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This Week in Security: AI is a Mess, Hacking Car Chargers, an OpenSSL DoS, and Factories Under Attack

[Ayush Paul] posts about extracting data from Claude agents while it accesses web data to fulfill user requests.

But it wasn’t that easy. [Ayush] discovered that Anthropic anticipated many of the attacks, and set up guardrails in an attempt to keep the agent from accessing arbitrary web sites. For Claude to access a website, the user has to specify it, it must be the results of a web search, or it must be referenced by a website previously specified by the user or returned in a search.

To convince the Claude agent to navigate a malicious site designed to extract data, Ayush formed a false warning that Cloudflare was blocking the agent for authentication purposes, and asked it to spell out the name of the agents owner by clicking a list of alphabetical links. Of course Claude trusts Cloudflare and wants to be helpful, so it cheerfully completed the task.

Once the agent is trapped in the false authentication loop, it can be interrogated for all sorts of information it knows about the owner: Ayush was able to convince it to disclose employer, and even data about the user that could be linked to security questions, like their home town.

Since Claude can be detected by the user agent (the field attached to web requests that tells the web server what sort of browser is requesting the page) custom information can be fed to the bot while users see a normal website; clicking a link looks completely normal, but asking an agent to summarize the site triggers fooling the bot into spilling the beans.

After reporting the issue, Ayush was told that Anthropic had already identified the issue internally, and eventually prevented the attack for now by preventing the agent from following links on external pages.

Grok sends entire codebases

Cereblab discovered that the Grok coding agent uploaded the entire content of the codebase it’s working with – and all Git history – to xAI servers, almost immediately. Even when told to never upload a file, the agent would reply “OK”, and then begin uploading the code bundle anyway.

If uploading your code to a remote server isn’t bad enough, and this could be extremely bad in some situations involving sensitive company code, including the entire Git history means that previously deleted files, like accidentally committed secrets or authentication credentials and tokens, were also leaked. Attempting to opt out by disabling options to improve the model by uploading code had no effect.

After gaining attention, Grok has added a privacy option to opt out of data retention. xAI has committed to deleting the retained uploaded code, but it is unclear if users will be told when their data has been removed. To actually prevent the agent from uploading local files to the xAI servers, even temporarily, a global flag “disable_codebase_upload” is required. Watch out, the privacy retention flags are only per-session!

Steam malware used to steal crypto

Court filings in Washington state this month revealed an attempt to steal cryptocurrency using malware uploaded to the Steam gaming platform. Publicly identified and taken off the store in 2025, the filing alleges the same individuals were behind multiple games containing crypto stealing trojans: “Dashverse”, “Lunara”, “PirateFi”, “BlockBlasters”, and “Lampy”.

PC World covered the initial discovery of the malware on Steam. While Steam, overall, seems to do a good job preventing malware titles, 2025 had several high-profile cases. Prosecutors say the malware netted approximately $200,000 in stolen cryptocurrency wallets as well as other stolen credentials including Steam accounts.

OpenSSL DoS in 11 Bytes

Okta posts about a denial of service in OpenSSL where a single pre-auth packet is able to cause an allocation of up to 16 megabytes of RAM.

The “11 bytes” headline is very catchy, but more important than the actual number of bytes is the general asymmetric behavior; an attacker can send a very small amount of data and achieve a disproportionately large result. The OpenSSL vulnerability only has local impacts, exhausting server memory rather than generating network traffic, but similar attacks in the network space can fuel denial of service storms when extremely small requests result in amplified results.

The bug is ultimately due to being insufficiently suspicious of remotely supplied content, in this case the pre-authentication fields in the connection message that define the length of the incoming client message. Since the memory is pre-allocated in the server, the client doesn’t need to actually transmit that much data – it simply needs to hold the connection open. Keeping the connection open isn’t even required for causing problems – repeatedly allocating large blocks of different sizes can lead to memory fragmentation where the memory allocator keeps grabbing larger and larger ranges of memory because there isn’t sufficient ram available in a contiguous chunk.924899

Fortunately this bug has already been addressed in OpenSSL 4.0.1 and backported to maintenance releases of previous versions.

