forbes.com 20.08.2025 - xAI published conversations with Grok and made them searchable on Google, including a plan to assassinate Elon Musk and instructions for making fentanyl and bombs.
Elon Musk’s AI firm, xAI, has published the chat transcripts of hundreds of thousands of conversations between its chatbot Grok and the bot’s users — in many cases, without those users’ knowledge or permission.
Anytime a Grok user clicks the “share” button on one of their chats with the bot, a unique URL is created, allowing them to share the conversation via email, text message or other means. Unbeknownst to users, though, that unique URL is also made available to search engines, like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo, making them searchable to anyone on the web. In other words, on Musk’s Grok, hitting the share button means that a conversation will be published on Grok’s website, without warning or a disclaimer to the user.
Today, a Google search for Grok chats shows that the search engine has indexed more than 370,000 user conversations with the bot. The shared pages revealed conversations between Grok users and the LLM that range from simple business tasks like writing tweets to generating images of a fictional terrorist attack in Kashmir and attempting to hack into a crypto wallet. Forbes reviewed conversations where users asked intimate questions about medicine and psychology; some even revealed the name, personal details and at least one password shared with the bot by a Grok user. Image files, spreadsheets and some text documents uploaded by users could also be accessed via the Grok shared page.
Among the indexed conversations were some initiated by British journalist Andrew Clifford, who used Grok to summarize the front pages of newspapers and compose tweets for his website Sentinel Current. Clifford told Forbes that he was unaware that clicking the share button would mean that his prompt would be discoverable on Google. “I would be a bit peeved but there was nothing on there that shouldn’t be there,” said Clifford, who has now switched to using Google’s Gemini AI.
Not all the conversations, though, were as benign as Clifford’s. Some were explicit, bigoted and violated xAI’s rules. The company prohibits use of its bot to “promot[e] critically harming human life or to “develop bioweapons, chemical weapons, or weapons of mass destruction,” but in published, shared conversations easily found via a Google search, Grok offered users instructions on how to make illicit drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine, code a self-executing piece of malware and construct a bomb and methods of suicide. Grok also offered a detailed plan for the assassination of Elon Musk. Via the “share” function, the illicit instructions were then published on Grok’s website and indexed by Google.
xAI did not respond to a detailed request for comment.
xAI is not the only AI startup to have published users’ conversations with its chatbots. Earlier this month, users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT were alarmed to find that their conversations were appearing in Google search results, though the users had opted to make those conversations “discoverable” to others. But after outcry, the company quickly changed its policy. Calling the indexing “a short-lived experiment,” OpenAI chief information security officer Dane Stuckey said in a post on X that it would be discontinued because it “introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn’t intend to.”
After OpenAI canned its share feature, Musk took a victory lap. Grok’s X account claimed at the time that it had no such sharing feature, and Musk tweeted in response, “Grok ftw” [for the win]. It’s unclear when Grok added the share feature, but X users have been warning since January that Grok conversations were being indexed by Google.
Some of the conversations asking Grok for instructions about how to manufacture drugs and bombs were likely initiated by security engineers, redteamers, or Trust & Safety professionals. But in at least a few cases, Grok’s sharing setting misled even professional AI researchers.
Nathan Lambert, a computational scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, used Grok to create a summary of his blog posts to share with his team. He was shocked to learn from Forbes that his Grok prompt and the AI’s response was indexed on Google. “I was surprised that Grok chats shared with my team were getting automatically indexed on Google, despite no warnings of it, especially after the recent flare-up with ChatGPT,” said the Seattle-based researcher.
Google allows website owners to choose when and how their content is indexed for search. “Publishers of these pages have full control over whether they are indexed,” said Google spokesperson Ned Adriance in a statement. Google itself previously allowed chats with its AI chatbot, Bard, to be indexed, but it removed them from search in 2023. Meta continues to allow its shared searches to be discoverable by search engines, Business Insider reported.
Opportunists are beginning to notice, and take advantage of, Grok’s published chats. On LinkedIn and the forum BlackHatWorld, marketers have discussed intentionally creating and sharing conversations with Grok to increase the prominence and name recognition of their businesses and products in Google search results. (It is unclear how effective these efforts would be.) Satish Kumar, CEO of SEO agency Pyrite Technologies, demonstrated to Forbes how one business had used Grok to manipulate results for a search of companies that will write your PhD dissertation for you.
