Microsoft has reminded customers that systems running Home and Pro editions of Windows 11 24H2 will stop receiving updates in two months. "On October 13, 2026, Windows 11, version 24H2 Home and Pro editions, and Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2016 will reach end of updates," Microsoft warned in a message center update. "After this date, devices running these editions will no longer receive monthly security and non-security preview updates containing protections from the latest security threats." However, according to its support website, Windows 11 24H2 Enterprise and Education editions will remain under mainstream support until October 2027. Customers are advised to upgrade to Windows 11 25H2 (also known as the Windows 11 2025 Update), which has become generally available in September 2024 as a minor update installed through an enablement package.
Microsoft tracked over 30 MacSync Stealer domains by focusing on behavioral patterns, revealing a campaign targeting passwords, keys, wallets and other data. Domain blocking is a losing game when the thing you’re blocking can register a new domain faster than you can add it to a list. That’s the exact problem Microsoft Defender Experts ran into while tracking MacSync Stealer, a macOS-focused information stealer that RST Cloud first flagged for swapping out its command-and-control infrastructure almost immediately after getting publicly outed. Microsoft detailed how its experts stopped chasing individual domains and started tracking the behaviors that stayed constant underneath them. Instead of tracking individual domains, Microsoft looked at recurring request patterns, HTTP headers and other behaviors. This allowed its researchers to link more than 30 domains to the same campaign and determine that the infrastructure was doing more than just sending commands to infected Macs. It was also being used to collect, stage and exfiltrate stolen data. “MacSync Stealer is a macOS-focused information stealer that relies on changing infrastructure to deliver payloads, communicate with compromised devices, and exfiltrate data. Earlier reporting by RST Cloud identified the threat through a limited set of domains and documented rapid command-and-control (C2) replacement after public disclosure.” reads the report published by Microsoft. “Microsoft Defender Experts expanded that view by correlating recurring endpoints and network behaviors across the activity. This behavior-led approach connected more than 30 domains and showed that the infrastructure supported more than C2 communication, extending into active collection, staging, and exfiltration.” The infection chain starts with a trick rather than an exploit. Victims get social-engineered through a technique known as ClickFix, tricked into pasting or running commands directly in macOS Terminal, and once that shell session fires, curl pulls down attacker-controlled payload content from a path formatted as /curl/[token]. Then, native macOS tools decode and unpack the payload, and an AppleScript-driven layer takes over, blending Unix commands like sh, cp, rm, and killall with osascript calls that make the whole chain look more like ordinary system scripting than malware. Once active, the stealer focuses on valuable data. The malicious code looks for macOS Keychain data, saved browser passwords and cookies, SSH keys, AWS credentials, Kubernetes configurations and files in common user folders. It also searches for Ledger and Trezor wallet data, showing that the malware targets users with valuable credentials and assets rather than simply collecting random browser history. What actually confirms exfiltration, rather than just suspicious traffic, is the upload mechanism itself. Collected data gets staged under temporary paths, compressed into an archive, split into chunks, and pushed out through HTTP PUT requests carrying parameters like upload_id, chunk_index, and total_chunks. “The staged archive was uploaded through rotating infrastructure using curl and HTTP PUT requests. Observed requests included –data-binary, API-key headers, macOS User-Agent string, upload_id values, chunk_index values, and total_chunks parameters.” states Microsoft. “These upload traits confirmed active data exfiltration and provided durable hunting pivots even when domains rotated. “ The researchers pointed out that the exfiltration method stays recognizable even when the destination keeps changing. RST Cloud’s follow-up work backs up how consistent this infrastructure actually is under the surface. Using the same recurring URI patterns, RST Cloud surfaced eleven additional candidate domains and found a static API-key value shared across four confirmed command-and-control domains, even while the build token attached to each deployment kept rotating. A shared static key sitting inside otherwise rotating infrastructure is exactly the kind of detail that makes automated evasion look less impressive up close. The attack wraps up with cleanup, deleting temporary archives, staging folders, and lock files after the upload completes. Microsoft notes this reduces what’s left sitting on disk, but it doesn’t