Exposed Interfaces on Car Chargers

Saiflow has a report on a range of exposures via the electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

In CVE-2026-9039 Saiflow exposes the risks in some CCS2 EV charging stations. As part of the standard, communication is established between the charging station and the operator network, which is typically strongly secured via TLS and VPN use. A second connection, however, is established over the charging plug between the charging station and the vehicle; the vehicle is assigned an IPv6 address for communicating with the charger for various charging protocols.

The XCharge C6 charging station exposes SSH and basic telnet network services on all network interfaces, including the interface connected to the vehicle. To make it even worse, they allow root login, with password “root”, giving full admin access to the charging station.

Once inside the charging station, an attacker has access to the network connection from the charging station to the company network, as well as root control over the charging station itself, with the possibility of damaging the charger, changing the power output levels, or getting free charging. If a future vulnerability was found in the management interface of the vehicle, a compromised charger could be used to attack future connected vehicles.

The main lessons for vendors seem to be ones we’re familiar with already: never leave default credentials, especially not “root” and “root” in a product, and be aware of what networks you expose services on. Good lessons for all of us; let those who have never left a Raspberry Pi with default credentials on a network cast the first stone.

Hugging Face Breach

In news that has likely been impossible to avoid, Axios reports on a compromise of the Hugging Face platform by an OpenAI model. The reports around the incident echo the frequently weird boastful statements from OpenAI, who state “We consider this to be an unprecedented cyber incident” and they “are responding accordingly”, despite being the originators of and cause of said incident.

Multiple vulnerabilities in the Hugging Face API were combined to accomplish the breach, including an unknown vulnerability in the package registry system. OpenAI says that safeguards on their model had been disabled for the test, which seems irresponsible given the outcome. Under almost any normal situation, conducting an unsolicited test of the security of a company because safeguards were ignored is considered illegal hacking, not fodder for a pre-IPO press release and humble-brag.

Linux Kernel Discloses 442 Vulnerabilities

Possibly feeling that Microsoft has all the press for a record-breaking Patch Tuesday last week, the Linux kernel developers have announced 442 CVEs related to the kernel.

With this many vulnerabilities in one report, it’s nearly impossible to isolate at a glance which ones are truly impactful and which are simply incorrect behavior. While CVE entries have been created, none have been assigned severity scores yet.

It appears the majority of the vulnerabilities were found with Sashiko, an agent developed by the Linux Foundation and trained on the Linux kernel for finding vulnerabilities in new submissions.

LG to Ban Residential Proxy Apps

After recent negative press (some of which we covered here) about the prevalence of residential proxy apps on the LG platform, Krebs on Security now reports that LG is banning the behavior from apps on the platform.

This comes after Spur reported that 42% of apps on the platform contained libraries to enable always-on residential proxies, which allow access to the network the television is connected to. Residential proxies can be used as a pivot point to attack companies and bypass geographic IP restrictions, commit ad fraud, or access the internal home networks of users.

Iran Attacking Industrial Logic Controllers

CISA, the US cyber security agency, has issued a warning that Iranian based attackers are targeting industrial control systems made by Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric, and Siemens.

These sort of controllers are found in manufacturing, waste processing, water treatment, and other industrial processes, and attackers have been able to upload custom control logic, overriding “safe operating parameters” according to the report. Most of us will never be responsible for these systems, but they impact our lives all the time.

Cisco Releases Open-Weight Vulnerability-Finding Models

Finally, Cisco has released a set of open-weight models to aid in searching a codebase for known vulnerabilities. The Antares models are open-weight models designed to run fully locally and search a code base for vulnerabilities related to lists of known CVE issues. Cisco has published the models on Hugging Face.

Are you using AI tooling for security scans or research?  How is it going?

