A researcher chained two Unitree G1 flaws to gain root access remotely and showed how a compromised robot could attack others nearby. Security researcher Olivier Laflamme spent about three months digging into the Unitree G1 humanoid robot and eventually found a way to fully compromise it without plugging in a single cable. In his technical write-up, he details two vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-76639 and CVE-2026-76640, that can be chained across Bluetooth, Unitree’s cloud infrastructure, the mobile app, and the robot’s firmware to gain unauthenticated root access to any G1 within Bluetooth range. The first bug lives entirely inside the robot itself, no wireless attack surface needed if you can reach it over Ethernet. The G1’s AI chatbot service accepts a “knowledge” upload with almost no validation on the filename it writes to disk, and a classic path traversal payload lets an attacker write an arbitrary file anywhere on the filesystem, including into a directory that a separate service called bashrunner treats as trusted. Restart bashrunner, tell it to run the newly planted file, and you’ve got root-level shell execution with five DDS messages and zero authentication. The second chain is the one that should worry anyone deploying these robots at scale. It starts with a Bluetooth characteristic that accepts writes without pairing, something The Hacker News also covered in its own report on the disclosure. An unpaired device can request the robot’s encrypted key bootstrap blob, and Unitree’s cloud API would decrypt that blob for any free, logged-in Unitree account without ever checking whether the account actually owned that specific robot. “The blob is RSA-encrypted & the corresponding RSA private key is held by Unitree’s cloud infrastructure. This, in theory, is safe.. This is the security boundary Unitree appears to have relied on. Nearby devices can request the bootstrap blob, but only Unitree owns the RSA private key capable of opening it.” reads Laflamme’s report. “However, the Unitree mobile app reassembles the BLE notification chunks and slingshots that shit via a POST to Unitree’s cloud API /device/bindExtData on global-robot-api.unitree.com and the app stores the response body as gcmKey.” That decryption oracle is the crux of the whole chain, and Laflamme doesn’t undersell how convenient it made everything. “This single AES-128 key unlocks both the BLE protocol and the WebRTC signaling channels.” continues the report. Once an attacker has obtained it, they can authenticate to the robot’s Bluetooth handshake and unlock WiFi configuration commands that were previously locked behind that same key. From there, an oversized WiFi password triggers a fallback code path in Unitree’s own configuration script that inserts attacker-controlled text directly into a config file without escaping it, letting the attacker force the robot to join a hotspot they control, no physical access needed at any point. Going from “the robot connects to my Wi-Fi” to a full root shell required a buffer overflow in the G1’s Bluetooth server, and this is where the research gets particularly impressive. The server used a 500-byte buffer without proper bounds checking, allowing Laflamme to overwrite nearby memory with a carefully crafted 1,050-byte payload. He used that payload to create a fake cleanup structure that the program later interpreted as a legitimate function pointer, causing it to execute an attacker-controlled command with root privileges. There was one more obstacle: randomized memory addresses. To make the exploit work reliably, Laflamme first needed to discover where the vulnerable program was loaded in memory. He solved that by turning the first vulnerability into an information leak and using the result to make the second exploit work. In other words, one bug effectively helped unlock the other. The wormability is what turns this from an interesting security flaw into a much more serious operational risk. Once an attacker compromises one G1, that robot can use the same attack against other G1 robots within Bluetooth range, without requiring additional discovery or configuration. Laflamme tested the technique on just two robots in the same room, so the real-world reach of a chain reaction remains unclear. In a warehouse, laboratory, or campus where dozens of these robots operate close to each other, however, the possibility of one compromised machine spreading the attack to others is difficult to ignore. Unitree’s response gets genuine credit in the writeup, and it’s worth noting given how often vendor disclosure stories go badly. The company patched the cloud ownership-check flaw within about two months of the report, paid out a combined $5,000 bounty across both chains, and worked through verification quickly enough that Laflamme calls the collaboration close to ideal. “July 1-6 August, 2026 — Unitree implemented an account-to-robot cloud binding ownership check before returning the AES-128 key. Patching the “cloud-oracle” vulnerability discovered back in May. “August 6, 