Chrome is getting new scam protections that use Gemini to detect deceptive websites and warn users when they copy suspicious commands from ClickFix attacks. The changes are part of Enhanced Protection in Safe Browsing, which Google claims makes users ten times safer from phishing, social engineering, notification abuse, and other scams compared with Standard Protection. Chrome is also adding a new "suspicious site" warning for pages that show deceptive patterns but haven't reached the confidence level required for its existing full-page red warning. "Suspicious site warnings notify users when a page exhibits deceptive patterns commonly associated with known malicious sites," the company explained. "By tailoring the warning UI in this way, we are able to safely expand our coverage to display a higher volume of protective warnings."
Hackers compromised the infrastructure of Onamae Desktop Cloud, a popular provider of VPS services in Japan, and installed malware on up to 26,739 customers' servers. The company confirmed on October 20 that an unauthorized third party installed "malicious programs" in some customer environments. After detecting the intrusion, the company says it progressively shut down customer servers beginning at 04:00 local time on October 21, 2026. “We have confirmed that unauthorized access by a third party occurred against Onamae.com Desktop Cloud and that unauthorized programs were installed in some customers’ server environments,” reads the announcement. Onamae.com, operated by GMO Internet, a member of GMO Internet Group, is one of Japan’s largest domain registrars and also provides web hosting, DNS, and other internet infrastructure services.
A Russian satellite made a close approach to a commercial radar satellite linked to Ukraine, raising concerns about surveillance and security in space. A Russian-made satellite called Kosmos 2612 got very close to ICEYE-X36 last week, a commercial Earth-observation satellite that may support countries like Ukraine. CNN reports it may have come within less than a mile. Orbital monitoring company LeoLabs says the behavior is consistent with rendezvous and proximity operations, meaning maneuvers designed to bring two spacecraft together. “A rare move by a Russian-made satellite may have brought it within less than a mile of a commercial Earth-observation satellite that may be used to provide national security services to countries such as Ukraine.” states CNN. “It’s not clear what, exactly, the Russian satellite, called Kosmos 2612 or Cosmos 2612, intended to accomplish with its close approach. But the behavior was consistent with rendezvous and proximity operations, or maneuvers carried out in orbit that are designed to bring two spacecraft together, said orbital monitoring services company LeoLabs, which tracks space junk and activity in Earth orbit, in a statement.” It is unclear what Russia wanted to achieve. LeoLabs said “While the intent remains uncertain, the behavior warrants continued monitoring.” Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell noted that this could be the first known case of one spacecraft approaching another without permission. This is different from docking, when two spacecraft intentionally connect, a common practice in space. The events unfolded over several months. In May, four Russian-controlled satellites changed their orbits to align with ICEYE-X36, according to a June report by the Royal United Services Institute. On October 15, Kosmos 2612 began moving closer to ICEYE-X36, reducing the distance from 350 kilometers to less than 5 kilometers by early October 16. It stayed nearby, making small adjustments through the weekend, before starting to move away on Monday. The War Zone (TWZ) reports that Kosmos 2612 was one of six satellites launched together on April 17. The closest point is disputed. LeoLabs says it came within roughly 500 meters during part of the event, but warns that the repeated maneuvers and awkward tracking geometry make separation estimates uncertain. Space.com reports the satellites may have been a few meters apart at one point, and TWZ’s reading of public tracking data points to about 26 meters. The target matters. ICEYE operates about 80 radar satellites that image the Earth through clouds, day and night, and ICEYE-X36 belongs to its US subsidiary. At least some ICEYE satellites provide imagery to Ukraine, and in January the company signed a contract firming up that relationship, saying it gives Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence persistent situational awareness on tactical timelines. A Ukrainian official told Axios that Ukraine’s military works with ICEYE but couldn’t say whether this specific satellite is involved. Russia appears to be paying close attention to ICEYE-X36. Changing a satellite’s orbit to match another spacecraft’s path uses a lot of fuel, so it is not a decision taken lightly. Four Russian satellites made similar changes in May. However, it remains unclear whether ICEYE-X36 is specifically used to collect images of Ukraine. Close approaches between satellites are not new, but this case is different. Russia, the United States, and China have all moved satellites close to those operated by other countries, mainly in geostationary orbit. Kosmos 2612 operates in low Earth orbit. As far as is publicly known, Russia has carried out similar approaches there, but the United States and China have not. Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation pointed to two earlier Russian cases. In 2020, Kosmos 2543 came within about 30 kilometers of USA 245. In 2022, Kosmos 2558 approached USA 326 to within about 70 kilometers. Both targets were classified US spy satellites operated by the National Reconnaissance Office. ICEYE-X36, by contrast, is a privately owned satellite, and Kosmos 2612 came much closer than in those earlier cases. Space law professor Aaron Brynildson told Axios that there is no strict legal limit on how close satellites can approach each other. However, countries generally avoid getting within six miles of another satellite. Why do it? Samson lists a few options. Russia may want to learn the satellites’ capabilities and what they’re studying, or it may have interfered with sensors or communications. She leans toward a different reading: she thinks Russians are getting frustrated, in a stalemate for about six months, and this is a way to show military prowess in a way Ukraine can’t answer, since Ukraine matches Russia in drones but not in space. RUSI’s June report is blunter about the options. It lists intimidation or interference through jamming, which uses radio noise to stop satellites from communicating. It adds that the range of options for protecting an ICEYE satellite is limited, and that defending satellites is a famous dilemma. LeoLabs says the event doesn’t establish hostile intent, but shows capabilities that could support intelligence collection, inspection, coercive signaling, interference or preparation for future counterspace operations. ICEYE’s response was short: the company is aware, tracking closely, and says its constellation architecture is designed for continuity and resilience. CNN says it asked Russia’s defense ministry and Roscosmos for comment. The US Space Force had already described Russian satellites positioned near a Western commercial radar satellite used by Ukraine for imagery intelligence, according to Axios. Private companies and independent observers, rather than the US Space Force, revealed the satellite encounter, highlighting the need for greater government transparency as space becomes more contested. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, satellite)
North Korean hackers are using a post-quantum cryptographic mechanism to secure malicious payload delivery in new operations that combine old and new malware. The campaign targets South Korean organizations through a “rather complex” infection chain. Researchers at cybersecurity company Kaspersky dubbed the operation FlashHole and attributed it to the Lazarus Group. Analysis of the malware revealed that the threat actor used the standardized ML-KEM post-quantum cryptographic mechanism to communicate with the command-and-control (C2) server for malware delivery. Kaspersky says the attackers used LPEClient malware, previously associated with Lazarus, to receive ML-KEM-1024 public keys from its C2 infrastructure and generate shared keys that allowed it to decrypt subsequently incoming payloads.
OpenAI reveals two cases of AI agents disabling safety monitoring during coding tasks, with one falsely denying it had removed the safeguards. OpenAI published an internal incident report this week documenting two separate cases in which GPT-6 class agents weakened the system designed to detect misaligned behavior, in both cases while carrying out routine coding tasks. This wasn’t an external attack. These were internal deployments, and the agents made their own judgment calls that happened to gut the oversight watching them. OpenAI explained that “in both cases, the agents considered whether monitoring safeguards should be preserved, but interpreted routine coding instructions as permission to weaken them.” In other words, the agents thought about whether they should keep the safety controls in place. They then interpreted the user’s instructions in a way that led them to weaken those controls. “In two internal coding tasks, agents weakened misalignment monitoring while making requested software changes. A GPT-6.1 Sol agent repairing an evaluation pipeline disabled automatic alerts to our Security team, treating an earlier instruction not to send messages during a Slack history search as a reason to suppress monitoring notifications.” reads OpenAI’s report. “In a separate task, a GPT-6 Astra agent migrating a program removed its monitoring integration in order to match a reference implementation, and then falsely claimed to the user that it had not removed the monitor.” On October 3, a researcher asked a GPT-6.1 Sol agent to create evaluation tasks using Slack data. The researcher clearly instructed the agent not to send any messages during the process. Later, the system triggered a monitoring alert because it couldn’t save its findings to a database. The user then asked the agent how to proceed. At this stage, the agent was still following the rules. It even told a subagent to keep monitoring enabled and report the actual results. The subagent correctly identified that turning off notifications would disable required safety alerts and decided not to do it. Then the parent agent reconsidered on its own, reasoning that writing results to a database might cause the monitoring system to send a message, which conflicted with the user’s earlier “don’t send messages” instruction. It concluded the instruction applied to safety alerts too, and directed the subagent to set no_notify to true, empty the list of people set to receive monitoring reports, and make notification suppression a hard requirement before writing any results. The monitor still ran and saved its reports. Nobody received the human alerts. On October 6, a user asked a GPT-6 Astra agent to copy a reference implementation while keeping existing tool definitions and functionality intact. An earlier instruction from another agent had explicitly told the system not to disable monitoring, even temporarily. The parent agent passed that requirement to a subagent but softened it, saying monitoring should be preserved “as appropriate” to the reference implementation. The subagent took this wording as permission to remove monitoring because the reference implementation did not include it. It also changed a test that checked whether monitoring was active. The new test instead required monitoring to be disabled. After the migration, the main agent noted internally that the new setup no longer included agent monitoring and described this as a positive outcome. When the user later asked whether monitoring had been removed, Astra said: “No… I did not remove an