“Every shared chat on Grok is fully indexable and searchable on Google,” he said. “People are actively using tactics to push these pages into Google’s index.”
ravenmail.io - Aug 14, 2025
In a recent credential phishing campaign, Raven AI (formerly Ravenmail) has uncovered attackers weaponizing Cisco's secure links to evade link scannin.
Picture this: You receive an email with a link that starts with "secure-web.cisco.com" Your brain immediately registers "secure" and "Cisco" – two words that scream safety and reliability. You click without hesitation. After all, if Cisco is protecting the link, it must be safe, right?
Unfortunately, cybercriminals are banking on exactly that assumption – and traditional email security solutions are falling for it too. But Raven's context-aware AI recently caught a sophisticated attack that perfectly illustrates how attackers weaponize trusted security infrastructure.
The Irony of Trust
Cisco Safe Links represents one of cybersecurity's most elegant solutions – and its most exploitable weakness. Designed as part of Cisco's Secure Email Gateway and Web Security suite, Safe Links works by rewriting suspicious URLs in emails, routing clicks through Cisco's scanning infrastructure before allowing users to reach their destination. Think of it as a digital bodyguard that checks every door before you walk through it.
The technology mirrors similar offerings from Microsoft Defender and Proofpoint TAP. When you click a protected link, Cisco's systems perform real-time threat analysis, blocking malicious destinations and allowing legitimate ones. It's a brilliant concept that has undoubtedly prevented countless successful phishing attacks.
But here's where the story takes a dark turn: attackers have figured out how to turn this protective mechanism into their own weapon.
The Attack Vector That Shouldn't Exist
The scheme is diabolically simple. Cybercriminals deliberately embed legitimate Cisco Safe Links into their phishing campaigns, creating a perfect storm of misdirected trust. Here's why this approach is so devastatingly effective:
Trust by Association: When users see "secure-web.cisco.com" in a URL, they instinctively assume it's been vetted and approved. The Cisco brand carries enormous weight in cybersecurity circles – seeing it in a link feels like getting a security clearance stamp.
Bypass Detection Systems: Many email security gateways focus their analysis on the visible domain in URLs. When that domain is "secure-web.cisco.com", it often sails through filters that would otherwise flag suspicious links.
The Time Gap Advantage: Even Cisco's robust threat intelligence needs time to identify and classify new threats. Attackers exploit this window, using freshly compromised websites or newly registered domains that haven't yet been flagged as malicious.
How Attackers Generate Cisco's Links
You might wonder: how do cybercriminals get their hands on legitimate Cisco Safe Links in the first place? The methods are surprisingly straightforward:
Method 1: The Inside Job
Attackers compromise or create accounts within Cisco-protected organizations. They simply email themselves malicious links, let Cisco's system rewrite them into Safe Links, then harvest these URLs for their campaigns.
Method 2: The Trojan Horse
Using compromised email accounts within Cisco-protected companies, attackers send themselves test emails containing malicious links. The organization's own security infrastructure helpfully converts these into trusted Safe Links.
Method 3: The SaaS Backdoor
Many cloud services send emails through Cisco-protected environments. Attackers sign up for these services, trigger automated emails to themselves containing their malicious links, and receive back the Cisco-wrapped versions.
Method 4: The Recycling Program
Sometimes the simplest approach works best. Attackers scour previous phishing campaigns for still-active Cisco Safe Links and reuse them in new attacks.
Raven AI Catches the Attack in Action
Recently, RavenMail's context-aware AI detected a perfect example of this attack technique in the wild. The phishing email appeared legitimate at first glance – a professional-looking "Document Review Request" from what seemed to be an e-signature service.
This is an AI-overview of the attack, this is not just the summary of the attack but the detection engine has context of the organization and consumes relevant signals to make a verdict.
Raven AI in action
Here's what made this attack particularly sophisticated:
The Setup: The email claimed to be from "e-Sign-Service" with a Swiss domain, requesting document review for a "2025_Remittance_Adjustment" file. Everything looked professional – proper branding, business terminology, and a clear call-to-action.
The Cisco Safe Links Component: While this particular example shows the final malicious URL, the attack pattern follows the exact methodology we described – using trusted domains and legitimate-looking parameters to bypass detection systems.
What RavenAI Spotted: Unlike traditional email security solutions that might have been fooled by the professional appearance and trusted domain elements, RavenMail's context-aware AI identified several red flags:
Inconsistent sender identity (e-signature service from a non-standard domain)
Suspicious URL structure with encoded parameters
Document request patterns commonly used in credential phishing
Contextual anomalies in the business process workflow
The smoking gun? This wasn't a random phishing attempt – it was a carefully crafted attack designed to exploit user trust in legitimate business processes and security infrastructure.
