The Manchester Airports Group (MAG) disclosed that hackers breached its systems and stole customer data, including Wi-Fi sign-ups from Manchester, Stansted, and East Midlands airports. The intruder did not access customer payment details, and the attack had no impact on airport operations, the company said. A statement from the company today notes that the exfiltrated data also "relates to car park, lounge and Fast Track bookings." The list of compromised details includes customers' email addresses, phone numbers, vehicle registration numbers, and postcodes. “The incident has not resulted in any operational disruption,” assured the organization, adding that “Airport operations remain unaffected and customer parking services continue to operate normally.” Out of an abundance of caution, MAG has temporarily suspended its online “Manage My Booking” service and is instead directing travelers to use its phone line.
Australian police charged two men linked to TeamPCP over malware hidden in open-source code that stole 500,000+ credentials from 1,000+ organizations. Australian police have charged two men from Western Australia over a global cybercrime operation that allegedly hid malicious code in open-source software and used it to steal data from thousands of organisations. “Two West Australian men have been charged following a joint investigation between the AFP and Western Australia Police Force (WAPF), working in parallel with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), into a sophisticated cybercrime syndicate that allegedly created malicious open-source software to rob thousands of global businesses.” states AFP. “The AFP charged the men yesterday (26 August, 2026) with a combined total of 14 offences after executing search warrants in Perth with WAPF, and the assistance of the FBI.” The Australian Federal Police, the Western Australia Police Force and the FBI executed search warrants in Perth on 26 August 2026 and arrested a 21-year-old from Cottesloe and a 23-year-old from Mandurah. They face a combined total of 14 charges covering unauthorised data modification, possession and supply of data for computer offences, and dealing with proceeds of crime. Police say the pair were principal participants in a syndicate known as TeamPCP, which allegedly inserted malicious code into software hosted on public repositories and then let other developers pull it in without knowing. Infected components ended up in systems across government, academia and the private sector, giving the group a way to steal credentials and other sensitive material at scale. “Parallel investigations started in April, 2026, after the AFP and FBI received information from multiple cyber threat assessment companies regarding a syndicate that allegedly inserted malicious code into software available on an open-source repository, which was then unwittingly used by other developers.” continues AFP. “Police will allege infected software was then distributed into computer systems at other organisations across government, academia and the private sector. The software allegedly enabled the syndicate to infiltrate those organisations to steal or harvest sensitive data, including user credentials and authentication materials.” The numbers are not small. Investigators estimate the malicious code potentially compromised more than 1,000 organisations worldwide, enabling the theft of over 500,000 credentials and the exfiltration of at least 300 gigabytes of data. Remediation costs so far run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. TeamPCP is behind multiple supply chain attacks, in the past, they targeted PyPI packages and NPM repositories, and most recently the “Mini Shai-Hulud” campaign also caught two OpenAI employees. The pattern is consistent: go after the tools developers trust, poison the supply chain, and let the downstream damage multiply. The confirmed list of modified tools includes Trivy, a widely used container vulnerability scanner; KICS, a static analysis tool for infrastructure-as-code; LiteLLM, a popular library for routing requests across AI model APIs; and the Telnyx Python SDK. These aren’t niche utilities. They’re commonly integrated into enterprise CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure workflows, and security scanning processes. Hitting them means hitting a large number of organizations simultaneously through a single poisoned update. The group also deployed four distinct malware families. CanisterWorm harvested cloud access tokens, credentials, and API keys for AWS, GCP, and Azure. SANDCLOCK extracted AWS credentials, Kubernetes ServiceAccount tokens, local environment variables, and cryptocurrency wallet data. Mini Shai-Hulud was a self-replicating worm designed to spread across both npm and PyPI registries. Miasma was a variant of Mini Shai-Hulud that propagated across those same open-source registries while harvesting credentials and poisoning configuration files. The worm component is the part that deserves particular attention. Mini Shai-Hulud and its Miasma variant didn’t just infect the initial target and stop. They spread across open-source package registries autonomously, harvesting credentials and poisoning configuration files as they went. The FBI confirmed two GitHub repository names used for exfiltration: tpcp-docs and docs-tpcp. If either of those repository names appears in your GitHub organization, the worm created it using stolen credentials. TeamPCP’s method was straightforward and effective: inject malicious code into legitimate software packages, push the trojanized versions through normal distribution channels, and wait for CI/CD pipelines to pull them in automatically. The modified tools installed credential-stealing malware and persistent backdoors without any visible sign that anything had changed. “These men are allegedly members of the cybercriminal group TeamPCP, whose malicious code potentially compromised more than a thousand organizations worldwide,” Assistant Director Leatherman said. “We are proud to work with the Australian Federal Police and the Western Australia Police Force to impose cost on criminal actors and combat the growing threat of software supply-chain attacks.” The charges show how serious the alleged operation was. The 21-year-old faces several charges, including changing data without authorization, possessing and supplying data for computer crimes, failing to comply with a production order, and handling at least A$100,000 in criminal proceeds. The 23-year-old faces similar hacking charges, with maximum penalties ranging from three to 20 years. Police seized electronic devices and other items from properties in Cottesloe, Hamilton Hill and Mandurah. Investigators are now examining a large amount of data and have not ruled out further arrests or charges. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, newsletter)
Threat research gives security teams insight into how attackers operate, while MDR turns that intelligence into faster detection and response. ESET explains how combining threat intelligence, continuous monitoring, and human expertise can help SMBs strengthen their defenses.
