OpenAI confirmed GPT-6.1 Terra is safer overall than some of its older models, but its safety testing also found other problems. According to OpenAI, GPT-6.1 Terra showed higher rates of exfiltration, destructive actions, and attempts to bypass restrictions than GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra. OpenAI performed simulations across approximately 48,690 matched tasks and found that Terra received 22 severity-3-or-higher flags, or 0.045%. For comparison, GPT-6 Sol received 38, while GPT-5.6 Sol received 61. "GPT-6.1 Terra received approximately 42% fewer severity level 3 or higher flags than GPT-6 Sol and 64% fewer than GPT-5.6 Sol," OpenAI noted in its system card. However, that is no longer the case when you compare Terra with other newer models on less severe behaviors. "Relative to GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra, we observed higher rates of flags for concealing uncertainty, circumventing restrictions, exfiltration, other misalignment, destructive action and inbound prompt injection," OpenAI explained.
The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center disclosed a cyberattack that caused system outages and disrupted patient care and academic activities. On Monday, UNM Health, the university’s healthcare provider, began temporarily limiting new patient admissions, diverting ambulances to nearby hospitals, and suspending outpatient surgeries and appointments. In an update on the incident, UNM said UNM Hospital and Sandoval Regional Medical Center remain open, and all clinics will resume scheduled appointments and procedures starting today, Tuesday, October 27. Regarding emergencies, the healthcare organization advised that people should call 911. However, today’s classes at its four health sciences schools are canceled, and nonessential HSC employees were instructed to stay home. UNM Health is a major statewide provider of specialist care with more than 1 million patient visits annually.
A credit card skimming group reportedly compromised a shared analytics script used by e-commerce platform Convertr to steal shoppers’ payment data during checkout. The campaign was identified on October 24 and has been attributed to a Brazilian gang, active since at least July 2024, that focuses on infecting online stores running Magento, OpenCart, and WooCommerce platforms. Convertr is a Brazilian e-commerce platform that powers online stores and checkout systems for dozens of major fashion brands in the country, handling R$2 billion ($370M) in sales. E-commerce security firm Sansec says that the attacker modified the Plausible tracker file hosted on a self-managed server operated by Convertr. Ecommerce cybersecurity company Sansec says that the attacker modified the tracker file on a self-hosted server for Plausible, an open source alternative to Google Analytics, managed by Convertr.
Italy ’s Parliament cyberattack highlights hybrid warfare risks and the need for transparency, stronger defenses and accountability. The cyberattack targeting email accounts at Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, including a parliamentary account assigned to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, raises questions that go well beyond the security of individual inboxes. At a time when European institutions face growing cyber pressure, the incident highlights how access to political communications can become part of a broader hybrid warfare strategy. The Chamber confirmed that its IT systems had been targeted and said it had activated security measures in cooperation with Italy’s National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN). According to reports, three parliamentary email accounts were affected, including those associated with Meloni, former Justice undersecretary Andrea Delmastro and lawmaker Paolo Formentini. Palazzo Chigi clarified that the account assigned to Meloni was not the one she uses for government communications. That distinction matters, but it does not settle the broader security questions raised by the incident. The public information available so far does not provide a complete technical account of what happened, what level of access the attackers may have obtained, or whether any information was taken. The Chamber described the incident as having no emergency implications, adding that attacks of this kind occur daily. It also confirmed that similar attempts and pressure on IT systems had intensified in recent days, affecting other Italian, European and international institutions. This combination of statements deserves closer scrutiny. Cyberattacks may be a daily occurrence, but their frequency does not make every incident routine or harmless. The significance of an attack depends on the target, the access obtained, the information exposed and the wider strategic context. An email account is more than a channel for exchanging messages. It can reveal professional relationships, contacts, ongoing discussions, schedules and the way an institution operates. Depending on the level of access obtained, an attacker may also find documents, personal information or details that could help target other officials. A compromised account can provide a starting point for further attacks. Messages sent from a legitimate address may appear trustworthy, making it easier to approach colleagues, political staff or external partners. Information gathered from correspondence can also support impersonation, targeted phishing or attempts to obtain access to other systems. Even an account that is not used for government business can therefore have intelligence value. The important question is not simply whether an account handles classified information, but what an attacker could learn from it and how that information might be used. The distinction between an attempted attack and a confirmed compromise