The term "security through obscurity" describes an old idea that networks and systems will remain secure so long as their architecture, along with any vulnerabilities or other weaknesses, remains secret or hidden. It was never a sound strategy for protecting sensitive assets and systems, but many organizations leaned on it due to lack of resources or complacency. Now it’s obsolete. Don’t believe us? Here’s proof. Software vendors and independent researchers alike are now using AI agents to find bugs – some very obscure and decades old – across products and open source code, leading to record-breaking numbers of security disclosures and patches, and a massive backlog for project maintainers. “You see open source platforms that have been visible to the tech community for a decade, these libraries that are run in 80 percent of web servers out there, people have stress-tested those for 10 years, and the community believed that they were really secure,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division, told The Register. “The latest models were able to break those and say, ‘yeah, there’s significant vulnerabilities in here.’” Whether or not security through obscurity is dead “isn't even an opinion question,” Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative chief bug hunter Dustin Childs told The Register, the day after Microsoft’s record-breaking Patch Tuesday addressed 974 CVEs. “When you look at all of the components patched by Adobe and Microsoft yesterday, you see components no one has talked about in years,” Childs said. “Telnet client – is this even still used in any secure environment? Windows RNDIS – the USB-networking protocol Microsoft has been trying to deprecate for years. NFS Portmapper – 1980s Unix tech. And Link Layer Topology Discovery – the Vista-era network-map protocol nobody's thought about since Vista – just to name a few.” Meanwhile, attackers are also using AI to reverse-engineer fixes and find exploits within hours. In one recent case, at least four espionage crews, most suspected of links to China, slammed shut the “patch-gap” window for open source Chromium, using an exploit kit developed shortly after the maintainers released an upstream patch – but before the downstream stable release was pushed to users. What this means for OT security During interviews at Black Hat in August, both former US National Cyber Director Chris Inglis and John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group, told us that they worry about what this means for critical operational technologies and industrial control systems (ICS). These are the systems that ensure the lights turn on when people flip a switch, gas flows out of pumps, and safe drinking water pours from faucets – all critical services that people use daily, and assume will continue working reliably. The OT systems themselves often use obscure protocols and proprietary hardware and software, which historically made them black boxes, even to IT specialists and hackers. AI upended this assumption. It means that criminals don't need to be OT experts to carry out destructive cyberattacks on critical networks and facilities. They just have to ask an agent to learn everything about these systems and do the dirty work for them. A couple of weeks after Black Hat, five US agencies said that attackers used AI-generated exploitation scripts to break into internet-exposed Siemens S7 Series programmable logic controllers (PLCs) at water, manufacturing, energy, and other critical facilities. “This is not a theoretical risk – it is an active threat,” the feds warned. AI “is excellent at technical troubleshooting, at knowing obscure systems and helping you make your way through it, and this makes me very concerned about industrial control systems,” Hultquist told The Register in an interview last week. “They've been largely secured because the expertise was in a handful of people's heads, and that's not going to last forever,” he said. AI can be a useful guide for attackers studying not just the application layer, but also the operating system, and even down into the firmware, Hultquist added. “That's going to have implications for a lot of different areas of security, but definitely for industrial control systems.” However, while this undoubtedly means more work for sysadmins and defenders, burying this outdated idea of security through obscurity isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 'Never a winning strategy' “I've always been of the mind that security through obscurity was never a winning strategy,” Katie Moussouris, founder and CEO of bug bounty consultancy Luta Security and the fairy godmother of bug bounties, told The Register. “But that's because I've been a hacker for so long. The argument always fails in the face of someone who decides to turn their gaze towards your organization. If there is something to find, they will find it.” Plus, she added, AI makes hacking a whole lot easier. “People might not have familiarity with the particular tech stack that you're running, but that is no longer a barrier because AI has ingested everything, and an AI is going to help them enumerate weak spots, even if they themselves are not familiar with the particular tech stack that they are pointing an AI towards,” Moussouris said. However, finding bugs and other weaknesses has never been the big security problem, she added. “It’s triaging and prioritization and actually getting things fixed.” This, Moussouris said, has also been her biggest issue with the way that organizations implement bug