erase the behavioral sequence itself. “After exfiltration, the malware removed temporary archives, staging folders, lock files, and other artifacts. Although this cleanup reduced on-disk evidence, the sequence of archive creation, chunked upload, and deletion can still provide a useful behavioral correlation for defenders.” concludes Microsoft. For anyone defending Mac fleets, the practical takeaway here isn’t a list of domains to block, since that list will be stale within days. It’s building detection around the recurring shape of the attack itself: shell sessions spawning curl with those specific flag patterns, osascript chaining rapidly into network activity, and archives appearing under /tmp/sync* right before outbound PUT traffic starts. Chase the pattern, not the address, because the address was never going to sit still long enough to matter. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, malware)
U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds Apple macOS, Microsoft SharePoint, Broadcom VMware vCenter, and Microsoft IKE flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added the following vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog: CVE-2026-33824 (CVSS score: 9.8) – Microsoft Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Service Extensions Double Free Vulnerability CVE-2026-55040 (CVSS score: 9.1) Microsoft SharePoint Weak Authentication Vulnerability CVE-2026-59310 (CVSS score: 9.8) Broadcom VMware vCenter Path Traversal Vulnerability CVE-2026-65400 Apple macOS Improper Authentication Vulnerability CVE-2026-33824 is a Windows Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Service Extensions Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. This critical flaw in Windows IKE service extensions could allow remote attackers to execute code on affected systems. Systems with IKE enabled are at risk, though blocking UDP ports 500 and 4500 can reduce exposure from external threats. However, internal attackers may still exploit it for lateral movement, so rapid patching is strongly recommended. CVE-2026-55040 is a critical SharePoint authentication bypass. An unauthenticated attacker can exploit weaknesses in JWT validation to forge tokens and impersonate any SharePoint user, including administrators. “A critical authentication bypass vulnerability exists in SharePoint Server Subscription Edition’s JWT token validation pipeline. The root cause is a chain of four distinct weaknesses that, when combined, allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to forge a valid JWT and impersonate any SharePoint site user.” wrote Rapid7. The exploit chain works by sending a JWT with “alg: none” in the outer header so no signature is required, using SharePoint’s own STS certificate thumbprint to resolve a signing key without verification, and then passing a non-empty but never-verified signature like “AAAA.” The result is a fully forged token that SharePoint accepts as legitimate. Defused researchers observed attackers using the Rapid7 POC for CVE-2026-55040 against our SharePoint their honeypots. CVE-2026-59310 flaw is a Path Traversal Vulnerability that allows an attacker with network access to execute arbitrary code. “VMware vCenter contains a directory traversal vulnerability in the Syslog server. Broadcom has evaluated the severity of this issue to be in the Critical severity range with a maximum CVSSv3 base score of 9.8.”states the advisory.”A malicious actor with network access to vCenter may exploit this issue to execute arbitrary code.” CVE-2026-65400 is an Improper Authentication Vulnerability that sits in macOS’s built-in Screen Sharing feature, the remote desktop tool baked into every Mac.On August 15, 2026, the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre confirmed active exploitation of a critical macOS authentication flaw, less than two weeks after Apple shipped the fix. Apple’s fix improved how the system manages authentication state, closing a gap that let attackers on the network authenticate to Screen Sharing without valid credentials at all. Apple patched this issue with the release of macOS Tahoe 26.6.1, macOS Sequoia 15.7.9, and macOS Sonoma 14.8.9, crediting researcher Alfredo Pesoli (@__rev) at Bynario Atlas (bynar.io) for the discovery. “An attacker on the network may be able to authenticate to Screen Sharing without valid credentials” reads the advisory. According to Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities, FCEB agencies have to address the identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect their networks against attacks exploiting the flaws in the catalog. Experts also recommend that private organizations review the Catalog and address the vulnerabilities in their infrastructure. CISA orders federal agencies to fix the flaws by August 21, 2026 Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, CISA)
We provide guidance for preparing for and mitigating large-scale credential attacks, focusing on recent campaigns targeting security vendors' devices. The post Threat Brief: Mitigating Large-Scale Credential Attacks (Updated August 18) appeared first on Unit 42.
