts, apparent experts and ready-made narratives can remain quiet until a political event, election, protest or crisis gives it an opening. This case also shows what AI changes and what it does not. It does not eliminate the need for operators, infrastructure, stolen material, audience research or political intent. It makes routine tasks cheaper: drafting posts, translating them, changing tone, generating replies, creating branding and monitoring channels at a pace that a small team can sustain. “The significance of the operation lies less in the audience it reached, however, than in the infrastructure it had built. While the actors only used ChatGPT to produce isolated promotional posts, those posts pointed to an otherwise credible-appearing institution, complete with purported experts, republished academic work and a purported proprietary risk index.” concludes the report. “This illustrates how influence actors can use AI as a supporting tool within a broader effort to manufacture authority, obscure the source of favored narratives, and establish assets that could be scaled over time. It also illustrates how their supporting use of AI can lead to the broader operation being exposed.” Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, OpenAI)
OpenAI on Wednesday revealed that reward hacking was a key driver behind the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered hack of Hugging Face last month, adding that it found evidence of misaligned behavior as early as late May. The incident, the company said, took place during cybersecurity evaluations of several OpenAI models, and that it was mainly fueled by what it described as a "highly capable
Credit: Hacktron Vercel has released security patches for two critical-severity vulnerabilities in the Next.js web framework, both of which allow unauthenticated remote code execution, one exploitable via specially crafted AVIF image files and the other through a path traversal flaw affecting servers that use a Windows filesystem. The Windows path traversal, tracked as CVE-2026-75604&
A fake login page. A fake security scan. A fake productivity app. Apparently, pretending to be useful is still one of the easier ways into a machine. The rest of the week gets stranger: botnets borrowing AI, command traffic hiding in public infrastructure, malicious tools waiting before showing their real behavior, exposed systems getting scanned, and exploit windows shrinking again. Different
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a vulnerability in Amazon Kiro, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered, agentic integrated development environment (IDE), that could facilitate data exfiltration via prompt injection and Kiro Powers. The security flaw, which does not have a CVE identifier, works against Kiro IDE 0.7.45 on Windows, according to Mindguard. The latest version of
Security teams have spent years trying to detect threats faster. AI is changing the harder part: how much time defenders have left to act. Advanced AI models can now help attackers discover vulnerabilities, generate exploit code, and move through weaknesses faster than traditional security processes were built to handle. The challenge is no longer just finding another vulnerability or
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