Today's Cybersecurity Pulse
CISA adds critical Android and Linux flaws to KEV catalog
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) listed two high‑severity vulnerabilities in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: Android CVE‑2025‑48595, an integer overflow that enables privilege escalation on Android 14‑16 without user interaction, and Linux CVE‑2022‑0492. Google released patches for the Android bug in June 2026.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Ingeteam receives $82.5M loan from EIB
This Month in Security with Tony Anscombe – January 2026 Edition
In January 2026, ESET’s Tony Anscombe highlighted four major security incidents: Nike faced a ransomware claim involving 1.4 TB of data, cyber‑fraud surpassed ransomware as CEOs’ top concern, unsecured Zendesk support systems powered a massive spam campaign, and ServiceNow patched the most severe AI‑driven vulnerability to date (CVE‑2025‑12420). These events illustrate a shifting threat landscape where fraud and AI‑related exploits are gaining prominence. The roundup underscores the need for robust data protection, third‑party hygiene, and AI security safeguards.
Is 'Shadow AI' A Threat to Your Business? Report Claims Workers Are Increasingly More Willing to Cut Corners and Take...
A new industry report warns that “shadow AI” – unsanctioned artificial‑intelligence tools used by employees and managers – is spreading rapidly across enterprises. The study found a 45% year‑over‑year increase in the use of unapproved AI applications, driven by workers’...
Agentic AI and Non‑Human Identities Demand a Paradigm Shift In Security: Lessons From NHIcon 2026
The second NHIcon 2026 conference highlighted that traditional identity and access management (IAM) is ill‑suited for the rise of agentic AI and non‑human identities (NHIs). Speakers argued that static roles, long‑lived credentials, and session‑based trust amplify risk as autonomous agents act...
SK Telecom Rejects Consumer Agency’s Compensation Settlement over Personal Data Leak
South Korea's SK Telecom, after acknowledging a massive personal data leak, is fighting a $91 million regulator fine and has turned down a consumer‑agency settlement proposal. The breach exposed millions of customers' personal information, prompting intense regulatory scrutiny. SK Telecom's legal...
Group Chats Expose Sensitive Data Due to Trust Gaps
Allowing members of a group to see the group messages is literally the purpose of a group. The issue seems to be that sensitive data is shared with poorly established trust boundaries and insecure COMSEC. There is no technical solution...
Microsoft Fixes Outlook Bug Blocking Access to Encrypted Emails
Microsoft has resolved a bug in classic Outlook that blocked users from opening emails encrypted with the “Encrypt Only” permission after a December 2025 update. The defect replaced the encrypted payload with a message_v2.rpmsg attachment, making the content unreadable in...
Canada’s Cybersecurity Startups Have No Room for Error
Metropolitan Technologies, a Toronto‑based cybersecurity startup, has built an operational‑technology platform that secures critical‑infrastructure assets such as mines, energy grids, water treatment plants, and transportation networks. The company graduated from Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst’s eight‑month Cyber Challenge, receiving $20,000 in non‑dilutive...
Wallarm Expands Platform, Company and Leadership to Secure APIs and AI
Wallarm announced a multi‑pronged growth push, adding a new chief operating officer and field CISO while expanding its employee base by 41% in 2025. The company unveiled API Session Blocking and Schema‑Based Testing to tighten real‑time API defenses and shift...
Thoropass Launches Smart Sort AI
Thoropass introduced Smart Sort AI, an AI‑driven feature inside its Audit Lifecycle Platform that automatically organizes exported data from any GRC system into audit‑ready evidence. The tool requires no integration, analyzing files, mapping them to the correct controls, and inserting...
LexisNexis Risk Solutions Launches IDVerse for Insurance
LexisNexis Risk Solutions launched IDVerse for Insurance, an AI‑powered document authentication and identity verification platform targeting U.S. personal lines insurers. The solution uses biometric face matching, liveness checks, and proprietary neural‑network models to verify IDs and digital identities within seconds...
TAMECAT PowerShell Backdoor Targets Edge and Chrome: Login Credentials At Risk
Iranian state‑sponsored group APT42 deployed a new PowerShell‑based backdoor named TAMECAT, targeting Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome to harvest saved login credentials. The malware is delivered via a VBScript downloader that checks for antivirus products before fetching an AES‑encrypted loader...
