IT News Analysis

1

Microsoft Patches 398 Flaws Including a Windows Driver Zero-Day Under Active Attack

Microsoft released its monthly security updates on Tuesday, and one of the flaws it closed is already being used in attacks. The bug sits in a core Windows kernel driver that handles network socket operations. An attacker with code already running on a machine can use it to escalate to SYSTEM. That patch goes out first. The flaw is tracked as CVE-2026-68820 (CVSS score: 7.0) and is the only one in this month's release Microsoft flags as under active exploitation. Exploitation depends on triggering a race condition in the driver. Microsoft has not publicly attributed the exploitation. Check Point Research says Lazarus used the zero-day in its Operation Dream Job campaign. Four other flaws in the release need nothing at all from the victim: no account, no password, no click. They affect Windows DNS Server, Windows Deployment Services, Microsoft's implementation of the QUIC transport protocol, and High Performance Computing (HPC) Pack, and each carries a CVSS score of 9.8....

Aug 11, 2026

2

Kimwolf v7 Android Botnet Makes HTTP/2 DDoS Traffic Look Like Legitimate Browsing

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new version of the Kimwolf/AISURU Android and Internet of Things (IoT) botnet that comes with significant improvements to improve its operational resilience and conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The new version, tracked as Kimwolf v7, was discovered by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in February 2026. "Kimwolf v7 adds an HTTP/2-based DDoS flood that constructs complete browser fingerprints," researchers Asher Davila, Chris Navarrete, and Doel Santos said. "This makes attack traffic more difficult to distinguish from legitimate browsing." The botnet also aims to make its command-and-control (C2) infrastructure more resistant to takedown efforts by using a tiered mechanism that employs Ethereum Name Service (ENS) to obtain the C2 address, a hard-coded Tor .onion hidden service, and a local proxy for routing between clearnet and Tor, while removing all scanning, exploitation, and brute-force functional...

Aug 11, 2026

3

Zoom Annotation Flaws Could Let a Meeting Participant Hijack Another Attendee's Client

Anyone sharing their screen on a Zoom call could have taken over the computers of everyone watching, and anyone watching could have taken over the presenter's. The flaw sat in the annotation tool, the feature that lets participants draw and type on a shared screen, and it asked nothing of the victim beyond being in the meeting. No click, no download, no prompt, and nothing on screen to show it had happened. The patches are not new. Client fixes shipped in June and July, roughly two months before the flaws were made public, and no exploitation has been reported as of publication. None of the three identifiers appear in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The versions that close them: Zoom Workplace, all supported platforms, before 7.1.5 and 7.0.6 in their respective branches Zoom Workplace VDI Client for Windows, before 7.0.11 and 6.6.16 Zoom Rooms and Zoom Meeting SDK, all platforms, before 7.1.0, and before 7.1.5 for the third flaw The research ...

Aug 11, 2026

4

AI Is Flooding Security with Bugs Nobody Proved

Stephen Sims on why unproven AI findings pile up as a triage burden. Read the full SANS blog.

5

Sandworm-Linked UAC-0145 Uses Fake Job Interviews to Push VPN That Can Run Commands

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has disclosed details of a new social engineering campaign orchestrated by Russian nation-state threat actors targeting IT workers in the country by masquerading as recruiters to trick them into installing malware. CERT-UA pinned the activity on a threat cluster it tracks as UAC-0145 , which is a subgroup within Sandworm (aka APT44, Seashell Blizzard, and UAC-0002), a sophisticated hacking group affiliated with the GRU. The campaign is assessed to be ongoing since May 2026. "Specifically, on job search websites, after reviewing a candidate's resume, the attackers contact a potential victim – typically a system administrator or IT specialist – on behalf of an IT company (such as ATLAS Business Group)," CERT-UA said .  Although initial communications take place via built-in online chat, the conversation subsequently shifts to messaging apps like Telegram, where a preliminary chat takes place with a purported H...