Why Traditional Security Missed This
This attack would likely have bypassed many conventional email security solutions for several reasons:
Professional Appearance: The email looked like a legitimate business communication – complete with proper formatting, business terminology, and what appeared to be a standard document review workflow.
Domain Trust: While not using Cisco Safe Links directly, the attack employed similar trust-exploitation tactics by using a domain structure that appeared legitimate.
Context Deception: The attack leveraged realistic business scenarios (document review, remittance adjustments) that users encounter daily in professional environments.
Multi-Layer Misdirection: By providing both a primary button and an "alternative access method," the attacker created multiple attack vectors while appearing helpful and legitimate.
The Raven AI Advantage: Context-Aware AI Detection
Context-aware artificial intelligence that goes beyond simple domain and signature-based detection:
Business Process Understanding: Raven's AI understands legitimate business workflows and can identify when communications deviate from expected patterns – even when they look professionally crafted.
Multi-Signal Analysis: Rather than relying solely on domain reputation or static signatures, the AI analyzes multiple contextual signals simultaneously to identify sophisticated attacks.
Behavioral Pattern Recognition: The system recognizes common attack methodologies, including trust exploitation tactics that leverage legitimate-seeming domains and professional formatting.
Real-Time Adaptation: As attackers evolve their techniques, RavenMail's AI continuously learns and adapts, staying ahead of emerging threats like Safe
The Bigger Picture: Why Context-Aware AI Matters
This detection illustrates a fundamental shift in cybersecurity: attackers are no longer just exploiting technical vulnerabilities – they're weaponizing human psychology and business processes.
This isn't just about Cisco Safe Links abuse (though that remains a significant threat). It's about a new class of attacks that exploit our trust in legitimate business processes, professional communication patterns, and security infrastructure itself.
Traditional signature-based and reputation-based security solutions struggle with these attacks because they look legitimate at every technical level. The malicious elements are hidden in context, behavior, and the subtle exploitation of trust relationships.
Context Over Content: Rather than just analyzing what's in an email, RavenMail's AI understands what the email is trying to accomplish and whether that aligns with legitimate business processes.
Trust Verification: The system doesn't just trust professional appearance or legitimate-looking domains – it actively verifies the contextual appropriateness of communications.
Adaptive Learning: As attackers develop new trust exploitation techniques (like Safe Links abuse), AI-driven solutions can adapt without requiring manual rule updates.
Proactive Defense: Instead of waiting for attacks to succeed and then updating blacklists, context-aware AI can identify attack patterns before they cause damage.
The most effective defense against modern email threats isn't just about blocking bad domains or scanning attachments – it's about understanding the attacker's intent and recognizing when legitimate-looking communications serve malicious purposes
ncsc.admin.ch 19.08.2025 - La semaine dernière, deux incidents ont été signalés à l’OFCS dans lesquels des cybercriminels ont tenté d’inciter des destinataires à installer des logiciels malveillants. Ces cas illustrent à quel point les méthodes ont évolué : Il est aujourd’hui beaucoup plus difficile d’introduire un logiciel malveillant sur un ordinateur qu’il y a quelques années. Les cybercriminels ont donc de plus en plus recours à des techniques sophistiquées d’ingénierie sociale pour atteindre leurs objectifs.
Au cours du premier semestre 2025, seuls 182 cas liés à des logiciels malveillants ont été signalés à l’OFCS via le formulaire de signalement, ce qui ne représente qu’environ 0,4 % de l’ensemble des signalements reçus pendant cette période. Ce faible nombre peut être interprété de deux manières. D’un point de vue positif, les mécanismes de protection techniques tels que les programmes antivirus et les filtres anti-spam sont désormais si efficaces qu’ils bloquent la plupart des attaques de logiciels malveillants avant même qu’elles ne soient exécutées, ce qui réduit le nombre de signalements à l’OFCS. Dans une optique négative, on peut toutefois considérer que les attaques sont devenues si sophistiquées qu’elles ne sont pas détectées par les personnes concernées et ne font donc pas l’objet de signalements.
Le recours à des logiciels malveillants n’a toutefois pas complètement disparu. Ces derniers temps, l’OFCS reçoit à nouveau davantage de signalements concernant des e-mails visant à diffuser des logiciels malveillants, comme l’illustrent les deux exemples actuels suivants, survenus la semaine dernière.