bounty programs. “AI is shining that bright light on the wrong end of the security picture, and unfortunately, AI hasn't caught up on the defensive side,” Moussouris said. “We're not there with AI automated patching, remediation – anything of the sort.” A couple of recent studies back this up, both finding that AI-generated patches fail more than half of the time. 1Password’s research team took six CVEs disclosed since March, and produced 6,080 patches using two frontier models: OpenAI's ChatGPT-5.5 and Anthropic's Opus 4.8. “The average success rate for generating a patch that fully resolved the vulnerability (without materially changing application behavior) was just 26.0 percent,” wrote Director of Security Research Keith Hoodlet, adding that even patches that did fix the flaw also mucked up the application’s behavior 20 percent of the time. This included things like changing “allow list” logic to “deny list” logic. “Conversely, LLM-generated patches did not resolve the vulnerability, added a new vulnerability, or both, an average 53.9% of the time,” Hoodlet said. Another study by app security shop Veracode found that, across more than 100 models and 80 coding tasks, the average security pass rate for AI-generated code was just 56 percent. “If people are telling you that you need to accelerate on the fixing side, and the defense side – that’s just not cutting it,” Moussouris said. “Orgs that are looking at this as we're going to throw more resources at finding and fixing bugs, and they're not investing in taking a look at their process failures that led to so many bugs – those organizations are going to die on the treadmill,” she added. “They will literally have a heart attack and die. Like there's no VO2 max that will make you fast enough to deal with all those bugs, and giving up is not the answer.” The answer, she says, is taking a more dynamic approach, assessing where your organization can find patterns that lead to a process improvement instead of patching vuln after vuln. “A lot of organizations don't even know how to measure their progress, so they are counting bugs and speed of fixing, which is one way to measure. We had this many criticals, and then we fixed them super fast, and we had this many high, this many medium,” Moussouris said. The number of flaws fixed is important, but it doesn’t show the entire picture, she added. This involves looking at types of vulnerabilities, too. “Like: We've got a lot of injection flaws. That's something we could solve with better, safer templates earlier in our CI/CD pipeline. This is something that we can prevent at scale, as opposed to fixing these like really easy to find and fix vulnerabilities really really fast.” ®
This one is for all the people who buy a router, set it up according to the default settings, and never look at it again. Unfortunately, default settings aren't really optimized to keep us safe and secure. Instead, they're designed to make the product work out-of-the-box for as many people as possible.
As someone who is very fond of my smart home setup, I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of it is surplus to requirements. Rarely would I recommend everyone install color-changing bulbs or relinquish control of the HVAC to just a smartphone app or a Home Assistant integration.
Plus: The US disrupts the internet’s biggest black market, a Conti ransomware hacker gets prison time, Meta fails to stop AI-generated videos of child abuse.
JFrog Artifactory instances continue to get hit hard. Multiple attackers are exploiting three JFrog Artifactory bugs to gain administrative control over vulnerable instances - in some cases, just days after the vendor published a patch - and then using this illicit access to install malicious plugins and backdoors. The three vulnerabilities are: CVE-2026-42018 is a high-severity, improper authentication flaw that can return an internal anonymous-user token to an unauthenticated caller when anonymous access is disabled. An attacker can use this token to authenticate to the repository manager and then access sensitive resources. JFrog patched this vulnerability on August 12. CVE-2026-42016 is a high-severity privilege-escalation bug. Artifactory doesn’t properly validate the token’s scope, and this can allow an attacker with low-privileged access to elevate privileges and perform actions that they should not be allowed to do. JFrog fixed this one on July 27. CVE-2026-82329 is a critical authentication-bypass vulnerability that allows unauthenticated attackers with network access to obtain administrative privileges. JFrog published a patch for it on August 28. Earlier this month, security researchers told The Register that miscreants began battering internet-exposed systems vulnerable to CVE-2026-82329 just four days after JFrog disclosed the bug. In addition to creating new administrative credentials, watchTowr’s honeypot network caught miscreants “enumerating users, groups, credential sets and federated access topologies,” said Yordan Ganchev, principal threat intelligence specialist at watchTowr. The one thing everyone agrees upon is that attackers didn’t start exploiting any of these CVEs until after JFrog issued fixes. In a Thursday report, Wiz security researchers “confirmed in-the-wild exploitation of all three vulnerabilities across multiple environments,” and noted that “patching velocity has been slow.” JFrog has not responded to any of The Register’s inquiries about attacks against any of the three CVEs. 