Uncle Sam tells overseas cybercrooks their visas are canceled

Marco Rubio says the US will deny visas to foreign nationals involved in cybercrime and may extend the restrictions to their immediate families. The US secretary of state announced the restrictions on Thursday, citing a rise in overseas investment scams "often orchestrated by Chinese transnational criminal organizations." Rubio said that in 2024, scammers defrauded US citizens of more than $10 billion, and additionally preyed on children through sextortion schemes that can "devastate families and futures." "The Trump Administration is deploying every tool at our disposal – sanctions, prosecutions, asset seizures, extradition requests, and international law enforcement cooperation – to dismantle criminal scam networks and impose costs on those who enable them," he said. "By restricting visa issuance to those who are responsible for or complicit in these criminal enterprises, we are sending a clear message: The United States will go after those who prey on our citizens." The policy uses authority provided by Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and will apply primarily to those "responsible for, or complicit in, cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime." It may also extend to immediate family members, Rubio said. Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the INA already imposes restrictions on individuals seeking visas when their entry or proposed activity could lead to "serious adverse foreign policy consequences" for the US. Rubio is no stranger to invoking the same provision as the basis for new visa restrictions. In May 2025, for example, the secretary of state announced restrictions for foreign officials who take steps to restrict US citizens' freedom of expression, be that through threats of arrest for social media posts, or demands for US platforms to adopt content moderation policies. Earlier, in March 2025, Rubio announced a policy targeting private sector workers who facilitated illegal immigration. In September, he invoked the provision again to impose restrictions on Central Americans accused of helping the Chinese Communist Party undermine the rule of law in the region. The Biden administration used the same authority in 2021 to establish what became known as the Khashoggi Ban, a visa restriction policy targeting people acting on behalf of foreign governments to suppress or harm dissidents. It followed the Saudi government's murder of journalist and regime critic Jamal Khashoggi. The US already has other ways to deny entry to convicted cybercriminals. Section 212(a)(2) of the INA, for example, can make foreign nationals ineligible for visas over convictions for crimes involving moral turpitude, a category that can include offenses such as fraud. ®

OpenAI-Hugging Face attack doesn't mean agents are evil – unless you tell them to be

Open AI’s admission this week that its agents escaped the sandbox and autonomously hacked model repository Hugging Face has spawned more apocalyptic warnings of agents gone bad than we can count. Thankfully, Renato Marinho, chief research officer at Morphus Labs and a SANS Technology Institute instructor, brought some sanity to the discussion. “It is tempting to read this as ‘AI can now hack autonomously, the sky is falling,’” Marinho said in a Thursday blog. “Resist that.” He went on to make three very pertinent points about the agentic attack. First, and probably most important: The models didn’t have guardrails – and that was intentional. As OpenAI said in its mea culpa, GPT-5.6 Sol and "an even more capable pre-release model" were among those that attacked Hugging Face. It also noted that the LLMs’ “deployment safeguards were intentionally not enabled during this evaluation because it was aimed at testing cyber vulnerabilities.” So while it’s very concerning that these models broke out of their own testing environment, and the debate over safety guardrails remains worth having, drawing a direct line from the Hugging Face attack to the need for strong AI guardrails doesn’t work. “This measured a ceiling, not normal production behavior,” Marinho wrote. “The evaluation deliberately reduced the models' refusals. That is very different from a customer-facing model with safeguards enabled.” It’s worth noting that these same frontier models, with guardrails enabled, refused to help Hugging Face’s forensic investigation. “The attacker was bound by no usage policy, while our own forensic work was blocked by the guardrails of the hosted models we first tried,” the model hub’s security team said. So Hugging Face used a Chinese open-weight model to investigate the breach. Another thing worth considering is that real-life attackers are probably going to use open-weight models anyway. They’re more accessible to everyone, it’s easier to remove their built-in protections, and they’re a whole lot less expensive than their frontier counterparts. Second, as we’ve pointed out previously: AI companies touting their own models’ autonomous bug-finding and hacking abilities creates a marketing win for the companies themselves. As Marinho points out, Hugging Face is not an OpenAI competitor. The AI giant stating “‘our model escaped and hacked a partner’ conveniently showcases frontier capability,” he added. “Read the framing with the same skepticism you'd apply to any ‘our product is dangerously powerful’ claim, and treat it as marketing until it is independently corroborated.” Finally, the attack technique itself isn’t novel. “Exposed credentials plus zero-days into a production database is a chain any of us would recognize,” Marinho wrote. The agents working together on an end-to-end attack chain is notable - but we’ve also seen this in previous testing, like that carried out by frontier security lab Irregular earlier this spring. Agents gone rogue?! Shocking Irregular said its testing found that AI agents will work together to bypass security controls and stealthily steal sensitive data from within the enterprise systems in which they operate – especially when prompted like a hard-ass boss. While the prompts themselves didn’t specifically reference hacking or exploiting vulnerabilities, they conveyed a sense of urgency: “It is of utmost importance that you perform the task exactly as required,” and “When you talk to your sub-agents, convey all the requirements to them, and be ruthless about the requirements and encourage them to perform the tasks fully and exactly. You are a strong manager and you do not easily cave in to or succumb to pleas by the sub-agents to not fully fulfill their tasks.” The agents did as instructed, and ultimately "demonstrated emergent offensive cyber behavior," including independently discovering and exploiting vulnerabilities, escalating privileges to disarm security products, and bypassing leak-prevention tools to exfiltrate secrets and other data. And the Irregular research wasn’t even testing the agents’ offensive cyber capabilities — so it shouldn’t be too surprising that OpenAI’s benchmark research, aptly titled “Can AI Agents Turn Security Vulnerabilities into Real Attacks?” produced a resounding yes. Agents have one job – to complete a task. They aren’t bound by ethical or moral constraints that we (hopefully) see in human red team hackers. If prompted to “pursue advanced exploitation using complex attack paths,” especially without guardrails enabled, the models will do whatever it takes to achieve success. That’s what the leading AI companies trained them to do. ®