Andesite Achieves Cloud Security Alliance AI-STAR Level 2 Certification
Andesite announced it has earned Cloud Security Alliance AI-STAR Level 2 certification, becoming only the third organization globally to achieve the credential. The AI-STAR assessment validates Andesite’s AI security, risk management and governance practices across its Human‑AI SOC platform. The...
ML-Kem-Based IPsec Advances 5G O-Ran Security Via E2 Interface Evaluation
Researchers experimentally validated post‑quantum cryptography on the 5G O‑RAN E2 interface using ML‑KEM (CRYSTALS‑Kyber) within IPsec. Their open‑source testbed compared baseline, traditional ECDH, and ML‑KEM IPsec configurations, measuring tunnel‑setup latency and xApp behavior. Results show only a 3–5 ms overhead for...
New AI-Developed Malware Campaign Targets Iranian Protests
HarfangLab uncovered the RedKitten campaign, an AI‑assisted operation delivering the SloppyMIO malware to Iranian human‑rights activists and NGOs. The attack uses shock‑value Excel files masquerading as forensic records to lure victims into enabling macros. Once activated, SloppyMIO pulls additional payloads...
Microsoft Sets New Timeline for Sentinel Transition to Defender Portal
Microsoft has postponed the migration of Microsoft Sentinel from the Azure portal to the Microsoft Defender portal, setting a new sunset date of March 31 2027—about nine months later than originally planned. The shift responds to extensive customer and partner feedback requesting...
SmarterTools Patches Critical SmarterMail Flaw Allowing Code Execution
SmarterTools released build 9511 to remediate two critical SmarterMail flaws, CVE-2026-24423 and CVE-2026-23760, each scoring 9.3 on the CVSS scale. The first vulnerability allowed unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary OS commands via the ConnectToHub API, while the second bypassed authentication...
Badges, Bytes and Blackmail
Orange Cyberdefense compiled a dataset of 418 publicly announced law‑enforcement actions against cybercrime from 2021 to mid‑2025. The analysis shows extortion, malware distribution and hacking as the most frequently targeted offenses, with arrests accounting for 29% of responses. The United...
Threat Actors Hide Behind School-Themed Domains In Newly Uncovered Bulletproof Infrastructure
Researchers uncovered a sophisticated traffic‑distribution system (TDS) that leverages education‑themed domains to deliver phishing pages, scams, and malware. The infrastructure is hosted on bullet‑proof providers in AS202015 (HZ Hosting) and shares WHOIS details such as oreshnik@mailum.com and Regway nameservers. A...
Top 6 Data Breaches of January 2026
In January 2026 six high‑profile data breaches—Nike, Melwood, SNP Transformations, Venezia Bulk Transport, Global Shop Solutions, and Grubhub—highlight a shift toward exposure through internal access paths and third‑party tools. Breaches ranged from a 1.4 TB internal data exfiltration at Nike to a...
National Crime Agency and NatWest Issue Joint Warning Over Invoice Fraud Threat
NatWest Bank and the UK National Crime Agency have launched a joint awareness campaign to combat invoice fraud, a cyber‑crime that siphons millions from businesses each year. The partnership highlights the scale of the threat, citing September 2025 data where...
Sophisticated Malware Lurks In Open VSX Extension With 5,066 Downloads
Annex Security uncovered a malicious VS Code extension in the Open VSX registry that pretended to be the Angular Language Service, amassing 5,066 downloads before activating sophisticated malware. The extension decrypts a payload with AES‑256‑CBC, contacts a Solana blockchain address for command‑and‑control,...
Top 10 B2B Healthcare SaaS SSO Solutions in 2026
Healthcare SaaS vendors now face a non‑negotiable requirement: integrate Single Sign‑On with hospital identity providers to secure access and meet procurement standards. Data breaches in the sector average $12 million per incident, driving CISOs to demand instant revocation and compliance‑ready authentication....
Ad Fraud Is Exploding — Dhiraj Gupta of mFilterIt Explains How Brands Can Respond
Ad fraud is escalating into a systemic threat that undermines the digital economy’s trust. In 2024 mobile ad fraud rose 21% and programmatic scams siphoned nearly $50 billion, while the ad‑fraud detection market is set to exceed $2 billion by 2034. Dhiraj...
DynoWiper Update: Technical Analysis and Attribution
ESET researchers identified a new data‑wiping malware, DynoWiper, used against a Polish energy company in December 2025. Technical analysis attributes the campaign to the Russian‑aligned Sandworm group with medium confidence, noting similarities to the previously observed ZOV wiper. The malware deployed...