is equally important. Public statements have not yet provided enough technical detail to establish the full extent of the incident. Investigators need to determine whether access was blocked, whether an account was accessed, whether messages were read and whether credentials or other information were exposed. These are different scenarios, with different implications for security. The incident should also be considered against the backdrop of growing cyber pressure on public institutions. On October 8, Italy’s Foreign Ministry was targeted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that media reports linked to pro-Russian actors. A DDoS attack and an intrusion targeting email accounts are technically different operations, and there is currently no public evidence linking the two incidents. Their broader significance, however, lies in the pressure they place on institutions and the range of objectives that cyber operations can serve. Hybrid warfare does not rely on a single method. It can combine cyber operations, intelligence gathering, propaganda, disinformation, economic pressure and other activities designed to exploit weaknesses or influence decision-making. These actions do not necessarily need to be coordinated in every case to contribute to a more hostile strategic environment. In this context, a cyber operation does not need to shut down a public service to have an impact. An attacker who gains access to political correspondence may seek information about relationships between officials, internal priorities or ongoing discussions. That information could potentially support intelligence operations, help prepare future intrusions or provide material for influence campaigns. Stolen communications can also be selectively leaked, manipulated or presented without context to damage reputations and undermine public trust. The value of such material may lie less in its immediate technical impact than in how it can be used later. These are possible scenarios, not established facts about the attack on the Chamber. The public perception of an incident can itself become part of the problem. A successful intrusion, if confirmed, can raise doubts about an institution’s ability to protect sensitive communications. A poorly handled response can deepen those doubts, particularly if officials appear more concerned with reassuring the public than explaining what happened. None of this proves that the attack was directed by a foreign government or formed part of a coordinated influence operation. Attribution requires technical evidence, intelligence and careful analysis. Treating hybrid warfare as a serious risk means investigating these possibilities without presenting them as conclusions before the evidence supports them. The Chamber’s statement that the incident was not an emergency because similar attacks occur daily is, at best, an inadequate explanation of the risk. It confuses the frequency of attacks with the seriousness of their potential consequences. Reassurance has a legitimate role in crisis communication. Institutions should prevent unnecessary alarm and explain when protective measures are working. But reassurance is not a substitute for transparency, especially when the technical investigation is still underway. The Chamber has acknowledged that cyber pressure has increased against other institutions in Italy and abroad. That admission makes it even more important to explain the nature of the threat and the measures being taken to address it. A responsible update should clarify what is known about the affected systems, which protective controls were activated, what investigators have established and which questions remain open. Sensitive technical details can be withheld when their disclosure could compromise an investigation or expose additional weaknesses. That does not justify treating the incident as unremarkable before its impact is understood. The response also needs to go beyond public statements. Authorities should review access controls, authentication mechanisms, account monitoring, email forwarding rules and the procedures used to detect suspicious activity. They should assess whether accounts that are no longer needed remain active and whether older accounts receive the same protection and monitoring as those used every day. The objective is not to assume that a dormant account caused the incident, but to ensure that every account represents only an acceptable level of risk. The attack should prompt a broader review of how parliamentary communications are protected and how cyber incidents are handled. New agencies, appointments and organizational structures can contribute to security, but they do not guarantee it. Their value depends on clear responsibilities, technical expertise, adequate resources, tested response procedures and measurable results. Cooperation between the Chamber and the ACN is important, but the public also needs a clear account of how the incident is being investigated and what corrective action follows. Where the investigation establishes weaknesses, those weaknesses must be addressed rather than obscured by general assurances. The challenge is particularly significant as Italy and other European countries prepare for future elections. Political institutions may face not only attempts to disrupt their services but also operations intended to collect information, exploit internal divisions or influence public debate. Cybersecurity is therefore part of democratic resilience, alongside the ability to identify manipulated information, communicate reliably and maintain public confidence. The first priority must be to establish what happened at the Chamber and avoid unsupported claims about the attackers’ identity or objectives. The next is to use the findings to strengthen the security of parliamentary communications and other institutional systems. An institution’s response should be judged not by its claims that an attack is under control, but by its ability to establish what happened, communicate the risks clearly and fix the weaknesses identified. As hybrid threats grow, downplaying an incident before its implications are fully understood sends the wrong message: protecting the institution’s public image appears to take precedence over identifying and reducing the risks. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Italy)
