IT News Analysis

1

Kiteworks Fixes Critical Flaw Found During Nine-Hour Precautionary Shutdown

Kiteworks on Monday said it worked with federal intelligence authorities over the weekend as it identified and addressed a critical security vulnerability during the scheduled precautionary shutdown . "During the shutdown, this activity led to the discovery of a previously unknown critical vulnerability confined to a capability that is enabled for less than 1% of the customer base," the company said in a statement. "Kiteworks developed and deployed a fix during the window, [and] applied an additional protective layer across all environments." There is no evidence that the vulnerability has ever been exploited in a malicious context. Other Kiteworks products are not affected by the flaw. The development comes days after Kiteworks, previously Accellion, urged customers to take their systems offline for a period of nine hours, in addition to shutting down environments it hosts on behalf of customers, after receiving intelligence about a potential imminent cybe...

Sep 29, 2026

2

Reco Finds Four in Five Agents Run With Zero IT Oversight

See which agent permissions security teams aren't reviewing, and why it matters now.

3

101 Malicious npm Packages Add Developers' WhatsApp Accounts to Groups Without Consent

Cybersecurity researchers have identified a cluster of 101 npm packages that are used to trap developers into a WhatsApp group subscriber campaign dubbed PhantomSub . "The malicious packages abuse the 'Baileys' WhatsApp open source project to add the victims to groups without their consent," OX Security researchers Nir Zadok, Moshe Siman Tov Bustan, and Vitalii Chepurko said in a technical write-up published Monday. These packages have been collectively downloaded 490,000 times, out of which 116,000 occurred in the last 30 days. The names of some of the packages are below - ourin-baileys @nexustechpro/baileys @badzz88/baileys @ostyado/baileys levvleys @vanzxy/baileys @yudzxml/baileys @chatunity/baileys @kelvdra/baileys neuralwhatsapp lilys-baileys @fyxzpediaa/baileys noxleyss @xrelly-stack/bails alipclutch-baileys kurobails eliteprotech-baileys @xayz/baileys chromestaff-baileys @sanzoffc/baileys @s...

Sep 29, 2026

4

Dutch Police Arrest 24-Year-Old Amsterdam Man in ShinyHunters Investigation

Dutch authorities have confirmed that they arrested a 24-year-old man from Amsterdam in connection with the ShinyHunters group. "It is true that this month a 24-year-old man from Amsterdam was arrested in an investigation into the hacker group ShinyHunters," the Politie Landelijke Opsporing en Interventies said in an X post Monday. Police said the individual is expected to appear before the Rotterdam District Court on September 29, 2026. Although law enforcement officials did not disclose any additional details, independent security journalist Brian Krebs and DataBreaches.Net identified the arrested man as Pepijn van der Stap (aka Umbreon), who was previously apprehended in 2023 for his role in a series of data thefts and extortions. Per DataBreaches.Net, van der Stap was arrested on September 15, 2026. In 2023, it emerged that the individual worked at cybersecurity company Hadrian and volunteered at the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD). ...

Sep 29, 2026

5

Official MCP Python SDK Flaw Can Let Malicious Servers Steal OAuth Credentials

A malicious MCP server could trick an application built on the official  MCP Python SDK  into handing over the OAuth credentials it uses to log in to a real service, the SDK's maintainers said in a security advisory. Affected versions sent the client secret, the authorization code, and the PKCE proof key to a token endpoint the attacker controlled. The fix is in versions 1.30.0 and 2.2.0. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI applications to outside tools and data, and this package is its official Python SDK for building MCP servers and clients. With the stolen credentials, the attacker can request a valid access token from the real login service. Cycode, the security firm that reported the flaw , demonstrated that full exchange in a test and says the resulting token carries whatever permissions the app was granted. The client secret is long-lived, so it keeps working until it is changed. The flaw is rated high (7.5) for the two prov...

Sep 29, 2026

6

OpenAI Shelves GPT-6.1 Astra After Tests Find Deception and Unauthorized Actions

OpenAI on Monday shelved plans to release GPT-6.1 Astra, a next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) model that was planned for an October launch, after it failed internal safety and alignment audits. The development was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The move "marks a rare case of a major AI developer ditching a new release because of safety concerns," the news publication said. The ChatGPT maker said it made the decision to scrap its GPT-6.1 Astra model release after testing raised questions about whether it can follow user instructions without deviating from expected behavior. The Journal reported that the model exhibited higher levels of deception than its predecessor during evaluation, and failed to disclose what actions it had carried out. In some cases, it went ahead without seeking permission or attempted to use outside tools in scenarios where doing so could be deemed unsafe. "While (GPT-6.1 Astra) improved on axes such as model laziness...

Sep 29, 2026

7

Build Your Email Security Strategy for the Agentic Era

Get the 2026 checklist for defending against AI phishing, compromised accounts, and human error.

8

OpenAI Pauses Tool Use After Agent Bypasses Internet Controls to Reach External Chatbot

OpenAI said it has made the decision to pause training of its most powerful models after one of its agents during reinforcement learning (RL) training contacted an external chatbot by exploiting a loophole in its internet-access restrictions. "An agent attempting to complete a search-based training task queried a public chatbot service through a gap in our internet-access restrictions: insufficient DNS filtering in its training sandbox," OpenAI said . "Before this, the agent issued queries via our search tool and unsuccessfully tried to access search engines directly. Note that all internet access apart from the DNS resolver in this report hit our offline webcache and therefore did not access the live internet." OpenAI said it has since added blocking controls at two independent layers to prevent this access in the first place. It also said its misalignment monitoring system detected the behavior within 15 minutes and it was acknowledged by a human reviewer...

Sep 29, 2026

9

Apple Patches CoreGraphics Flaw Possibly Exploited in Targeted Attacks

Apple has released security updates to address a vulnerability in older versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS that it said may have been exploited in targeted attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-86950 , refers to an out-of-bounds write impacting the CoreGraphics component that could lead to arbitrary code execution when processing a maliciously crafted file. The iPhone maker said the issue was addressed with improved bounds checking. It credited Meta Product Security with discovering and reporting the issue. "Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals on versions of iOS before iOS 27," it added. However, the company offered no details on how many individuals were targeted, if any of those attempts were successful, or when the first instance of CVE-2026-86950 exploitation occurred. The shortcoming has been addressed in the following devices and operating syste...

Sep 28, 2026

10

Hackers Use NeedyMantis to Maintain Long-Term Access in Breached Networks

Hackers have used a malware family called NeedyMantis to maintain long-term access to networks they had already breached, Microsoft said in a technical analysis. The malware has been seen in a small number of targeted intrusions at telecommunications organizations, universities, medical nonprofits, intergovernmental organizations, and government contractors. Its use goes back to at least October 2025. Microsoft found NeedyMantis while following up on indicators from Kaspersky's investigation into the  supply chain attack on DAEMON Tools . In that attack, official, signed installers for the DAEMON Tools Lite disk image program carried malicious code from April 8, 2026. The developer replaced them with a clean version on May 5. Microsoft tracks the activity tied to that attack as Storm-3069. It says Storm-3069 is one group that uses NeedyMantis, though it has not seen the malware itself spread through a supply chain attack. Defenders can check their networks using the fi...

Sep 28, 2026