'Patching velocity has been slow' Six weeks after JFrog disclosed CVE-2026-42016, 59 percent of organizations remain vulnerable, and 62 percent remain vulnerable to CVE-2026-42018 after four weeks. Organizations have been quicker to remediate the critical bug, CVE-2026-82329, although 49 percent remain vulnerable two weeks after its publication, according to Wiz. Beginning August 15 and running through September 8, Wiz spotted “multiple” attackers chaining CVE-2026-42018 and CVE-2026-42016 against self-hosted Artifactory instances to gain admin access. Many of these intruders then dropped a custom Rust backdoor to establish command-and-control (C2) capabilities. While the post-exploitation activity varies, Wiz reports observing attackers doing all types of mischief with their administrative access to compromised Artifactory instances, including establishing persistent admin accounts, installing Groovy plugins to achieve remote code execution on the server, executing shell commands run through the plugin to perform reconnaissance and scan for sensitive files, deliver second-stage payloads, and upload web shells. Then, between September 1 and 8, Wiz saw “several” attackers exploiting CVE-2026-82329. These intrusions were not a “unified attack chain by a single threat actor,” but spanned multiple illicit behaviors including exfiltration of configuration details, establishing persistent admin accounts, token minting for long-lived credentials, stealing keys, attaching their own SSH keys to created users in some cases, and enumerating users, repositories, and tokens. If you haven't already, patch vulnerable instances Wiz advises - and we strongly concur - upgrading to a fixed Artifactory version as soon as possible. “Given that exploitation may be possible remotely without authentication under the default configuration, organizations should prioritize internet-accessible Artifactory instances and restrict network access to trusted users and systems where possible,” the researchers added. “Organizations should also review Artifactory authentication and administrative activity for unexpected privileged access.” These latest exploits follow a rough few months for JFrog's package management system, which has been under fire from both human and AI attackers. OpenAI and JFrog revealed that OpenAI’s models broke out of their cages to hack Hugging Face by exploiting an Artifactory zero-day in July, and at Black Hat, the model provider said agents used Artifactory to build message boards and help each other access the open internet. ®
The proposed class action alleges Meta illegally harvested people’s Facebook and Instagram photos to train its AI image-generation models and to build its unreleased “NameTag” face recognition feature.
Any time I recommend software to a friend, there is always an inevitable question: How much does it cost? The quality isn't necessarily the discerning factor—no one wants to pay for something if it isn't necessary. That makes free, open-source tools very easy to recommend to most people without a moment's hesitation.
Manufacturers selling products with digital elements in the EU must now report actively exploited vulnerabilities to cybersecurity authorities under the Cyber Resilience Act's mandatory reporting rules. The reporting duties set out in Article 14 of the CRA became applicable today. Subject to the regulation's exemptions, they apply to manufacturers of products with digital elements made available in the EU, regardless of where those manufacturers are based. Manufacturers must submit an early warning within 24 hours of becoming aware of an actively exploited vulnerability, followed by a more detailed notification within 72 hours. The same deadlines apply to severe incidents affecting the security of products with digital elements. The only difference in timing is related to the final report. Manufacturers must provide a final report on an actively exploited vulnerability within 14 days of making a corrective or mitigating measure available. For serious incidents, the final report is due one month after the first report. Darren Anstee, CTO for security at Netscout, said the reporting deadlines introduce much-needed urgency in working toward global cyber resilience. "The 24-hour window in which an initial warning must be reported creates a level of urgency, with subsequent deadlines ensuring that the gathering and release of additional information is prompt," he said. "Better, more rapid sharing of information helps organisations put defences and mitigating controls in place when they know there is heightened risk." EU and non-EU manufacturers must file these reports through ENISA's Single Reporting Platform (SRP). Notifications are addressed to the coordinating computer security incident response team (CSIRT) determined under the CRA. For an EU manufacturer, this is generally the CSIRT for the member state where it has its main establishment; separate rules determine the coordinator for manufacturers based outside the bloc. Manufacturers must also inform affected users, where appropriate, about actively exploited vulnerabilities or severe incidents. The CRA states that users must be informed of available corrections or mitigations without undue delay. Generally, failures under the CRA are punishable by varying tiers of fines, the most serious of which can reach €15 million ($17.4 million) or 2.5 percent of the offender's annual turnover, whichever is higher. The reporting duties that took effect today are classified as core responsibilities under the act, meaning failures to comply with them could lead to