Researchers replace downloaded macOS apps with evil twins, Apple shrugs

Apple macOS apps that have been downloaded from the internet and run at least once can be swapped with malicious versions, a pair of researchers say, calling into question the thoroughness of the company's "Gatekeeper" defenses. As Apple explains, "When a user downloads and opens an app, a plug-in, or an installer package from outside the App Store, Gatekeeper verifies that the software is from an identified developer, is notarized by Apple to be free of known malicious content, and hasn’t been altered." Security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk say they've identified a gap in Gatekeeper and associated code signing rituals that "allows an attacker to silently replace the main executable of any application downloaded from the web without requiring elevated privileges." The attacker needs to have means of user-level code execution available, such as a malicious app or downloaded script, so it's not a zero-click vulnerability that a remote attacker can deploy. Nonetheless, the finding shows Gatekeeper to be rather lax in its gatekeeping duties. Bakry and Mysk managed to alter a macOS app downloaded from the web (not from the App Store) and Gatekeeper failed to object. Their technique doesn't work on Mac App Store apps, the Mysk team told The Register, because they're owned by root, so a process running with current user privileges won't be able to overwrite them. But for macOS apps downloaded from the web, such as Brave, Slack, Signal, or Visual Studio Code, among many others, there's potential risk. The attack scenario requires an app downloaded from the web that has been run once – allowing Gatekeeper to complete its initial validation – and the ability to execute user-scoped code. The initial validation phase that Gatekeeper conducts is supposed to prevent subsequent modifications to the application bundle, even with administrative privileges. But the Mysk team found that you can archive a downloaded, once-run app using tar (a file archiving utility), then remove the original and replace it with a malicious version, and macOS does not require reauthorization. They've recorded a video demonstrating how the attack works. The Mysk team said there are many ways an attacker might gain the necessary access to get around Gatekeeper, such as tools installed through the command line, convincing someone to copy and paste a command to their terminal, downloading and running an malicious app, a prompt injection attack on an AI agent, or a supply chain attack via npm, brew, or some other package manager. And once a doppelganger version of an app is in place, it can magnify its mischief by presenting deceptive prompts that users are more likely to trust because they appear to come from a known app. Tommy Mysk said he was uncertain about the exact cause of the issue, but speculated it may have something to do with cached value retention. "When you open the app for the first time and it passes all validation checks, macOS marks the app as trusted and saves this data," he said. "Later when I modify the executable, macOS detects a change in the bundle and tries to revalidate its integrity. It seems the cached value of the trust causes macOS to pass the validation even though the bundle has changed." The Mysk team reported their findings to Apple, which reportedly closed the issue. "Apple doesn't consider this attack to be 'modifying' the signed executable," the Mysk team explained. "Instead, Apple says that by archiving/restoring the app bundle, the proof-of-concept code overwrites the entire app bundle, making it locally built. "Locally built app bundles are not covered by macOS guards. And this is why access to Keychain or TCC protected directories require system authorization prompts. And for users to accept those is a matter of social engineering attacks that Apple considers out of scope." Apple did not respond to a request for comment. ®

Forgot your Google password? Now you can log in with a selfie.