Aug 11, 2026

6

Researchers Disclose AI-Assisted SharePoint Exploit Chain Reaching Unauthenticated RCE

Security researchers found a way to enter Microsoft SharePoint servers as any user, including an administrator, with no valid account. A significant part of the work that found it was done through an AI agent. The flaw, tracked as  CVE-2026-55040  (CVSS 9.1), affects SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, SharePoint Server 2019, and SharePoint Server 2016. Microsoft's affected-product list covers only those three on-premises editions, and SharePoint Online is not among them. It lets a remote unauthenticated attacker assume a chosen user's identity. The attack has one prerequisite: the intruder has to know which account they want to become, either by its Active Directory security identifier (SID) or its user principal name (UPN), which is formatted like an email address. Rapid7 then chained the bypass to a separate remote code execution flaw and ran code on the server with no credentials. Microsoft and the firm disclosed that second flaw on August 11 as  CVE-2026...

Aug 11, 2026

7

Exploit Time Just Dropped From 30 Days to 30 Minutes

Download the 11-step checklist CISOs use to close exposure windows first.

8

DeadLock Ransomware Uses Polygon Smart Contracts to Make Extortion Infra Harder to Disrupt

The ransomware group known as DeadLock has been observed using decentralized infrastructure to facilitate victim communications and data leak operations in a bid to improve operational resilience. "Its recovery ecosystem combines the Session messaging network with blockchain-backed services that store and deliver resources used throughout the extortion process," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said . The tech giant said it observed the ransomware being deployed by multiple threat actors, including an affiliate for Lynx and INC ransomware. DeadLock was first detected in July 2025, employing double extortion tactics to encrypt victim environments and apply pressure by threatening to publicly release exfiltrated data. As of this month, the group has claimed 96 victims , with most of them located in Italy, Spain, Poland, Türkiye, and the U.S. In an analysis published earlier this January, Singapore-headquartered Group-IB said the group has managed to keep a lowe...

Aug 11, 2026

9

OpenAI Launches GPT-5.6-Cyber with Reduced Safeguards for Exploit Development

OpenAI on Monday unveiled a new cybersecurity-focused model called GPT‑5.6‑Cyber that it said is focused on vulnerability research, penetration testing, and incident response. "Built on GPT‑5.6 Sol, it is trained to improve capabilities on several specialized cybersecurity tasks (e.g., finding zero-day vulnerabilities and developing exploit chains) and to reduce refusals for certain higher-risk, dual-use cyber tasks," OpenAI said . The artificial intelligence (AI) company said it's making GPT 5.6 Cyber available through Daybreak Red, a new tier that provides access to its purpose-trained cybersecurity models to other firms for authorized vulnerability research, exploit validation, and security testing. GPT-5.6-Cyber, a more cyber-permissive version of GPT-5.6 Sol, builds upon GPT‑5.5‑Cyber , which OpenAI released in June 2026. To measure the reduced rate of refusals provided by GPT‑5.6‑Cyber through Daybreak Red access, OpenAI said it created an internal evaluat...

Aug 11, 2026

10

A Malicious SIM Card Can Run Attacker Code Inside the Modems Behind Cellular IoT Devices

A malicious SIM card can order the device it sits in to run commands of the attacker's choosing. On the cellular modules built into electric-vehicle chargers, industrial routers, and car telematics units, that is enough to take the whole device over. Researchers at the University of Birmingham and the security firm Fuzzware tested 26 phones and cellular modules for the capability, found it switched on in 9 of them, and used it to run their own code on a commercial EV charger. Six of the eight cellular modules they tested accepted the command. Only 3 of 18 phones did: the OPPO Find X5, the OPPO Reno 14 F 5G, and the ASUS Zenfone 9. No iPhone or Pixel was among them. The exposure is in machine-to-machine hardware. Five of the six were Quectel parts, three of them pulled from an EV charger, an industrial router, and a car's telematics control unit. Knowing the victim's number is not enough: every attack starts with a hostile card already in the slot, swapped by hand,...

Aug 11, 2026