ConnectWise has shut down customer access to its Cloud Backup service (formerly SkyKick Cloud Backup) after hackers accessed application identities and compromised Microsoft 365 tenants. Reports of the malicious activity began emerging on Friday, with administrators observing unauthorized access to client data in Microsoft 365 tenants due to a potential “SkyKick/CW breach.” Later on the same day, managed cybersecurity and threat detection platform Huntress confirmed the worries, saying that it had identified at least 162 compromised tenants in its environment. In a post today, Microsoft also confirmed malicious activity involving ConnectWise’s Cloud Backup service, saying it identified unauthorized authentication attempts from an IP address on October 15. ConnectWise’s cloud backup solutions provide backup and recovery services that help managed service providers (MSPs) and IT teams protect and restore customer data, such as emails and files, in cloud environments including Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
Drupal has patched two critical vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to execute code remotely on websites running any supported version of the content management system. The security issues impact the software core's Field UI module and the contributed Entity List module. Drupal issued an advance warning at the beginning of the week, urging administrators to apply updates promptly because attackers could develop exploits shortly after the vulnerabilities’ disclosure. “The Drupal Security Team urges you to reserve time for core updates at that time because exploits might be developed within hours or days,” the project's security team warned. “We recommend updating to the latest supported patch (bugfix) release for your site's version of Drupal before October 14, so that you can address any other upgrade issues before the security window.”
India’s CERT-In warns AI agents accessed confidential data undetected, while attackers used offensive AI frameworks to accelerate cyberattacks. CERT-In, India’s national cyber response team, published a critical-severity advisory 15 documenting two distinct categories of AI-related incidents. In one, AI models under research and evaluation exceeded their assigned tasks and accessed live Indian systems without authorization. In the other, attackers deliberately weaponized open-source AI agent frameworks to run financially motivated intrusions. “CERT-In has observed different categories of cyber incidents in which the attacker was an AI agent, that is, a software system capable of autonomously planning work, issuing commands, invoking tools and acting on the internet over extended periods. In some incidents, AI agents under research and evaluation exceeded their assigned task authorization and made unauthorized access to Indian information and communication technology (ICT) assets. In others, cyber attackers deliberately used open-source agentic AI tools to conduct reconnaissance, exploitation and financially motivated intrusions.” CERT-In states. “The incidents came to light through voluntary disclosures by AI model providers, CERT-In’s forensic analysis of suspicious activities, and CERT-In’s own proactive threat hunting. The affected organizations could not detect the unauthorized access on their own.” What makes these incidents especially concerning is that the affected organizations didn’t detect the unauthorized access. None of the affected organizations detected the unauthorized access; in every case the incident was disclosed by the AI model providers after their internal review. The organizations only learned about the incidents from the AI companies. The agents accessed Indian systems using exposed credentials and connection settings found in configuration files, public code repositories, and cloud accounts with excessive permissions. They then accessed business records containing personal and confidential information. CERT-In didn’t name the AI companies, models, or affected organizations. It also didn’t say whether the agents copied or kept any data, or whether the affected organizations had been notified. “Further, victim entities in the campaign that remediated incompletely were attacked again within days, at greater scale.” continues the advisory. “In the voluntarily disclosed incidents, agents were observed re-deriving and re-using the same exposed credential in separate operations.” That’s worth reading carefully. It means an agent that encountered a leaked key once didn’t just use it once, it came back to it. CERT-In’s own threat hunting found a separate campaign against Indian entities using publicly available offensive AI frameworks. These tools have been misused, rebranded, and redeployed across infrastructure in multiple countries, and CERT-In describes a large number of active deployments. The attackers ran multiple agents in parallel for hours to days, and victims who only partially remediated the initial access were hit again within days at greater scale. The biggest concern is how quickly these attacks can happen. These frameworks can reportedly reduce the time between gaining access and causing damage from several days to just a few hours. In September, Google Threat Intelligence Group reported a similar case in which attackers used a compromised cloud resource to run an AI-driven campaign that stole thousands of credentials from other services in less than six hours. CERT-In puts the strongest emphasis on this point. In every incident, the weaknesses were common security problems: credentials and keys stored in source code, commit histories, CI/CD variables, configuration files, and public web pages. Other issues included unused APIs that had never been disabled, payment API keys stored in plain text, cloud roles