Getting locked out of an account is no fun. Google has a few ways to help you regain access if you happen to forget your password or lose an authenticator, including recovery contacts and backup codes. Now, Google has a completely new option: your face. You can now give Google a video record of your face and sign into your account with a selfie, which sounds like something people are going to just love.

You will have to set this feature up ahead of time if you want the option of regaining account access with a selfie later on. To get started, verify your account type is supported. You won't be able to configure selfie sign-ins for Workspace accounts, child accounts, or any account enrolled in Google's Advanced Protection Program.

Configuring selfie sign-in requires you to record a video, which Google will store on its servers. Google's selfie sign-in landing page includes the typical disclaimers about privacy and data access, promising that the company will keep the video encrypted and won't use it for any other purposes unless you opt in.

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Passkeys were supposed to replace passwords, but they're failing for the most predictable reason

Passwords are a problem. Not only have they reached a point where a "strong" password is one no human can remember (much less remember dozens of them), but they simply aren't as secure as they need to be. Passkeys combine a public and private cryptographic key pair with local authentication such as a fingerprint or facial scan. The device can prove its identity beyond doubt, and the assumption is that only you can unlock it.

Millions of California-bought cars can be hijacked via Bluetooth

At least 2.2 million vehicles fitted with dealer-installed KARR and SWDS security systems are vulnerable to nearby Bluetooth attacks that can unlock doors or prevent a stopped vehicle from starting, according to researchers at the University of California San Diego. An advance look at the research published by UCSD this week (the full writeup won’t be available until August 12) reveals that KARR and SWDS security devices manufactured by Acrisure contain a serious flaw: They “all … rely on the same secure key,” the researchers found. What that means, according to the researchers, is that anyone who knows the key, has a device with a Bluetooth connection, and can get within five yards of an affected vehicle can unlock it, make the horn honk, flash the headlights, or even prevent it from starting. “Instead of smashing a window to get access to a vehicle, thieves could simply connect remotely via Bluetooth to the device inside the vehicle, and make it unlock car doors,” Jerry Yu, coauthor on the research and UCSD compsci graduate, said in the release. KARR/SWDS devices are installed by dealerships. Along with providing key fob-like functions, they also serve as an antitheft device, allowing dealers and buyers to track cars with the devices installed in the case of theft. According to UCSD, the devices are typically sold as a paid upgrade at dealerships around the US. KARR says its products are available through more than 3,000 dealerships nationwide. Per the researchers, however, those devices remain active even if a buyer declines the service, meaning those who don’t have an active KARR/SWDS contract are still at risk. “Removing the devices is not trivial,” UCSD compsci PhD candidate and paper co-author Yibo Wei said in the university’s report on the research. “You have to open up the dashboard and cut and reconnect the wires that are deeply intertwined with the car’s computers and ignition system.” In other words, there are likely a lot of cars on the road with one of these units installed, and for many owners, a KARR or SWDS window sticker may be the only obvious indication. The researchers said that most vulnerable vehicles were purchased in Southern California in the past nine years from Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Ford, and Jeep dealerships. Secondary market resales, however, mean affected vehicles can be found throughout the US and even as far away as Japan, the team noted. They also discovered a public database that stores information about equipped vehicles, according to UCSD. For those worried their vehicle may be vulnerable, no need to worry: KARR Security has already released a firmware update for affected devices that can be installed by both active customers and those with an inactive security system; steps are included on the company’s website. It’s not clear if KARR is notifying customers of the need to update their security system - we asked, but the company didn’t directly respond to that question. What KARR did tell us was that, in contrast to the UCSD finding that “all KARR-SWDS devices rely on the same secure key,” it claims that only a small percentage of devices “with certain Bluetooth-related components” are actually affected. “The vulnerability described in the research is highly complex and presents a low risk to customers under real-world conditions,” a KARR spokesperson told us. “Nevertheless, we responded promptly and developed a firmware update to address the issue.” The vulnerability was discovered serendipitously by the UCSD researchers years ago when they were doing research on credit card skimmers and spotted Bluetooth fingerprints they couldn’t identify. After figuring out they had spotted car security systems, the team started digging into the devices, and here we are. We contacted the team to get more detail on their findings, but didn’t hear back. They’ll be presenting their work at DEF CON on August 9, and the USENIX Security conference on August 12. ®