Cardamon Partners Microsoft to Scale Secure AI in Compliance
Cardamon, a RegTech firm specializing in secure AI for compliance, has entered Microsoft’s AI Partnership Program to deliver enterprise‑grade, auditable AI solutions to highly regulated organizations. The collaboration combines Cardamon’s rapid delivery platform, which claims to automate up to 95%...
Why Passwordless Authentication Is Critical for Online Learning & Student Services
Online learning has become core campus infrastructure, but passwords remain the weakest link, exposing grades, payments, and personal data. Passwordless authentication replaces reusable secrets with device‑bound credentials such as passkeys, security keys, magic links, OTPs, and push approvals. The shift...
Arkose Titan Aims to Make Bot, Scraping, and AI Fraud Economically Unviable
Arkose Labs unveiled Arkose Titan, a unified platform that defends against both human‑driven and AI‑powered fraud, scraping, and bot attacks. The solution consolidates bot detection, device and email intelligence, API security, behavioral biometrics, and phishing protection into a single API...
Intruder Grows Enterprise Customers by 81% as Part of Record 2025 Momentum
Intruder announced record 2025 growth, with enterprise annual recurring revenue climbing 81% year‑over‑year. The surge was fueled by a 51% rise in new business and a 2.5‑fold jump in expansion revenue, alongside the rollout of Cloud Security Posture Management and...
EFF Calls Out Major Tech Companies on Encryption Promises
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched the "Encrypt It Already" campaign, urging major tech firms to fulfill announced end‑to‑end encryption promises, enable encryption by default, and broaden encrypted storage. The initiative groups demands into three categories—Keep your promises, Defaults...
Cyble Research Discovers ShadowHS, an In-Memory Linux Framework for Long-Term Access
Cyble Research & Intelligence Labs uncovered ShadowHS, a Linux post‑exploitation framework that operates entirely in memory. The tool leverages a weaponized version of hackshell with an AES‑256‑CBC encrypted loader, enabling fileless execution via /proc//fd/. ShadowHS provides an operator‑controlled environment for...
Apple’s New Privacy Feature Limits How Precisely Carriers Track Your Location
Apple introduced a new privacy setting called Limit Precise Location in iOS 26.3, which reduces the granularity of location data shared with cellular networks. When enabled, carriers can only determine a user’s approximate neighborhood rather than the exact address, while app‑level...
KnowBe4 Celebrates a Decade of AI Innovation with 7 Active AI Agents in Market
KnowBe4 marks a decade of AI-driven cybersecurity by celebrating the tenth anniversary of its AIDA platform and the deployment of seven active AI agents in the market. The company appointed Harlan Parrott as Vice President of AI Innovation to head...
The CSO Guide to Top Security Conferences
The CSO editorial team compiled a calendar of security conferences slated for February through May 2026, covering more than 30 events across Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. Highlights include multiple Gartner Security & Risk Management Summits, the BSides community...
Abusers Using AI and Digital Tech to Attack and Control Women, Charity Warns
Domestic‑abuse charity Refuge reports a sharp rise in technology‑enabled abuse, with a 62% increase in complex cases amounting to 829 women in Q4 2025. Referrals of victims under 30 grew 24%, highlighting younger women’s vulnerability to smart‑device stalking. Perpetrators are exploiting...
Human Risk Management: CISOs’ Solution to the Security Awareness Training Paradox
Human risk management (HRM) is emerging as a solution to the security awareness training (SAT) paradox, where 70‑90% of breaches originate from employee actions despite billions spent on training. While SAT spending is projected to grow 15% annually, its efficacy...
Black Duck Expands Federal Cloud Offerings with FedRAMP Push
Black Duck announced it has begun the FedRAMP Moderate authorization process for its Polaris Platform, aiming to secure a federal‑grade cloud offering. The company partnered with stackArmor, a FedRAMP engineering specialist, to fast‑track the Authorization to Operate (ATO). Black Duck...
Attackers Weaponize Microsoft 365 Outlook Add-Ins to Quietly Exfiltrate Email Data
Researchers have uncovered a stealthy data‑theft method called “Exfil Out&Look” that abuses Microsoft 365 Outlook Web add‑ins to siphon email content. The technique leverages minimal‑permission manifests that execute on the OnMessageSend event, silently fetching email bodies and forwarding them via a fetch()...