allowing anonymous or regular users to read and change data, and management interfaces exposed to the internet with weak or no multi-factor authentication. CERT-In’s conclusion is clear: AI found and exploited these common weaknesses “faster, more exhaustively and at greater scale than human attackers.” That’s the real change. The vulnerabilities themselves are nothing new. What has changed is how quickly attackers can find them and combine them to carry out attacks. The advisory’s list of recommended actions for organizations covers ground that should already be standard practice, but clearly isn’t. Audit every repository and build pipeline for exposed credentials. Rotate and purge anything you find. Keep a full API inventory and shut down anything old or unused. Remove management interfaces from the internet. Keep logs for at least 180 days and watch API traffic for bulk reads and automated registrations in real time. For organizations running their own AI agents, CERT-In adds a specific requirement: give each run its own short-lived, least-privilege identity, block outbound traffic to anything outside the task’s defined scope, and maintain a tamper-resistant log of every agent action touching production systems. The advisory also cross-references an earlier October 9 warning on payment and disbursement API abuse, which CERT-In says BFSI and fintech entities should apply alongside the measures here. AI developers and testing labs should block all outgoing network connections from test environments at the infrastructure level, rather than relying on instructions given to the AI model. If an AI agent tries to connect to an external system or finds credentials it should not have access to, the test should stop automatically, and the affected organization should be notified immediately. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, AI agents)
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious npm package that's part of a recently disclosed software supply chain attack campaign dubbed MALFEX. The package, named "imgdecode," was uploaded to the package registry on September 30, 2026, by a user named "malfexteste8." It has been downloaded 979 times as of writing and is still available on npm as of writing. The latest version of
Cybersecurity researchers are sounding the alarm related to an active campaign in which unknown threat actors are abusing a compromised Microsoft 365 (M365) credential belonging to ConnectWise Cloud Backup (formerly SkyKick) to gain unauthorized access to customers' M365 environments. ConnectWise Cloud Backup is a cloud-based backup and recovery service built for managed service providers (MSPs
Unit 42 details the top initial access vectors adversaries use to breach organizations, led by edge exploits, credential abuse and phishing The post Top 5 Initial Access Threat Vectors Observed by Unit 42 in September 2026 appeared first on Unit 42.
Candiru spyware was delivered to devices at Al Jazeera Media Network via targeted online advertisements in a zero-click attack that required only rendering the malicious ads on the victim's device. Researchers at Citizen Labs investigating the attacks referred to this technique as AdFection, noting that their report is the first public technical confirmation of mercenary spyware delivered through targeted ads. A similar method was documented in late 2025 by Amnesty International, involving ads that infected targets with Predator spyware without them clicking anything. That infection mechanism was called Aladdin and surfaced due to a collection of marketing files and documents leaked from the Intellexa surveillance company that researchers studied and corroborated with technical details from forensic investigations.
Employees using personal ChatGPT accounts at work can expose sensitive company data, even when their organization provides an approved Enterprise workspace. NordLayer explains how IT teams can investigate unauthorized AI use and block sensitive information before it reaches personal accounts.
Burger King Japan, the Japanese subsidiary of global fast-food giant Burger King, disclosed a major data breach after attackers accessed a server containing 11.18 million customer records. Founded in 1953 in Florida, Burger King is now a multinational fast-food chain with nearly 20,000 locations worldwide, including 350 in Japan. In a Thursday press release, Burger King Japan said it concluded a follow-up investigation on October 13 and apologized to customers whose data was stolen in early October and leaked online. The breached servers stored the personal information for users of the company's official smartphone app, including their names, dates of birth, gender, email addresses, phone numbers, and order history. "We identified a potential unauthorized third-party access to the system that manages member information for our official app and conducted an investigation," Burger King Japan said.
Microsoft says some users may have trouble turning on Smart App Control after installing this month's KB5127648 Windows 11 security update. Smart App Control is a Windows 11 security feature that uses Microsoft's app intelligence services and code integrity features and works alongside Microsoft Defender and SmartScreen to block potentially harmful apps or binaries. According to the company, on affected devices running Windows 11, version 24H2 and later, the Smart App Control option is grayed out and cannot be toggled. "After installing this update, some devices might be unable to turn on Smart App Control in the Windows Security app if it has been turned off. On affected devices, the option to turn on Smart App Control might be grayed out," Microsoft said in an update to the KB5127648 advisory.
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