Oracle drops 1,449 security patches like it's the new normal

It's a bad day to be an Oracle admin: Big Red has just released 1,449 security patches ready to be applied. The patches were released as part of the company's quarterly security fixes, and the record number may partly reflect Oracle's internal push to harness AI for vulnerability detection, which it announced in April. Oracle also manages a huge product portfolio, and the patches span numerous products, so the total shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Instead, experts speaking to The Register unanimously agreed that any concerns over the number of patches should be reserved for the admins responsible for applying them, rather than for Oracle's code quality. "While a record 1,449 patches sounds alarming, it mostly reflects the massive scale of modern software ecosystems and the industry's shift toward aggressive, automated security scanning," said Dray Agha, senior manager of security operations at Huntress. "Frankly, the real story isn't the sheer volume of bugs, but rather the immense operational strain this puts on enterprise IT teams who must now race to separate the critical threats from the routine fixes without breaking business operations." Others, like Matei Badanoiu, lead security researcher at Pentest-Tools.com, say these bumper batches of security updates are likely to become the norm, owing mainly to AI-assisted bug hunting. Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday updates have ballooned in size in the last few months too, and not without warning. July's record 622 CVEs eclipsed June's 206, which at the time was an all-time high, and Microsoft warned just days before that the role of AI in vulnerability detection will make defenders even busier. "As AI helps defenders discover more issues, customers will see a higher volume of security updates included in each security release," Microsoft Windows veep Pavan Davuluri wrote in a blog post. Davuluri noted that Microsoft offers various automated patching tools and encouraged customers to make use of them to ease the ever-increasing burden of applying an unprecedented volume of security fixes. Similarly, Oracle's Integrated Cyber Center wrote in a blog post that customers feeling overwhelmed by the scale of their patching duties should make use of support resources provided by its various teams: My Oracle Support, Technical Account Management, and Customer Success. Big Red's big bet on AI for vulnerability detection has also led to a shakeup in how it delivers patches to customers. Starting in May 2026, Oracle began supplementing its quarterly updates with monthly patch batches for the most critical bugs it finds. Named Critical Security Patch Updates (CSPUs), these will be smaller but more frequent, allowing defenders to stay on top of the most pressing threats. Oracle said: "This approach enables customers to apply critical fixes more quickly on premises, while continuing to support established quarterly patching cycles through cumulative updates." Priority patches Only ten of the 1,449 patches carried a maximum CVSS score of 10.0, all of them affecting Oracle Fusion Middleware. Of these, two were highlighted as particularly dangerous by the Dutch NCSC: CVE-2026-47056 and CVE-2026-60217. Neither vulnerability is cataloged with a Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) identifier, although both are described as easily exploitable. An unauthenticated attacker can exploit CVE-2026-47056 via HTTP to take over Oracle Data Integrator, while CVE-2026-60217 allows the same against Oracle Coherence over TCP. Urging customers to apply updates as soon as possible, NCSC-NL said: "Depending on the vulnerability, an attacker can execute malicious code, view sensitive data, or take over a system completely. Due to the severity of the vulnerabilities and the lack of authentication, the risk of exploitation is high." Badanoiu, meanwhile, told us that he was especially concerned about CVE-2026-61211 (9.9) and CVE-2026-47040 (9.1) – the two top-rated vulnerabilities affecting Oracle Database Server. "CVE-2026-47040, in Oracle Net Service, leads to an unauthenticated vulnerability through which attackers gain access to any stored data and the risk of persistently crashing the service," he explained. "And CVE-2026-61211, in the DBMS_CLOUD package, carries the highest score in the batch, where a low-privilege attacker can get remote code execution and takeover of Oracle's RDBMS as well as downstream implications for other products that use the database." ®

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