2026 — a $5,000 USD bounty was paid out, $4,000 for the BLE RCE and $1,000 for the chat_go RCE.” The BLE pairing and buffer overflow issues themselves, notably, sit deeper in the firmware and represent a harder, slower fix than a simple cloud-side ownership check. None of this required exotic tools or some cutting-edge attack technique. That is probably the detail that should get the most attention from anyone who still sees robot security as a niche problem. This was a $20,000 humanoid robot, the kind increasingly used in research labs and universities and likely to appear in more workplaces, compromised with a decompiled Android app, a firmware encryption scheme that researchers had already broken years ago, and a familiar class of buffer overflow that predates humanoid robots by decades. If your organization has a G1 sitting in a lab, lobby, or workspace, checking its patch status should be a priority. A 90-pound robot losing its collision-detection capabilities is not the kind of security incident you want to discover the hard way. “You could use the G1 to spy on people through audio and video, make it say obscene shit in public, swap out or backdoor the ResNet onboard AI models, tamper with perception and movement logic, disable collision detection and other safety checks (it weighs ~90lbs having that run into a kid, a wall, or even step on your toe will do some serious damage).” concludes the researcher. “They also cost a lot! I’d be pissed off if someone hacked into my G1, took control of it, and walked it off my factory/campus.” Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Robot)
Over 8,300 Internet-exposed Gitea instances are still unpatched against a critical security flaw exploited in ongoing remote code execution attacks, according to cybersecurity watchdog Shadowserver. The code injection vulnerability (CVE-2026-60004) targeted in these attacks was reported by Salesforce security researcher Shai Rod, and it allows authenticated attackers to execute arbitrary shell commands with the privileges of the Gitea service account by submitting malicious patches via the diffpatch API endpoint. While successful exploitation requires repository write access to repositories hosted on vulnerable servers, Gitea comes with self-registration enabled by default, allowing unauthenticated attackers to register an account, create a new repository, and trigger the vulnerability without prior credentials.
Hasbro, one of the world's largest toy and game companies, has disclosed that attackers have accessed the personal and financial information of an undisclosed number of employees. Founded in 1923, Hasbro is a publicly traded American multinational entertainment conglomerate on the NASDAQ and owns many brands, including Monopoly, Clue, Nerf, Transformers, Play-Doh, Peppa Pig, Scrabble, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, and many others. The company has filed data breach notification letters with the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, but didn't disclose the total number of affected individuals or when the incident was detected. "The information involved varied by individual but may have included your name and one or more additional personal information elements such as email, address, phone number, national ID number, or financial information," Hasbro said.
Malicious actors are exploiting a newly patched security flaw in PaperCut NG and MF to execute arbitrary code on susceptible instances, as the company released a fresh emergency fix with additional hardening. "This vulnerability gives an unauthenticated attacker remote control over PaperCut's trusted configuration, which could be used to execute arbitrary Java code inside the application's
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.
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.
Snowflake is ending password authentication for legacy service accounts, forcing organizations to migrate them to passwordless methods. Token Security explains why the harder challenge is identifying what uses each account, who owns it, and how much access it still needs.
Attackers are actively exploiting a critical-severity vulnerability in the Gitea self-hosted Git service, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Like cloud-hosted GitHub or GitLab SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms, Gitea provides a full suite of DevOps tools, but it is designed to be used as a self-hosted software development platform. Tracked as CVE-2026-60004 and reported by Salesforce security researcher Shai Rod, this code injection security flaw allows an authenticated user with repository write access to repositories hosted on vulnerable servers to execute arbitrary shell commands with the privileges of the Gitea service account by submitting malicious patches via the diffpatch API endpoint. However, default-configured Gitea instances have self-registration enabled, allowing unauthenticated attackers to register an account, create a new repository, and trigger the vulnerability without prior credentials.
