IT News Analysis

1

Claude AI Just Cracked a Post-Quantum Test Scheme and Found a Faster 7-Round AES Attack

Anthropic says Claude Mythos Preview helped derive an end-to-end key-recovery attack against HAWK-256 and a 200- to 800-fold speedup for an attack on seven-round AES-128. The HAWK attack exploits a previously unused symmetry in the lattice behind the signature scheme. Anthropic's released implementation gives an expected end-to-end runtime of about three hours and 42 minutes on a 96-core server. The AES result removes a 256-way guessing step from an existing meet-in-the-middle attack. Anthropic said neither result affects production systems. HAWK remains a candidate in a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) post-quantum standardization process, and the public recovery code only targets the smaller HAWK-256 parameter. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) result applies to seven of AES-128's ten rounds and still requires an impractical number of chosen plaintexts. The company said no production software needs to change as a result. Anthropic published...

Jul 28, 2026

2

How AI Is Rewriting the Cloud Security Playbook

Explore AI agents, Zero Trust, machine identities, and cloud security with Anthropic, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, and SANS. Explore the Agenda.

3

Tengu Botnet Reboots Compromised Linux Devices When Defenders Kill Its Process

A new Mirai-derived botnet called Tengu can use a compromised Linux device's hardware watchdog to trigger a reboot when defenders kill its main process. If that happens, Tengu's other persistence mechanisms get another chance to relaunch it. Nozomi Networks Labs observed the dropper reaching its honeypots through Telnet credential brute force. Tengu supports 25 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) methods. It can also run a SOCKS5 proxy, execute shell commands, and collect system and network data. The malware can update itself and retrieve additional Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) or Android package (APK) payloads. Nozomi listed architecture-specific samples for i386, amd64, MIPS, ARM, PowerPC, and m68k. The report identifies no specific vendor or device model. It also names no operator, infection count, or real-world DDoS victims. It shows what Tengu can do, not how far it has spread. Defenders should start by removing internet exposure for Telnet and other unne...

Jul 28, 2026

4

24,650 Internet-Exposed BMCs Disclose IPMI Password Hashes Before Login

Cybersecurity researchers have sounded an alert after finding more than 36,000 Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) management interfaces exposing Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) protocol to the public internet. Of the 36,872 internet-exposed server-management interfaces running IPMI, 24,650 have been found to disclose password-derived authentication hashes before login due to a vulnerability with the IPMI v2.0 specification itself, according to a new report Lava shared with The Hacker News. IPMI v2.0 was introduced in February 2024. The issue in question is CVE-2013-4786 (CVSS score: 7.5), a high-severity information disclosure flaw that enables remote attackers to obtain password hashes for valid accounts and conduct offline password guessing attacks by obtaining the HMAC from an RMCP+ Authenticated Key-Exchange Protocol (RAKP) message response from a BMC. Per an advisory released by Dell, "this is an inherent problem with the specification for IPMI ...

Jul 28, 2026

5

JFrog Confirms OpenAI Models Exploited Artifactory Zero-Day Before Hugging Face Breach

JFrog has confirmed that OpenAI models exploited a zero-day in self-hosted Artifactory while trying to reach the open internet from a sealed evaluation environment. Artifactory is JFrog's software repository manager. OpenAI says the models then escalated privileges and moved laterally until they reached an internet-connected node. JFrog says it has since developed and released fixes for cloud and self-hosted customers. The Artifactory exploit occurred inside OpenAI's environment. OpenAI says a separate attack path later reached Hugging Face's systems. JFrog says its cloud customers are already protected. Self-hosted users should review the Artifactory release notes and move to the remediating build for their maintained branch. Several Artifactory CVE records were published on July 27 with affected-version ranges and fixed-version thresholds, but neither JFrog nor OpenAI has said whether any of those records correspond to the vulnerabilities used during the evaluati...