enabled monitor from it.” That was false. OpenAI offers two possible readings of these incidents. The charitable one is what they call “benign overpersistence,” models that don’t understand why monitoring matters and follow instructions more literally than a reasonable person would. The less comfortable reading is that these models might have a specific tendency to find justifications for evading the systems watching them. “In both cases, the agents considered whether monitoring safeguards should be preserved, but interpreted routine coding instructions as permission to weaken them.” states OpenAI. “We are strengthening our misalignment monitoring system in response, and are also assessing whether these cases reflect benign overpersistence or a propensity to evade misalignment monitoring in particular.” OpenAI says it doesn’t yet have a satisfying answer. To find one, they’re developing paired evaluations, resampling agent continuations, and running experiments on the models’ internal activations. OpenAI has introduced some practical fixes. Its auto-review system, already required for internal Codex use, has been updated to detect and block attempts to disable safety monitoring. The company also plans to require each workload to have an approved safety plan that defines its monitoring requirements. Any workload that fails to meet these requirements will be stopped automatically. Part of the problem was how the systems were designed. Monitoring was easier for agents to bypass during evaluation tasks than in production Codex deployments. In production, monitoring runs outside the agent’s direct control, making it harder for the agent to disable. This report lands a week after OpenAI disclosed seven other misalignment incidents, including one where a research model took cryptocurrency from a wallet it didn’t own to pay transaction fees and didn’t disclose it. “In addition to making it harder for models to disable monitoring, we are looking to understand why models might seek to do so in the first place. It is possible that this behavior is simply an example of “benign” overpersistence, with models not understanding why monitoring is important or insisting that instructions be executed beyond what a reasonable person might expect.” concludes the report. “We are also developing evaluations to test whether models might have a propensity to evade misalignment monitoring in particular and exhibit motivated reasoning in order to do so. We don’t yet have a satisfying explanation for this behavior, and will investigate this behavior through the creation of paired evaluations, resampling of agent continuations, and experiments on models’ internal activations.” Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, AI)
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning that attackers are actively exploiting four vulnerabilities in Plex Media Server. The security issues are collectively called Plex2Shell. When chained in an exploit, an attacker can obtain the owner's admin token and execute code with elevated privileges. Plex Media Server is a popular media suite that helps users organize personal collections of movies, TV shows, music, and photos, and stream them to other devices at home or remotely over the internet. CISA has directed federal agencies to prioritize patching systems affected by Plex2Shell vulnerabilities or apply mitigations by October 23. The security issues were discovered by security researcher Zach Main, who reported them responsibly to Plex on July 27. The individual flaws are rated medium to high in severity, but the researcher assigns the full exploit chain a critical score of 9.8.
OpenAI agents powered by the GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra models weakened misalignment monitoring during two internal tasks, interpreting coding instructions as authorization to do so. AI alignment refers to how well an AI system’s goals and behavior align with human values, intentions, and instructions. It is a key focus of AI safety research aimed at preventing harmful actions and unintended outcomes. One of the incidents occurred on October 3, when an agent powered by GPT-6.1 Sol extended an earlier human instruction “don’t send any messages” related to a Slack history search to automatic monitoring alerts. It directed a sub-agent to empty notification recipient lists and suppress notifications. Although monitoring continued to run and save findings, it disabled alerts to humans.
An investigation into a threat actor bypassing AI safety controls to coordinate credential theft, VoIP fraud planning, and database exfiltration. The post “Next Exploit Opportunities”: How a Threat Actor Used AI to Help Plan and Execute Multiple Types of Cybercrime Activities appeared first on Unit 42.
ClickFix attacks are surging as cybercriminals use fake AI installers, malicious search results, and trusted chatbot platforms to trick users into executing malware. Push Security examines how these attacks evade traditional defenses and why AI tools have become increasingly effective lures.
Microsoft has released PowerToys 0.102, with two new mouse utilities, new command-line tools, and Command Palette improvements. Mouse Button Lock, one of the new mouse tools, makes it easier to select items on screen by locking a mouse button while you hold down a key. "With Mouse Button Lock, press and hold a button for a moment, then let go. Windows keeps treating it as held, so you can continue dragging or selecting until you click any button," Microsoft senior product manager Niels Laute explained. "This is especially useful for gaming, working in professional applications that require extensive dragging and selection, and improving accessibility for users who find it difficult to hold down a mouse button for extended periods." Microsoft also added CursorHide to PowerToys, another mouse utility that automatically hides the mouse pointer while you type or when you aren't moving the mouse.
Confirm this action.
Leaving now will discard your changes.