Researchers tested 31 million patterns to disrupt surveillance AI, with promising results but significant gaps between simulation and real-world use. The Kansas City-based cybersecurity researcher Bill Swearingen spent the past year doing something that sounds almost too simple to work: printing patterns, watching cameras fail to detect them, and repeating. TechCrunch reports that after roughly 31 million tests, he can now generate patterns on demand that block license plate readers and surveillance cameras from recognizing whatever the pattern covers, whether that’s a person or a vehicle. The project is called noRecognition, and the core idea isn’t stealth in the traditional sense. The camera still records everything just fine. What breaks is the detection layer sitting on top of the footage, the software that flags license plates, tracks faces, or spots “activity of interest” across thousands of hours of video. Swearingen’s patterns don’t hide you from the lens; they make the algorithm looking through that lens shrug and move on. Swearingen, co-founder of the SecKC meetup, said his project started for personal reasons. He became concerned about the growing number of surveillance cameras in his town and the possibility of being tracked while attending a protest. What started as a simple experiment later became a reinforcement learning system. He taught the model to create patterns, learn from failures and keep improving. Over time, it learned how to avoid detection by several camera systems. Every time a pattern failed and got detected, the system adjusted and tried again, eventually learning to defeat multiple detection algorithms simultaneously rather than just one at a time. The research dashboard behind the project, published at sandbox.norecognition.org, goes considerably deeper into the numbers than the headline claim suggests, and it’s refreshingly upfront about what’s proven versus what isn’t. The team states its overall objective plainly as “one pattern that defeats every detector,” and by their own account that goal remains only partially met. Their strongest validated result against a detector extracted directly from a real deployed surveillance camera sits at 61.7% non-detection across held-out test subjects, a solid number, but nowhere near total, and still a digital simulation rather than a real-world fabric test. That distinction matters more than it might seem. Most of the dashboard’s headline figures are explicitly labeled as digital, simulated results, meaning the pattern was tested against a virtual camera and printed ink model rather than an actual garment photographed by an actual camera in the field. The gap between “works in simulation” and “works when Donut Media wraps a real 2009 Toyota Yaris in it,” which is the physical test Swearingen ran live at DEF CON, is exactly the gap this kind of research has to close before anyone should treat it as a reliable, everyday privacy tool. “On Friday at the Def Con cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Swearingen ran his first real-world test. With help from Donut Media, the test involved covering a 2009 Toyota Yaris with one of Swearingen’s newest patterns to see if the car would be invisible to detection by a Flock camera.” reports TechCrunch. “We proved it was effective,” said Swearingen, though the wheels were a challenge. The video of the demo will be out in the next few weeks, said Donut Media.” That DEF CON demo is where things got concrete. Swearingen covered a car in one of his newest patterns and tested it against a Flock Safety camera, the kind widely deployed for automated license plate reading across the US. He said the test proved effective, though the vehicle’s wheels turned out to be a persistent weak point, curved surfaces apparently don’t cooperate with flat printed patterns the way a car door does. Source Tech Crunch – A photo of a 2009 Toyota Yaris at the Def Con conference in Las Vegas, covered in a pattern made by Bill Swearingen, as part of a test to see if it can defeat surveillance camera detection. Image Credits:Bill Swearingen / Donut Media Swearingen is not publishing his best patterns because he does not want camera makers to easily find and block them. Instead, he is using crowdfunding to develop and sell printed products such as T-shirts and hoodies, with vehicle wraps possibly coming later. It is still unclear whether the project will become a practical privacy tool for everyday users or remain mainly a DEF CON demonstration. Its real effectiveness will depend on how well the patterns work on real clothing, in different weather and camera conditions. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Surveillance camera)
Security controls can block a familiar attack method while missing quieter ways to achieve the same objective. Picus Security's Blue Report 2026 shows how prevention rates can vary dramatically by technique and why behavioral testing is needed to uncover those gaps.
