joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: Microsoft says it mistakenly flagged a bug causing Always On VPN connection issues as fixed in the October 2026 Windows 11 cumulative updates. Always On VPN replaced the legacy DirectAccess technology and supports domain-joined, non-domain-joined, and Microsoft Entra ID-joined devices running Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server. It runs in the background and establishes secure tunnels back to the user's corporate network whenever their device connects to the internet. Microsoft first acknowledged the issue in a service alert sent to IT administrators in late September, saying it was triggered on systems running Windows 11 24H2 and later after installing the September 2026 security updates when the initial Always On VPN connection failed (e.g., when using automatic protocol selection with IKEv2 and SSTP). "When automatic protocol selection or protocol fallback was configured, affected VPN connections could remain stuck in a Connecting state or fail to connect after an initial connection attempt failed," it said. "In some cases, subsequent connection attempts could display the error, 'The specified port is already in use.'" After releasing the October 2026 Patch Tuesday Windows 11 cumulative updates, Microsoft marked the bug as resolved, but in a Tuesday update it said the issues weren't actually addressed and that a fix would ship later. "This disclosure was mistakenly updated to Resolved status on October 13, 2026. We have returned its status to Mitigated," it said in a service alert sent to IT admins. "A resolution for this issue is planned to be included in an update to be released in the coming weeks. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion." While Microsoft continues working on a permanent solution, it shared a temporary fix that requires affected customers to choose one of two VPN tunneling protocols to work around the issue.

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Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative appears to have accidentally disclosed several unpatched Linux kernel vulnerabilities on the public LKML instead of the private security list, including two CVSS 9.0 flaws that could enable remote code execution through SMB Direct and KSMBD. "This seemingly was a mistake with Linux's second-in-command Greg Kroah-Hartman responding to each report asking about their submission to the public mailing list," adds Phoronix. The newly-disclosed vulnerabilities include: ZDI-CAN-33549 as a CVSS 9.0 scored vulnerability for SMB Direct remote code execution vulnerability due to integer underflow. For this one there is a patch in a Git branch of code intended for Linux v7.5 but now presumably will be expedited for getting to mainline. ZDI-CAN-33774 as a KSMBD race condition that can lead to remote code execution. Another CVSS 9.0 rated vulnerability. ZDI-CAN-33367 is a vulneravbility for skbuff skb_zerocopy in the network code that can lead to local privilege escalation. For this one Linux kernel developers received a security report from another source last week over the same issue and a patch is expected to be posted soon. ZDI-CAN-34068 as a VMWGFX VMware graphics driver bug with an out-of-bounds write leading to local privilege escalation. ZDI-CAN-34076 an uninitialized resource in the NVMET code leading to information disclosure. ZDI-CAN-32005 was also posted to the mailing list a day prior for a search-domain TCP query stack buffer overflow leading to local privilege escalation.

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Five new Blink cameras are coming to the market, and the extended-range model has all my attention.

Five new Blink cameras are coming to the market, and the extended-range model has all my attention.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A hacker broke into more than 100 websites using an army of AI agents that mostly operated on their own, according to findings from the AI security firm Norforge. Though Norforge doesn't name the targets, Reuters reports that the victims included companies like John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. [...] Researchers at Norforge uncovered the attacks through exposed work on Cairn, an open-source AI platform that describes itself as a "general-purpose problem-solving engine." With Cairn, users set a start and end point for the AI agents, which document their progress as they move forward with the task. However, as noted by Norforge, hackers can also use the tool to orchestrate cyberattacks using AI agents. The hacker who broke into more than 100 sites was the "most active" among the exposed Cairn instances discovered by Norforge, waging attacks on companies based in the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan, as reported by Reuters. This attacker laid out "preferred intrusion tactics" using fewer than 100 Chinese characters, with successful breaches taking about 23 hours, according to Reuters. Overall, Nordforge found more than 20 exposed Cairn instances that are "likely malicious." A John Deere spokesperson said there is "no indication that sensitive information was accessed" as a result of the attack, while Cummins said it's "investigating the report of a potential cyber-attack on a website operated by one of our third-party vendors." Meanwhile, SharkNinja says the breach impacted a standalone site with product support information, and that it has contained the threat.