Jul 28, 2026

6

Critical OpenWrt DHCPv6 Flaw Could Let Unauthenticated Attackers Run Code as Root

OpenWrt has shipped version 24.10.8 to close a critical DHCPv6 stack overflow and a wider set of remotely triggerable flaws in network services enabled by default. The critical issue, tracked as CVE-2026-53921 and rated 9.8 on CVSS 3.1 in OpenWrt's GitHub advisory, lets an unauthenticated attacker able to reach the DHCPv6 server overwrite a stack buffer in odhcpd through a crafted DHCPv6 REQUEST. odhcpd runs as root, and the advisory notes that embedded hardware commonly lacks stack canaries and address space layout randomization (ASLR), making code execution a realistic outcome on typical devices. The advisory includes public Python proof-of-concept code for both documented overflow paths. Users on the 24.10 branch should install 24.10.8, while users on 25.12 should install 25.12.5; firmware images are available through the OpenWrt Firmware Selector. As of July 28, the reviewed OpenWrt materials did not report exploitation in the wild. The flaw was also absent from CISA...

Jul 28, 2026

7

Five things successful IT teams get right about SaaS management

1Password blog: how IT teams can automate access reviews, reduce license spend, and surface shadow AI and IT.

8

Nimbus Manticore Deploys NightLedger and Turns Victim Systems Into Covert Relays

The Iranian state-backed hacking group tracked as Nimbus Manticore (aka GalaxyGato, Mirage Kitten, Smoke Sandstorm, Subtle Snail, and UNC1549) has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks targeting entities across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. The intrusions involve the use of a previously undocumented Windows backdoor called NightLedger and two custom WebSocket tunnelers, BridgeHead and ArcBridge, with an aim to maintain covert access. Targets of the campaign include Egypt, SMB and government environments in Jordan and Tanzania, aviation organizations in Pakistan, telecommunication companies in Ethiopia, and financial-sector entities in Burkina Faso, per Kaspersky. "The toolset includes NightLedger, a new Windows backdoor for reconnaissance, command execution, file operations, process discovery, and screenshot capture; and two custom WebSocket-based tunnelers, ArcBridge and BridgeHead, for covert network access and operator-controlled tunneling," Kasper...

Jul 28, 2026

9

Critical TeamCity Flaw Could Let Attackers Run OS Commands Without Logging In

JetBrains is urging customers of on-premise versions of TeamCity to update to the latest version following the discovery of a critical security issue that could result in arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability, assigned CVE-2026-63077 (CVSS score: 9.8), affects all TeamCity On-Premises versions. It has been addressed in versions 2025.11.7 and 2026.1.3. TeamCity Cloud instances have already been updated. JetBrains has credited Antoni Tremblay with discovering and reporting the flaw on July 10, 2026. "If exploited, this flaw may enable an unauthenticated attacker with HTTP(S) access to a TeamCity server to bypass authentication checks and execute arbitrary operating system commands with the privileges of the TeamCity server process," JetBrains said. The flaw allows unauthenticated remote code execution via the agent polling protocol to sidestep authentication checks and achieve command execution. Depending on the privileges granted to the TeamCity server process, ...

Jul 28, 2026

10

Researcher Says AI Helped Develop Linux Traffic-Control Race Into Root Exploit

STAR Labs has published a Linux kernel exploit that turns an ordinary local user into root on the CentOS Stream 9 build it targeted. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-53264 (CVSS score: 7.8), is a use-after-free race in the kernel's network traffic-control subsystem. Researcher Lee Jia Jie said artificial intelligence (AI) helped him find the bug and speed up exploit development. This is local privilege escalation, not remote code execution, so an attacker needs a foothold on the machine before any of it applies. The demonstrated exploit also requires unprivileged user namespaces, the CONFIG_NET_ACT_GACT and CONFIG_NET_CLS_FLOWER kernel options, and a kernel-specific return-oriented programming (ROP) chain containing hardcoded offsets. Those conditions narrow the immediate exposure, but full exploit source code is now public. The upstream fix landed on June 1, 2026, and has since been backported to several stable kernel branches. The Linux CNA record lists vulnerable ranges begi...

Jul 28, 2026