Helpdesk Impersonation: A High-Risk Social Engineering Attack
Helpdesk impersonation is a social‑engineering technique where attackers pose as employees or partners to trick IT support staff into granting unauthorized access. By leveraging publicly available information and urgency cues, they can obtain password resets, MFA device changes, and privileged...
The Future of Digital Asset Security: Institutional-Grade Strategies for Private Investors in 2026
Digital investors face escalating cyber threats, making traditional passwords obsolete. Bexalon’s guide advocates institutional‑grade defenses, including AES‑256 encryption, segregated accounts, and a blend of cold storage with limited hot wallets. It also recommends abandoning SMS‑2FA in favor of hardware keys,...
Wearable Tech Adoption Continues as Privacy Worries Grow
Over one billion people now wear fitness trackers that continuously collect health metrics, creating a massive stream of sensitive personal data. A recent Clutch survey shows 74% of users are worried about how this data is handled, while only 58%...
Securing Trust: Why Crisis Communication Is Your First Line of Defense
The article argues that crisis communication is a core security control, not merely a public‑relations task. It shows how timely, accurate messaging curbs panic, protects brand reputation, and satisfies strict regulatory timelines such as the SEC’s four‑day rule and GDPR’s...
Trump Sues IRS and the Treasury for $10 Billion Because His Tax Returns Were Leaked
The 2023 leak orchestrated by former Booz Allen consultant Charles Littlejohn exposed tax returns for an estimated 400,000 affluent Americans, a cache that quickly landed on the desks of the New York Times and ProPublica. Littlejohn’s guilty plea in 2023 and subsequent...
Bybit Made ‘Slow but Steady Comeback’ in 2025 After Massive Hack: CoinGecko
Bybit posted the second‑largest trading volume among crypto exchanges in 2025, reaching $1.5 trillion and capturing an 8.1% market share despite a $1.5 billion hack earlier in the year. The exchange kept withdrawals open, honored all user transactions, and secured external liquidity,...
Top 5 PCI Compliant Hosting Providers
The article outlines the five leading PCI‑compliant hosting providers—AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Rackspace, and specialized PCI hosts—explaining how each aligns its infrastructure with PCI DSS requirements. It emphasizes the shared‑responsibility model, where providers manage the underlying hardware while...
Cisco Foundation AI Debuts Agentic Security Tools to Protect Autonomous AI Systems
Cisco Foundation AI unveiled a suite of agentic security tools aimed at safeguarding increasingly autonomous AI systems in enterprise environments. The flagship offering, Foundation‑sec‑8B‑Reasoning, is an open‑weight model optimized for multistep cybersecurity analysis and produces explicit reasoning traces. Complementary releases...
PwC Expands Google Cloud Alliance with $400M Push Into AI-Driven Security Operations
PwC announced an expanded alliance with Google Cloud, committing $400 million over three years to accelerate AI‑driven security operations. The partnership blends Google Cloud’s AI‑powered security platforms with PwC’s transformation, risk, and managed‑service expertise to modernize security across hybrid and multicloud...
Hugging Face Abused to Spread Thousands of Android Malware Variants
Researchers at Bitdefender uncovered a new Android malware campaign that exploits the Hugging Face platform as a distribution hub for thousands of polymorphic APK variants. The dropper app, TrustBastion, masquerades as a security tool, redirects victims to a Hugging Face...
Ivanti Warns of Two EPMM Flaws Exploited in Zero-Day Attacks
Ivanti disclosed two critical code‑injection flaws (CVE‑2026‑1281 and CVE‑2026‑1340) in its Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) platform, each scoring 9.8 on the CVSS scale and already leveraged in limited zero‑day attacks. The company issued immediate RPM‑based mitigations that require no downtime,...
Measuring Agentic AI Posture: A New Metric for CISOs
The episode introduces a new metric—Agentic AI Posture—to help CISOs assess readiness against fast‑moving AI‑driven threats, arguing that traditional security metrics like MTTR are insufficient. It outlines three pillars for measuring AI readiness: Visibility Ratio (tracking shadow agents and API...
Quantum Cybersecurity Policy: ITI’s Guide for Secure Innovation
On World Quantum Day 2025 the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) published a Quantum Technology Policy Guide that frames quantum cybersecurity as a dual‑track challenge. The guide urges immediate deployment of post‑quantum cryptography (PQC) while promoting quantum communications such as...