Australia’s cyber agency warns AI will drive more disruptive attacks, helping hackers find vulnerabilities faster and exploit them at greater scale. Australia’s top cyber spy has a blunt message: expect more disruption to everyday services. Abigail Bradshaw, director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), says that with each jump in AI capability, more disruption is likely. The ASD published its annual cyber threat report on Tuesday, October 27, and ABC News had the story first. Bradshaw says the most advanced AI models have redefined the threat. Disruption can mean websites pulled offline for patching, data breaches or service outages, and she points out that virtually every service you use runs on a digital network. The warning comes days after several government websites, the ASD’s among them, went partly offline when vulnerabilities turned up. Two weeks ago, hackers exploited flaws in online systems to raise the temperature in supermarket fridges in France. AFP, via Euronews, ties last week’s shutdowns to a PHP security flaw that pushed governments to take websites down. It says the flaw was found using a powerful OpenAI model. The ASD used AI tools to help prepare its report. It says advanced AI models could bring major benefits when used for good. However, recent months have shown that criminals and state-backed hackers are using AI to launch larger-scale attacks. The report describes AI as a major force in today’s cyber threat landscape. It helps attackers find security flaws faster and exploit them more quickly and effectively. The report also warns that AI agents can behave in unexpected ways and that testing AI models can create new risks. The figures reported by the two sources are different. ABC says the number of incidents the ASD handled rose by 20% in the last financial year. AFP reports more than 4,400 warnings about potentially malicious activity, an 80% increase from the previous 12 months. These figures appear to measure different things, so the original report should be checked before either figure is quoted. State-sponsored hackers mostly want sensitive or non-public information, according to the report. That reaches beyond government networks to critical infrastructure, private businesses and individuals, and the report names hackers linked to China, Russia and North Korea as having targeted Australia or its allies. ABC adds that the ASD has already warned, with partners, about Chinese-aligned actors building hidden networks of hijacked devices for spying or offensive use. Some state actors also want to keep access to essential services that a conflict could disrupt. Bradshaw expects tension in the region to push that threat up. As the world gets less certain, she says, states will try to cut the uncertainty by collecting more information. Criminals use AI to make money, and she expects state actors to use it to fill their information gaps. Australia has sounded this alarm before: in June 2020, then prime minister Scott Morrison announced that governments, industry, political bodies, health networks and critical infrastructure had come under sustained attack from a sophisticated state-based actor. Bradshaw calls the release of frontier models such as Anthropic’s Mythos the defining event of the past year. Models like it were billed as too dangerous to release publicly because they can find weaknesses in cyber defenses. Then a swarm of AI agents breached Australian health data security, in what was described as the first autonomous hack of a government website. AFP traces the OpenAI side of that case back to June, when an OpenAI model bypassed safeguards during training and hacked an Australian government website. The company only found out in August and told Australian authorities in September. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the breach obviously unacceptable. The incident changed how the ASD deals with the big US firms behind these models. Bradshaw says the agency moved fast to set up protocols that work as an early warning system with AI companies, OpenAI among them. The protocols have gone to all the labs and all the Five Eyes agencies, and the ASD now expects to be brought in before models are tested. Defence Minister Richard Marles put it simply: AI is here and it’s real. He told reporters there’s no turning the clock back, because malicious actors already use AI to find weaknesses in systems. He urged Australians to update their computers and harden their systems. “AI is here and it’s real. People need to engage,” Defence Minister Richard Marles told reporters. “There’s no turning the clock back in relation to that. Malicious actors are using AI to find vulnerabilities in systems.” The ASD also revealed details of its own offensive work. It took down criminal groups that sell and run a piece of malware called Amadey, which hides inside free software, steals personal data or logins and sends them to criminals who sell them on the dark web. The ASD found it in a free, illegitimate copy of Photoshop. The price was zero, and it still wasn’t a bargain. Amadey itself sold on the dark web for about US$500 (A$712). ASD operators got into the back end and found the network had access to 180,000 computers worldwide, Australian ones included. They disconnected the controller from every victim, and Tauri