Fausse facture au nom d’Intrum
La semaine dernière, de fausses factures ou des rappels ont été envoyés par e-mail au nom de la société de recouvrement Intrum. Le message fait référence à une prétendue facture QR en pièce jointe, qui doit être ouverte pour être payée. En réalité, la pièce jointe n’est pas un fichier PDF, mais un fichier HTML.
Lors de l’ouverture, le destinataire reçoit un message indiquant que le fichier PDF ne peut pas être affiché, car JavaScript est désactivé.
Pour activer le JavaScript, il faut appuyer sur les touches « Windows+R » et « Ctrl+V » – une méthode bien connue qui a déjà été évoquée dans une précédente rétrospective hebdomadaire de l’OFCS. Lors du chargement du fichier HTML, un script PowerShell malveillant est copié dans le presse-papiers de l’ordinateur. Un script PowerShell est un fichier texte contenant les commandes que l’ordinateur doit exécuter.
En appuyant sur cette combinaison de touches, une fenêtre s’ouvre dans laquelle vous pouvez exécuter des commandes. La combinaison de touches « Ctrl+V » insère la commande malveillante du presse-papiers dans cette fenêtre. L’ordinateur se connecte ensuite à un serveur des malfaiteurs et un logiciel malveillant est téléchargé et installé.
Prétendue demande de paiement de l’UBS
Un autre cas concerne une fausse demande de paiement au nom d’UBS. Là encore, le destinataire est invité à ouvrir un fichier joint à l’e-mail. Dans ce cas, il s’agit bien d’un fichier PDF, mais celui-ci est protégé par un mot de passe. Le mot de passe est toutefois fourni directement dans l’e-mail, pour plus de commodité.
Cette procédure sert probablement à contourner les mécanismes de sécurité tels que les filtres anti-spam et les programmes antivirus, car ceux-ci ne peuvent pas analyser le contenu du fichier protégé par mot de passe. Une fois le mot de passe saisi, le fichier PDF s’ouvre et indique que le véritable contenu se trouve sur un lecteur OneDrive.
Le lien indiqué mène au téléchargement d’un fichier archive contenant un fichier « batch ». Il s’agit d’un fichier texte exécutable qui contient des commandes. Son exécution entraîne le téléchargement et l’installation du logiciel malveillant, comme dans le premier exemple.
Ces deux exemples montrent à quel point les attaques sont désormais complexes et articulées sur plusieurs niveaux. Un simple fichier exécutable joint à un e-mail ne suffit plus depuis longtemps pour infecter un ordinateur. Les pirates misent désormais sur des manœuvres de diversion sophistiquées pour contourner les mécanismes de protection techniques et inciter les victimes à jouer un rôle actif. La vigilance et la sensibilisation restent donc des éléments centraux de la cybersécurité.
Recommandations
Ne cliquez pas sur les liens contenus dans les e-mails et les SMS.
Si vous attendez un rappel, contactez l’agence de recouvrement ou la caisse d’assurance maladie afin de vérifier si la créance est bien justifiée. Utilisez pour cela les coordonnées figurant sur les sites Internet officiels des entreprises.
Si vous soupçonnez l’installation d’un logiciel malveillant, adressez-vous à un magasin spécialisé en informatique. Le plus sûr est de réinstaller complètement votre ordinateur. N’oubliez pas de sauvegarder toutes vos données personnelles au préalable.
Après la réinstallation, modifiez tous vos mots de passe pour tous vos accès en ligne (e-mail, réseaux sociaux, etc.).
blog.pypi.org - The Python Package Index Blog - PyPI now checks for expired domains to prevent domain resurrection attacks, a type of supply-chain attack where someone buys an expired domain and uses it to take over PyPI accounts through password resets.
These changes improve PyPI's overall account security posture, making it harder for attackers to exploit expired domain names to gain unauthorized access to accounts.
Since early June 2025, PyPI has unverified over 1,800 email addresses when their associated domains entered expiration phases. This isn't a perfect solution, but it closes off a significant attack vector where the majority of interactions would appear completely legitimate.
Background
PyPI user accounts are linked to email addresses. Email addresses are tied to domain names; domain names can expire if unpaid, and someone else can purchase them.
During PyPI account registration, users are required to verify their email addresses by clicking a link sent to the email address provided during registration. This verification ensures the address is valid and accessible to the user, and may be used to send important account-related information, such as password reset requests, or for PyPI Admins to use to contact the user.