Google is introducing new network security protections in Android 17 to strengthen connection privacy, address cellular vulnerabilities, and protect the privacy of users’ home networks. Android 17 adds support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), a new privacy standard that operates in conjunction with private DNS to hide profiling metadata, including visited domain names. ECH acts as a privacy extension for TLS, the protocol that secures HTTPS connections, encrypting the opening part of the TLS handshake that reveals the contacted hostname via the Server Name Indication (SNI). Even if the connection to a website or service is secure, internet service providers (ISPs) and Wi-Fi operators can still see the destination, which can be collected for commercial profiling purposes. Android users benefit from ECH when browsing with Chrome 117 and later or Firefox 119 and later, but Android 17 incorporates the protection at the platform level.
Australian authorities have arrested and charged two young men accused of being part of the TeamPCP hacking group linked to a string of far-reaching developer supply chain attacks. TeamPCP is a hacking group known for widespread supply-chain attacks over the past year that targeted open-source software and developer platforms to steal credentials, authentication secrets, and source code. High-profile attacks attributed to TeamPCP have impacted Trivy, LiteLLM, Telnyx, SAP, and TanStack packages, while the group has also breached the European Commission, Mistral AI, OpenAI, and GitHub. To carry out their attacks, the threat actors injected malicious code into software hosted on open-source repositories, which developers then unknowingly incorporated into their own applications on systems used by government, academic, and private-sector organizations.
Google Workspace breaches can begin with social engineering or forgotten third-party integrations rather than sophisticated exploits. This webinar examines real-world breaches, what happens during the critical first hours, and the security controls that can make the greatest difference.
The ShinyHunters extortion group has published sensitive data from nearly 13 million accounts stolen from clothing retailer giant Carhartt earlier this month, according to data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned. Founded in 1889, Carhartt is an American apparel company with workwear and streetwear manufacturing facilities in Kentucky and Tennessee and more than 3,000 employees in the United States and Europe. While Carhartt has yet to confirm the extortion group's claims or issue a statement about the breach, ShinyHunters claimed the attack on August 13 and said they allegedly stole more than 50GB of documents containing a wide range of customer, employee, and corporate data. "Millions of records of customer data and vast amount of sensitive information and PII containing employee, customer, customer metadata (royalty info), and other internal corporate data was compromised," the cybercrime gang said.
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.
CISA urges water utilities to find and secure internet-exposed PLCs after July attacks showed how easily exposed industrial systems can be compromised. Over 100 internet-exposed systems in the US water and wastewater sector got hit by cyberattacks in July 2026, and CISA’s response wasn’t just an incident report, it was a how-to guide for making sure it doesn’t happen to you next. The agency’s exposure reduction guidance, published August 21, walks through exactly how organizations can find their own internet-facing weak points before an attacker does. The pattern behind the July attacks was surprisingly simple. Most of the affected systems were programmable logic controllers (PLCs), small industrial computers that control pumps and valves. Many connected directly to cellular modems and had no firewall or gateway between them and the internet. CISA warns that this type of setup can expose PLCs to serious security risks. “Directly connecting PLCs to the internet through cellular modems can create significant security risks. However, internet exposure reduction does not mean disabling necessary remote access; organizations should remove remote access when it is unnecessary and secure it when it is necessary.” states CISA. Hackers remotely accessed exposed PLCs, changed device IP addresses and passwords, and in some cases disabled shutdown processes and alarms, creating what CISA called unsafe conditions without notifying the operators running the actual equipment. Iran is the suspected actor behind much of this activity, likely tied to the ongoing war involving the US and Israel, though officials have stopped short of a formal attribution. CISA presents reconnaissance as an ongoing process. Organizations need to know which systems they expose to the internet and can use tools such as Shodan, Censys, or CISA’s Cyber Hygiene Vulnerability Scanning service to check their own IP ranges from the outside. The review should also cover ports used by industrial systems. Besides SSH, RDP, and HTTP, CISA highlights protocols such as Modbus, EtherNet/IP, DNP3, BACnet, and OPC UA. Finding one of these ports open does not automatically mean the system has been compromised, but it does indicate an exposure that needs to be investigated and addressed quickly. Where remote access is genuinely necessary, CISA’s advice is to route everything through a secure, centrally managed gateway rather than connecting straight to a PLC, HMI, or remote terminal unit. Pair that with phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, unique credentials instead of shared defaults, and active monitoring of traffic in and out, and you’ve closed most of the gap that let this particular wave of attacks succeed in the first place. None of this is exotic security engineering; it’s the same basic hygiene that’s been recommended for years, just finally getting attention because attackers are actually using the gap. This isn’t an isolated incident CISA is responding to reactively, either. The water sector attacks sit inside a much larger pattern of nation-state interest in US and allied critical infrastructure, from China’s Volt Typhoon reportedly pre-positioning malware inside American infrastructure as a potential wartime disruption tool, to Russian-linked campaigns testing water and energy systems across Europe as part of broader pressure on NATO. If a foreign government is willing to spend years quietly waiting inside a power grid, an exposed PLC with a factory-default password isn’t a minor oversight, it’s an open invitation. “CISA urges all critical infrastructure organizations to route all necessary remote access through a secure gateway, firewall, VPN, or other centrally managed access solution, rather than connecting directly to a PLC, human-machine interface (HMI), or remote terminal unit (RTU).” concludes CISA. “The July 2026 malicious cyber activity targeting WWS Sector entities demonstrates the consequences of directly exposing PLCs to the internet. Threat actors remotely accessed internet-exposed PLCs, changed device IP addresses and passwords, and caused loss of monitoring and control functionality and, in some cases, operational disruptions.” If you run anything with the letters PLC, SCADA, ICS, or HMI in its job description, this guidance isn’t optional reading for next quarter. Go run the scan today, because the alternative is finding out the hard way that someone else already ran it for you. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Water Utilities)
Confirm this action.
Leaving now will discard your changes.