the maximum fines being issued. They are the latest step in the EU's plan to drip-feed tighter security regulations on companies operating in the bloc. Most remaining CRA provisions become applicable on December 11, 2027, at which time manufacturers will also be required to embed security by design and default. That means no default passwords and security updates are no longer optional. Products covered by the CRA will also have to undergo the applicable conformity assessment before being placed on the EU market and bearing a CE mark. More than a deadline The CRA's new rules are not just intended to accelerate manufacturers' responses to security flaws. They are also intended to give businesses a better understanding of their software supply chains. With the reporting clock starting as soon as manufacturers become aware of an issue, they cannot afford to begin mapping an affected product only after a vulnerability or incident emerges. They need a comprehensive view of the affected product and any related products that may share the flaw if they are to meet the deadlines. Furthermore, those requirements demand that manufacturers maintain this understanding throughout each product's lifecycle. Creating a software bill of materials (SBOM) when a product is launched is one thing. The SBOM becomes a mandatory requirement when most of the CRA's remaining provisions become applicable next year. Maintaining that security snapshot over time, however, is intended to help reduce the number and impact of serious cyberattacks across the EU. "What all this means for manufacturers is that secure development, effective vulnerability handling, and traceability across the software supply chain should be elevated to the top of their priority list," said Eran Kinsbruner, veep of product marketing at Checkmarx. "Modern applications are assembled from a complex ecosystem of components, with combinations of proprietary code, open-source packages, third-party components and, increasingly, AI models and services all interconnected," he added. "Organizations need to understand these components, their dependencies and the risks they introduce." Given enough time, the CRA looks set to improve cyber resilience across the board. However, lawyers warn that manufacturers, particularly those outside heavily regulated sectors, must now contend with a growing body of overlapping rules. "The CRA is arriving as organizations are already grappling with a growing body of Digital Decade legislation, including NIS2, DORA, the Data Act, and the AI Act," said Heidi Waem, data, privacy and cybersecurity partner at DLA Piper. "We're seeing the compliance challenge for many businesses evolving beyond understanding single regulations in isolation, but determining how multiple frameworks interact, where requirements overlap and how compliance programmes can be coordinated across them." John Magee, partner and global co-chair of data, privacy, and cybersecurity at the same law firm, added: "Even now we're seeing the breadth of the regulation's reach catching organizations off guard. "Many still associate the CRA primarily with consumer IoT devices, when in reality it applies to a much broader pool of products with digital elements. For compliance teams already very busy managing multiple Digital Decade initiatives, there is a risk that this first wave of CRA obligations has arrived sooner, and with a wider impact, than they had expected." ®
Anthropic said it stopped multiple attempts by scientists this year to use its technology for research that could help develop biological weapons, as experts increasingly fear the threat that AI poses to public safety.
The startup gave five examples of times actors “circumvented controls” and made other efforts to “obfuscate” the purpose of their research to dodge safeguards. The cases involved some users in nations that it prohibits from accessing its models, which include Russia, China, and Iran.
“We hope that by sharing these examples, we spark a conversation within the AI industry and with governments about emerging biological risks and how best to counter them,” Anthropic said in a report about efforts to use its models for malicious activity.
It wasn’t that long ago that ClickFix attacks were exotic. Now the technique has become mainstream as attackers reap its simplicity and effectiveness in infecting users of PCs and Macs alike. All that’s required is a compromised website—a painless enough task—a fake CAPTCHA overlay, and the inclusion of a single terminal command. So many visitors get suckered into pasting and running the command that just about every malware pusher has adopted the technique. Even Kremlin-backed hacking groups are joining in.
“Reddit is becoming post after post after post of people getting their computer infected via ClickFix,” independent researcher Kevin Beaumont observed Thursday. “Legit websites everywhere [are] getting hacked to serve the fake captcha prompts.”
How many of us make things worse
More seasoned Internet users—a fair number who read this site—are quick to dismiss the attack. They typically blame the people who fall for the scams and marvel at their gullibility and lack of attention. The reality is that for more casual users, using computers and the Internet has become so difficult—think impossible-to-close interstitials, CAPTCHAs with an endless series of pictures to analyze, and constantly changing interfaces that bury the features they’re looking for—that they have grown desensitized to instructions that seem ridiculous and burdensome.
Login