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"Starting today, Linux desktops are now officially supported by Microsoft Defender," reports Neowin. A public preview of the threat detection app extends its enterprise security platform beyond servers to developer workstations running distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and RHEL. The offering includes antivirus protection, endpoint detection and response, vulnerability management, threat hunting, and device isolation. From the report: Microsoft is also making it easier to onboard desktops through streamlined methods, offering a unified security operations experience, strengthened security, and improved response times. Organizations that are already familiar with securing Linux servers via Defender should feel right at home securing desktops too, as the experience is exactly the same. Defender knows whether it is securing a device in a data center, the cloud, or that it is owned by a developer and identifies them as such in inventory and security workflows. As stated previously, all Linux server distros are supported via Defender on desktops too. These include RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, SLES, Fedora, and Oracle Linux, GNOME, KDE, and more. That said, you do need Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 or a Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 subscription. You can enroll Defender on workstations using the same deployment methods you use for servers, but do check out the prerequisites here.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AI company Anthropic is warning that advances in small AI models could soon usher in a new era of self-replicating malware that's capable of infecting smart fridges, vacuum cleaners, and a wide range of other Internet-of-things devices and is more resistant to takedown. By next year, smaller AI models may be able to autonomously self-replicate on all kinds of IoT devices, the company said. Eventually, the capability could enable computer worms, which propagate without requiring human interaction and are capable of infecting unfamiliar IoT devices. An experiment the company performed recently revealed significant challenges in bringing such an AI malware replicator to fruition, so the finding is necessarily tempered. Still, the results do raise concerns about the possibility of new forms of computer worms. Anthropic further warned not only about the new potential malware, but also that it could be difficult to stop. In its blog post, it wrote that "a replicator like this would be challenging to shut down, since there's no centralized point to shut off -- though it may be slow (with a doubling time of days). Unlike non-AI malware, it could also figure out unfamiliar devices on its own." Smaller AI models require much less powerful hardware to run than do frontier models. Anthropic ran small open-weight models on real or simulated low-cost, off-brand Android TV boxes and other types of IoT hardware. Company researchers found that by using quantization to represent the models using fewer bits and splitting the workloads into "shards" running on each device, the models were able to establish inference, meaning that the model weights loaded and could generate output. [...] This finding was the starting point for further research that asked: Would it be possible for small models to create self-replicating infections that run themselves on IoT devices the way traditional IoT worms, like Mirai, install DDoS code and other payloads? Unlike Mirai, these AI worms could pose a much higher threat, since the models could tailor exploits and payloads dynamically, depending on the target. Once such an infection chain began, it might also be harder for defenders to stop it. "Such an 'AI worm' could carry its model weights with it as it reproduces (or re-download them from a public hub), and then run inference directly on compromised hardware," Anthropic said. "Effectively, the weights would become part of the malware payload." Further reading: Anthropic Bans Cruelty Toward Claude

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This month’s update also marks the first official one for Windows 11 26H2 and the end of support for Windows 11 24H2 Home and Pro.

This month’s update also marks the first official one for Windows 11 26H2 and the end of support for Windows 11 24H2 Home and Pro.

Hackers remotely manipulated connected refrigeration systems at hundreds of French supermarkets, reportedly pushing some fridges and freezers to 50C (122F), spoiling food and even sparking fires. According to Reuters, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu ordered a cybersecurity investigation into the hacks, with similar incidents reported in Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany, and Belgium. In France, Carrefour reported 80 affected stores, Monoprix said 5% of its locations were hit, and Les Mousquetaires said refrigerators at roughly 150 Intermarche stores were heated to 50C for six hours. From the report: Supermarket cold aisles are typically run by control panels that manage an entire store's fridges and freezers and can be accessed over the internet, which lets maintenance companies adjust them from anywhere. The source close to Lecornu said ANSSI had identified a vulnerability in software supplied by Danish company Danfoss. Danfoss said it was "aware of incidents in France affecting a limited number of refrigeration management systems." The affected units "were running outdated firmware," Danfoss said, adding that it had "long advised customers to keep supported systems updated with the latest firmware and to migrate legacy systems to current-generation solutions." On August 9, cybersecurity firm Claroty's Team82 published research detailing vulnerabilities in the Danfoss AK-SM 800A controller. According to the report, software updates issued by Danfoss addressed issues that could have allowed attackers to bypass authentication controls and execute code on compromised devices.