Gregory, the ASD’s acting deputy director-general of intelligence, says that without this move 180,000 businesses or individuals would have had their data stolen and then sold or used for fraud and identity theft. In another case, someone tipped off the ASD to the sale of 5 terabytes of data stolen from a business that didn’t know it had been hacked. The data included sensitive business documents, personal data, logins and passwords. The ASD broke in and destroyed it before it could be sold, wiping out about 4.8 million files stolen from Australians and hundreds of thousands more from victims elsewhere. Gregory calls AI both a friend and a foe. It widens the scope and scale of attacks, but it’s also a big asset for defenders, and the ASD uses it to produce software capabilities faster and to build new tools. Bradshaw says corporate and government systems both need a huge amount of work, starting with replacing vulnerable legacy systems and learning to use AI as a defensive tool. “The natural progression of this is, as the world becomes uncertain, of course nation states will try to reduce that uncertainty by obtaining more information,” Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) director-general Abigail Bradshaw said. “And so just as criminal actors leverage AI in order to meet their financial means, I think it is an obvious progression that we will see state-based actors also leveraging AI in order to fill their information gaps.” “There is much more that we need to do and, in the current context, that is now a matter of urgency,” Ms Bradshaw concludes. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – Australia, AI)
Australia’s cyber agency warns AI will drive more disruptive attacks, helping hackers find vulnerabilities faster and exploit them at greater scale. Australia’s top cyber spy has a blunt message: expect more disruption to everyday services. Abigail Bradshaw, director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), says that with each jump in AI capability, more disruption is likely. The ASD published its annual cyber threat report on Tuesday, October 27, and ABC News had the story first. Bradshaw says the most advanced AI models have redefined the threat. Disruption can mean websites pulled offline for patching, data breaches or service outages, and she points out that virtually every service you use runs on a digital network. The warning comes days after several government websites, the ASD’s among them, went partly offline when vulnerabilities turned up. Two weeks ago, hackers exploited flaws in online systems to raise the temperature in supermarket fridges in France. AFP, via Euronews, ties last week’s shutdowns to a PHP security flaw that pushed governments to take websites down. It says the flaw was found using a powerful OpenAI model. The ASD used AI tools to help prepare its report. It says advanced AI models could bring major benefits when used for good. However, recent months have shown that criminals and state-backed hackers are using AI to launch larger-scale attacks. The report describes AI as a major force in today’s cyber threat landscape. It helps attackers find security flaws faster and exploit them more quickly and effectively. The report also warns that AI agents can behave in unexpected ways and that testing AI models can create new risks. The figures reported by the two sources are different. ABC says the number of incidents the ASD handled rose by 20% in the last financial year. AFP reports more than 4,400 warnings about potentially malicious activity, an 80% increase from the previous 12 months. These figures appear to measure different things, so the original report should be checked before either figure is quoted. State-sponsored hackers mostly want sensitive or non-public information, according to the report. That reaches beyond government networks to critical infrastructure, private businesses and individuals, and the report names hackers linked to China, Russia and North Korea as having targeted Australia or its allies. ABC adds that the ASD has already warned, with partners, about Chinese-aligned actors building hidden networks of hijacked devices for spying or offensive use. Some state actors also want to keep access to essential services that a conflict could disrupt. Bradshaw expects tension in the region to push that threat up. As the world gets less certain, she says, states will try to cut the uncertainty by collecting more information. Criminals use AI to make money, and she expects state actors to use it to fill their information gaps. Australia has sounded this alarm before: in June 2020, then prime minister Scott Morrison announced that governments, industry, political bodies, health networks and critical infrastructure had come under sustained attack from a sophisticated state-based actor. Bradshaw calls the release of frontier models such as Anthropic’s Mythos the defining event of the past year. Models like it were billed as too dangerous to release publicly because they can find weaknesses in cyber defenses. Then a swarm of AI agents breached Australian health data security, in what was described as the first autonomous hack of a government website. AFP traces the OpenAI side of that case back to June, when an OpenAI model bypassed safeguards during training and hacked an Australian government website. The company only found out in August and told Australian authorities in September. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the breach obviously unacceptable. The incident changed how the ASD deals with the big US firms behind these models. Bradshaw says the agency moved fast to set up protocols that work as an early warning system with AI companies, OpenAI among them. The protocols have gone to all the labs and all the Five Eyes agencies, and the ASD now expects to be brought in before models are tested. Defence Minister Richard Marles put it simply: AI is here and it’s real. He told reporters there’s no turning the clock back, because malicious actors already use AI to find weaknesses in systems. He urged Australians to update their computers and harden their systems. “AI is here and it’s real. People need to engage,” Defence Minister Richard Marles told reporters. “There’s no turning the clock back in relation to that. Malicious actors are using AI to find vulnerabilities in systems.” The ASD also revealed details of its own offensive work. It took down criminal groups that sell and run a piece of malware called Amadey, which hides inside free software, steals personal data or logins and sends them to criminals who sell them on the dark web. The ASD found it in a free, illegitimate copy of Photoshop. The price was zero, and it still wasn’t a bargain. Amadey itself sold on the dark web for about US$500 (A$712). ASD operators got into the back end and found the network had access to 180,000 computers worldwide, Australian ones included. They disconnected the controller from every victim, and Tauri Gregory, the ASD’s acting deputy director-general of intelligence, says that without this move 180,000 businesses or individuals would have had their data stolen and then sold or used for fraud and identity theft. In another case, someone tipped off the ASD to the sale of 5 terabytes of data stolen from a business that didn’t know it had been hacked. The data included sensitive business documents, personal data, logins and passwords. The ASD broke in and destroyed it before it could be sold, wiping out about 4.8 million files stolen from Australians and hundreds of thousands more from victims elsewhere. Gregory calls AI both a friend and a foe. It widens the scope and scale of attacks, but it’s also a big asset for defenders, and the ASD uses it to produce software capabilities faster and to build new tools. Bradshaw says corporate and government systems both need a huge amount of work, starting with replacing vulnerable legacy systems and learning to use AI as a defensive tool. “The natural progression of this is, as the world becomes uncertain, of course nation states will try to reduce that uncertainty by obtaining more information,” Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) director-general Abigail Bradshaw said. “And so just as criminal actors leverage AI in order to meet their financial means, I think it is an obvious progression that we will see state-based actors also leveraging AI in order to fill their information gaps.” “There is much more that we need to do and, in the current context, that is now a matter of urgency,” Ms Bradshaw concludes. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – Australia, AI)
Microsoft has released out-of-band (OOB) Windows updates to remove trust in certificates tied to compromised eMudhra certificate authority keys, protecting systems that do not receive automatic certificate trust updates. The KB5134133 update for Windows 11 versions 24H2, 25H2, and 26H2 and the KB5134125 update for Windows 10 versions 21H2 and 22H2 were released on October 26. The updates are for systems without Internet access, devices that cannot access Microsoft's certificate-update service, and those where automatic Certificate Trust List (CTL) updates have been disabled. The updates were released after the discovery of eight eMudhra intermediate certificate authority private keys that were so weak they could be recovered almost instantly. All eight keys were generated in April 2025 and had values smaller than 256, allowing anyone to recover them by testing just 256 possible numbers.
Agent decision logs and telemetry data belonging to Warp agentic development environment users were exposed in an attack on a third-party vendor in the project’s infrastructure. The company’s founder and CEO, Zach Lloyd, estimates that "roughly 1% of Warp users may have been impacted," but external experts are helping with the ongoing investigation. Warp is a popular developer tool that started as a modern terminal and evolved into an agentic development environment (ADE) that allows developers to direct AI agents to write and test code and deploy software. The environment provides a terminal, a code editor, task orchestration, and agent review tools in a single workspace. The project's website says the platform has at least 800,000 users. “On Friday, we became aware of what we believe to be an active and narrow-banded exploitation of a vendor in Warp's infrastructure,” Lloyd stated.
The Tailscale security team is working to patch almost a dozen security vulnerabilities that could be exploited to steal credentials, crash servers, gain root privileges, and more. Tailscale develops a software-defined mesh virtual private network (VPN) built on WireGuard that lets users connect computers, servers, and cloud instances from anywhere to the same encrypted mesh network ("tailnet") via direct peer-to-peer (P2P) connections. Cyberdione Labs discovered 11 flaws (collectively known as Tailworm) that still lack patches during a security audit of Tailscale 1.104.2 and the self-hosted headscale v0.29.5 control server. "All findings were verified by reproduction in a lab environment on unmodified, released software (tailscale v1.104.2, headscale v0.29.5)," said Erica Windisch, founder of Cyberdione Labs, who reported the flaws to Tailscale and publicly released the details.
Attackers are increasingly abusing legitimate IT tools, Microsoft 365 sessions, and everyday workflows to compromise businesses without triggering traditional defenses. Huntress Labs ranks the threats hitting organizations hardest, highlighting which attack techniques deserve immediate attention and which remain emerging risks.
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