Microsoft says some users are experiencing issues searching in Microsoft 365 apps, including Outlook on the web, Outlook desktop, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive. According to an incident report seen by BleepingComputer and tracked under MO1456424 in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, the root cause is what Microsoft describes as a recent deployment that causes resource utilization problems. "Impact is specific to some users served through the affected infrastructure who are attempting to search for content in SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Outlook on the web, or Outlook desktop," Microsoft said. "Our investigation identified that a recent deployment introduced a resource utilization inefficiency issue, leading to impact." Microsoft says it has already developed a fix and deployed it to reduce resource pressure and restore service for all affected Microsoft 365 users.
GitLab patched a critical GraphQL flaw that let unauthenticated attackers remotely modify or delete public projects on self-managed servers. GitLab pushed out an emergency patch this week to address a critical flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-19478 (CVSS score of 9.4), that could let an attacker with zero credentials remotely modify or delete public projects and user data. “GitLab has remediated an issue that under certain conditions could allow an unauthenticated user to remotely modify or delete public projects and user data via a GraphQL directive.” reads the advisory. GitLab issued an emergency patch on August 17, five days after its regular update. The vulnerability impacts only self-managed installations, users should upgrade to versions 19.2.4, 19.1.6, 19.0.8, and 18.11.11. There’s a gap worth flagging for anyone still sitting on an older release. The available patches don’t cover the 18.2 through 18.10 branches, even though those versions technically fall inside the affected range. If you’re running anything in that window, staying put isn’t really an option; you’ll need to upgrade to a patched branch entirely rather than waiting for a fix that isn’t coming for your current one. hiimguardian reported the flaw through the company HackerOne bug bounty program. A second, less severe issue shipped in the same release. CVE-2026-19650 (CVSS score of 7.1), involves a cross-site request forgery weakness in how GitLab’s GraphQL handles multiplex queries, letting an unauthenticated attacker trigger mutations through GET requests due to improper validation. Unlike the critical flaw, this one needs a victim to actually interact with something, so it’s a real risk but a considerably narrower one. There’s no evidence either bug has been exploited in the wild yet, and no public proof-of-concept code has surfaced as of publication. That’s the good news. The less comforting part is GitLab’s own disclosure policy: full technical details typically go public on the company’s issue tracker 90 days after the patching release, which puts a working understanding of exactly how this bug functions squarely in mid-November, plenty of time for someone motivated enough to reverse-engineer the patch diff themselves before then. This is not the first serious GitLab issue in recent months. Last month, researchers released working exploit code for another remote-code-execution flaw affecting self-managed servers. Organizations running GitLab on their own infrastructure should therefore treat this patch as a priority, especially given the critical severity and the fact that the vulnerability requires no authentication or user interaction. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, GitLab)
Microsoft announced that it removed the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) tool from Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2, as well as from Windows 11 beta builds released this week. WMIC is a legacy built-in Windows command-line utility that helps interact with the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) system using text commands. This move is part of a process announced in September, when the company said that WMIC will be removed after upgrading to Windows 11 25H2 and later. Microsoft deprecated WMIC in Windows Server 2012 (in 2016) and Windows 10 21H1 (in 2021), and it converted it into a Feature on Demand (FoD) starting with Windows 11 22H2 (in 2022), and announced in January 2024 that it would be removed altogether after first disabling it by default. "Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) has been removed in this release. This change is part of the ongoing deprecation and removal of WMIC from Windows," Microsoft noted on Monday.
Varonis Threat Labs has disclosed three vulnerabilities in Microsoft Copilot Personal that it said could allow a single click on a crafted link to silently pull data from connected apps and other information available to the victim's Copilot session. The flaws, which the researchers collectively named CoSnitch, turn in part on an undocumented URL parameter that the assistant itself surfaced
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