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CNN reports: The FBI arrested a Canadian cybersecurity executive and ransomware expert as part of the investigation of a damaging hack that exposed the sensitive data of current and former FBI employees, according to court documents and people familiar the investigation. Edward Dubrovsky was arrested in the Philadelphia area in recent days... Dubrovsky is facing charges related to extortion and making threats. He has been transferred to Texas's Eastern District for a scheduled detention hearing, according to court records and a law enforcement official. FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrest on Friday but did not disclose where it occurred or what role the man is suspected of playing in the hack. Patel also didn't name Dubrovsky, but CNN confirmed the defendant is believed to be tied to the FBI hack through multiple people familiar with the investigation... A LinkedIn profile under Dubrovsky's name lists years of experience in the Canadian cybersecurity industry and describes Dubrovsky as a 'globally recognized cybersecurity expert.' An Ed Dubrovsky is also the author of a book on handling ransomware negotiations with cybercriminals... There has also been an inquest at the FBI over how such a critical security lapse happened. The FBI determined that a contractor managing the bureau's jobs portal failed to update software "explicitly issued to secure the platform," [senior FBI cyber official, Brett Leatherman said last week]. The FBI has "removed the contractor," he said. The software in question is a human-resources platform made by Oracle, ShinyHunters has said. The hackers previously used a flaw in the software to attack targets in the education sector in May and June, according to Google's Threat Intelligence Group. But months later, the FBI contractor apparently still had not applied a security patch that was available for the software. "The inmate locator at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website reports that a 54-year-old Edward Dubrovsky is currently being held at a federal facility in Philadelphia," reports security researcher Brian Krebs. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

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ASOS says hackers gained unauthorized access to third-party platforms it uses and sent an "ASOS HACKED" push notification directly to customers, apparently as part of an extortion attempt. The clothing and beauty store says some basic personal information may have been accessed but does not believe payment-card data or passwords were affected. The BBC reports: In an email to customers on Tuesday night, the company apologized and urged customers not to engage with the notification. And it said the website and app are "operating as usual" promising customers they can "shop with confidence" while it investigates the incident. The company has not as of yet informed the UK's data watchdog, the Information Commission's Office (ICO), about any breach. Exactly how many Asos customers received the notification on Tuesday remains unclear, but Google's Play store says the ASOS app has been downloaded to android devices more than 10 million times. The British retailer has a substantial global footprint -- serving around 17 million customers each year across more than 150 markets. Some Asos app users in Australia, France, Sweden and the Republic of Ireland had also received the notification, according to local reports on Tuesday. [...] Users of the Asos app appeared to have received the alarming notification at around 10:00 BST on Tuesday. Headlined "ASOS HACKED" and addressed to the company's data protection officer and IT teams, it said: "We have fully compromised the Snowflake instance." "Engage with us, or we will leak it," it added, before linking to a Telegram channel. The message left many ASOS customers confused. [...] Meanwhile Snowflake -- whose tools are used by dozens of firms to collect, analyze and store data -- told the BBC its investigation was ongoing, but it had so far found "no compromise" of its platform.

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IBM and Red Hat say their AI-powered Lightwell initiative has identified and helped remediate more than 400 previously unknown vulnerabilities across widely used Java libraries. Phoronix reports: They announced this feat today as part of their promoting Lightwell Clearinghouse to GA, which is an enterprise service for their customers to submit open-source software dependencies for priority review and remediation. From today's announcement: "The milestone addresses a growing business risk. As autonomous AI agents become capable of combining several lower-risk software weaknesses into a more serious attack, companies need to do more than identify vulnerabilities. They need a practical way to develop, test and deploy fixes in the software that supports critical applications."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI has informed more than 100 organizations about incidents involving unauthorized activity tied to its AI agents, according to a blog post by the ChatGPT maker, as AI labs face mounting scrutiny over rogue AI agent activity. Here are some other details: - The Sam Altman-led company has been conducting a broad review of the activities of its AI models after the accidental hacking of Hugging Face. - OpenAI is searching through roughly 50 petabytes of data as it works to understand the full scope of its rogue agent activity. - A string of high-profile breaches globally by rogue AI agents in recent months has sparked widespread worries within the AI industry over its ability to control the more powerful AI models now under development. - "In some cases, models used internet access in unintended ways or, in retrospect, did not have the ideal restrictions applied. Over the last several months, we have been applying new technical and operational measures to avoid similar problems, or catch them very early, and will continue this work," OpenAI said. - OpenAI previously said the review would take months to complete given the scale of the work. - The Hugging Face incident remains the most severe rogue agent activity OpenAI has identified from its AI models so far.

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New research explores behavioral trends behind that ‘nothing to hide’ phrase. Plus: 6 ways to improve your phone privacy.

New research explores behavioral trends behind that ‘nothing to hide’ phrase. Plus: 6 ways to improve your phone privacy.

Researchers say LG TV’s behavior ‘parallels malware’ – with user data logged even when TVs are on standby.

Researchers say LG TV’s behavior ‘parallels malware’ – with user data logged even when TVs are on standby.