U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds Gitea flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added an Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle Weblogic Server Proxy Plug-in flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-60004 (CVSS score of 9,8), to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. Gitea is an open-source platform for hosting and managing Git repositories. Think of it as a self-hosted alternative to GitHub or GitLab. CVE-2026-60004 is a critical remote code execution flaw that allows an attacker with write access to a repository to execute arbitrary shell commands as the Gitea service user. The flaw affects Gitea versions from 1.17 and was fixed in 1.27.1. The vulnerable diffpatch API can be abused to plant and execute a malicious Git hook. Because Gitea enables open registration by default, an unauthenticated attacker can create an account, create a repository, and exploit the flaw without existing credentials. A reported attack used the vulnerability to deploy a cryptocurrency-miner-like payload after an exposed Gitea instance allowed open registration and anonymous access to its web interface. 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 flaw by August 28, 2026. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, CISA)
WhatsApp says 1 billion users now use passkeys, while stronger two-step verification and caller context add new layers of account protection. WhatsApp has reached a significant security milestone: more than one billion people now use passkeys to protect access to their accounts. At the same time, Meta is adding stronger two-step verification and more information about calls from people who aren’t in a user’s contacts. Passkeys let users sign back into WhatsApp with a fingerprint, Face ID or their device’s screen-lock code instead of relying on passwords, PINs or one-time codes. WhatsApp now also allows people who use both Android and iOS devices to add more than one passkey to the same account, which removes one of the practical limitations of the earlier implementation. “More than 1 billion people now use a passkey: A passkey lets you log back into WhatsApp with your fingerprint, face ID, or screen lock code. It’s the fastest and most secure way to verify it’s really you, with no codes or PINs.” reads the announcement published by WhatsApp. “More than a billion people have already set one up, and you can now add more than one passkey to your account if you use both Android and iOS devices. To get started, go to Settings > Account > Passkeys.” For people who move between platforms, the ability to register multiple passkeys should make account recovery less dependent on a single device. It is important to highlight that WhatsApp is moving account protection away from secrets that users have to remember or type. Passkeys rely on credentials stored on the device and protected by its existing biometric or screen-lock mechanism, which also makes phishing them much harder than a traditional password or verification code. WhatsApp is also changing its two-step verification system. Until now, the additional protection relied on a six-digit PIN. The company has now upgraded it to a full password that can be longer, use letters and numbers, and include special characters. “Two-step verification is an extra protection layer that helps prevent someone from taking over your account, even if they get hold of your one-time passcode.” continues the announcement. “Until now it was a six-digit PIN, we’ve now upgraded it to a full password: longer, alphanumeric, and even with special ch@racters to make it harder to guess. If you’ve been using “123456,” this is your sign to upgrade.” That’s a small interface change with a meaningful security consequence. A short numeric PIN has a limited number of possible combinations and encourages users to choose predictable values, while a longer password gives account owners a much stronger second factor. WhatsApp makes the point in unusually direct terms, even calling out the classic 123456 choice. If that’s still protecting an account, the app has just provided a fairly unambiguous hint. The change also addresses a specific account-takeover scenario. If an attacker manages to obtain a user’s one-time registration code, the additional password can still prevent the takeover from succeeding. The third change targets a different problem: social engineering. On Android, WhatsApp will now provide additional context when someone outside the user’s contacts calls. The information can include whether the number comes from another country and whether the caller shares any groups with the recipient. That gives users a little more information before they decide whether to answer. “When you get a call from someone not saved in your contacts, a little context can help you decide whether to pick up. On Android, you’ll now see more information about a non-contact caller, like whether the number is from a different country and if you have any groups in common.” concludes the announcement. “Scammers rely on urgency – now you can take a beat with some more info before answering.” It’s a simple addition, but it addresses a common weakness in fraud attempts: pressure. An unexpected call creates a sense of urgency, and attackers often use that moment to persuade someone to disclose information, click a link or continue the conversation on their terms. Giving the recipient more context doesn’t stop a scammer from calling. It gives the user a reason to pause before answering. Taken together, the three changes target different parts of the same account-security problem. Passkeys make authentication harder to steal, stronger two-step verification provides another barrier when a one-time code is compromised, and caller context gives users more information before a potentially suspicious interaction begins. The billion-user passkey figure is also worth watching beyond WhatsApp. It suggests that phishing-resistant authentication is no longer an experimental security feature limited to security-conscious users. At this scale, the challenge shifts from convincing people that passkeys are safer to making sure they understand when and how to use them. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, WhatsApp)
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