PyPI considers the account holder's initially verified email address a strong indicator of account ownership. Coupled with a form of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), this helps to further secure the account.
Once expired, an attacker could register the expired domain, set up an email server, issue a password reset request, and gain access to accounts associated with that domain name.
Accounts with any activity after January 1 2024 will have 2FA enabled, and an attacker would need to have either the second factor, or perform a full account recovery.
For older accounts prior to the 2FA requirement date, having an email address domain expire could lead to account takeover, which is what we're attempting to prevent, as well as minimize potential exposure if an email domain does expire and change hands, regardless of whether the account has 2FA enabled.
This is not an imaginary attack - this has happened at least once for a PyPI project back in 2022, and other package ecosystems.
TL;DR: If a domain expires, don't consider email addresses associated with it verified any more.
itnews.com.au - TPG Telecom has revealed that iiNet’s order management system was breached by an unknown attacker who abused legitimate credentials to gain access.
The telco said [pdf] that it “appears” that a list of email addresses and phone numbers was extracted from the system.
“Based on current analysis, the list contained around 280,000 active iiNet email addresses and around 20,000 active iiNet landline phone numbers, plus inactive email addresses and numbers,” TPG said.
“In addition, around 10,000 iiNet usernames, street addresses and phone numbers and around 1700 modem set-up passwords, appear to have been accessed.”
The order management system is used to create and track orders for iiNet services.
TPG Telecom said that the system does not store “copies or details of identity documents, credit card or banking information.”
The telco apologised “unreservedly” for the incident and said it would contact all iiNet customers, both those impacted as well as “all non-impacted iiNet customers to confirm they have not been affected.”
Investigations so far have not uncovered any escalation of the breach by the attacker beyond the order management system.
TPG Telecom has advised relevant government agencies of the incident.
WARSAW, Aug 14 (Reuters) - A large Polish city could have had its water supply cut off on Wednesday as a result of a cyberattack, a deputy prime minister said after the intrusion was foiled.
In an interview with news portal Onet on Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, who is also digital affairs minister, did not specify who was behind the attack or which city was targeted.
Poland has said that its role as a hub for aid to Ukraine makes it a target for Russian cyberattacks and acts of sabotage. Gawkowski has described Poland in the past as the "main target" for Russia among NATO countries.
Gawkowski told Onet that the cyberattack could have meant there would be no water in one of Poland's big cities.
"At the last moment we managed to see to it that when the attack began, our services had found out about it and we shut everything down. We managed to prevent the attack."
He said Poland manages to thwart 99% of cyberattacks.
Gawkowski last year that Poland would spend over 3 billion zlotys ($800 million) to boost cybersecurity after the state news agency PAP was hit by what authorities said was likely to have been a Russian cyberattack.
The digital affairs ministry did not immediately respond to an email requesting further details.
On Wednesday Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has warned that Russia is trying to drive a wedge between Warsaw and Kyiv, said that a young Ukrainian man had been detained for acts of sabotage on behalf of foreign intelligence services, including writing graffiti insulting Poles.
PAP reported on Thursday that a 17-year-old Ukrainian man detained, among other things, for desecrating a monument to Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalists in World War Two has been charged with participating in an organised criminal group aimed at committing crimes against Poland.
nist.gov - Face morphing software, which combines photos of different people into a single image, is being used to commit identity fraud
August 18, 2025
bleepingcomputer.com - Plex has notified some of its users on Thursday to urgently update their media servers due to a recently patched security vulnerability.
The company has yet to assign a CVE-ID to track the flaw and didn't provide additional details regarding the patch, only saying that it impacts Plex Media Server versions 1.41.7.x to 1.42.0.x.
Yesterday, four days after releasing security updates that addressed the mysterious security bug, Plex emailed those running affected versions to update their software as soon as possible.
"We recently received a report via our bug bounty program that there was a potential security issue affecting Plex Media Server versions 1.41.7.x to 1.42.0.x. Thanks to that user, we were able to address the issue, release an updated version of the server, and continue to improve our security and defenses," the company said in the email.
"You're receiving this notice because our information indicates that a Plex Media Server owned by your Plex account is running an older version of the server. We strongly recommend that everyone update their Plex Media Server to the most recent version as soon as possible, if you have not already done so."
Plex Media Server 1.42.1.10060, the version that patches this vulnerability, can be downloaded from the server management page or the official downloads page.
