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. ®
We spoke with several cybersecurity researchers, who look for unknown vulnerabilities and develop tools to exploit them, about how OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s guardrails affect their work.
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. ®
Amanda Phelps, a strategic advisor of allied defense and intelligence at Coder, explains why software sovereignty is important to protect against cyber attacks.
Chick-fil-A disclosed a credential stuffing attack affecting customers across 10 states, underscoring the risks of password reuse and account takeover.
Security operations teams face a constant balancing act: stopping sophisticated email threats, maintaining visibility across their attack surface and keeping administrative workflows running smoothly. When security tools operate in silos or rely on rigid, manual processes, friction builds up quickly. This friction consumes valuable time that analysts could spend on higher-priority initiatives.
Chick-fil-A disclosed a credential stuffing attack affecting customers across 10 states, underscoring the risks of password reuse and account takeover.
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.
By reducing data at rest and limiting data movement outside governed environments, agencies can significantly reduce the consequences of device compromise.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researchers Jun Dai and Xiaoyan “Sherry” Sun are launching a three-year project, funded with a $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, that will train high school teachers across the country to teach quantum information science and cybersecurity to their students.
AegisAI co-founders developed AI agents that quickly analyze each message as a human would, paying attention to small anomalies that even the most elaborate checklist wouldn’t catch.
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.
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. ®
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