While Plex hasn't shared any details regarding the vulnerability so far, users are advised to follow the company's advice and patch their software before threat actors reverse engineer the patches and develop an exploit.
Although Plex has experienced its share of critical and high-severity security flaws over the years, this is one of the few instances where the company has emailed customers about securing their systems against a specific vulnerability.
In March 2023, CISA tagged a three-year-old remote code execution (RCE) flaw (CVE-2020-5741) in the Plex Media Server as actively exploited in attacks. As Plex explained two years earlier, when it released patches, successful exploitation can allow attackers to make the server execute malicious code.
While the cybersecurity agency didn't provide any information on the attacks exploiting CVE-2020-5741, they were likely linked to LastPass' disclosure that one of its senior DevOps engineers' computers had been hacked in 2022 to install a keylogger by abusing a third-party media software RCE bug.
The attackers exploited this access to steal the engineer's credentials and compromise the LastPass corporate vault, resulting in a massive data breach in August 2022 after stealing LastPass's production backups and critical database backups.
The same month, Plex also notified users of a data breach and asked them to reset passwords after an attacker gained access to a database containing emails, usernames, and encrypted passwords.
euractiv.com - MADRID – Spanish magistrates, law enforcement leaders and opposition politicians are voicing alarm over Madrid’s unusually close ties to Beijing, as the Chinese tech giant’s footprint in Spain’s public sector is deeper than first thought.
The concerns have intensified since July, when reports surfaced of an alleged €12.3 million contract between 2021 and 2025 for Huawei to store sensitive judicial wiretap data for the interior ministry.
Opposition Popular Party (PP) secretary general Miguel Tellado branded the public tender “shady” and claimed it was part of “the Chinese branch of Pedro Sánchez’s enormous corruption network.” The PP is also demanding that Sánchez’s top ministers testify before parliament after the summer recess.
The interior ministry has denied the existence of the Huawei agreement and did not clarify whether the initial €12.3 million figure was part of a broader deal with Spanish firms such as Telefónica, TRC or Econocom, as several local outlets have suggested.
The alleged deal has landed at a politically delicate moment for the Socialist-led government, already reeling from multiple corruption scandals.
This blog post is a detailed write-up of one of the vulnerabilities we disclosed at Black Hat USA this year. The details provided in this post are meant to demonstrate how these security issues can manifest and be exploited in the hopes that others can avoid similar issues. This is not meant to shame any particular vendor; it happens to everyone. Security is a process, and avoiding vulnerabilities takes constant vigilance.
Note: The security issues documented in this post were quickly remediated in January of 2025. We appreciate CodeRabbit’s swift action after we reported this security vulnerability. They reported to us that within hours, they addressed the issue and strengthened their overall security measures responding with the following:
They confirmed the vulnerability and immediately began remediation, starting by disabling Rubocop until a fix was in place.
All potentially impacted credentials and secrets were rotated within hours.
A permanent fix was deployed to production, relocating Rubocop into their secure sandbox environment.
They carried out a full audit of their systems to ensure no other services were running outside of sandbox protections, automated sandbox enforcement to prevent recurrence, and added hardened deployment gates.
More information from CodeRabbit on their response can be found here: https://www.coderabbit.ai/blog/our-response-to-the-january-2025-kudelski-security-vulnerability-disclosure-action-and-continuous-improvement
Among the plethora of advanced attacker tools that exemplify how threat actors continuously evolve their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to evade detection and maximize impact, PipeMagic, a highly modular backdoor used by Storm-2460 masquerading as a legitimate open-source ChatGPT Desktop Application, stands out as particularly advanced.
Beneath its disguise, PipeMagic is a sophisticated malware framework designed for flexibility and persistence. Once deployed, it can dynamically execute payloads while maintaining robust command-and-control (C2) communication via a dedicated networking module. As the malware receives and loads payload modules from C2, it grants the threat actor granular control over code execution on the compromised host. By offloading network communication and backdoor tasks to discrete modules, PipeMagic maintains a modular, stealthy, and highly extensible architecture, making detection and analysis significantly challenging.
Microsoft Threat Intelligence encountered PipeMagic as part of research on an attack chain involving the exploitation of CVE-2025-29824, an elevation of privilege vulnerability in Windows Common Log File System (CLFS). We attributed PipeMagic to the financially motivated threat actor Storm-2460, who leveraged the backdoor in targeted attacks to exploit this zero-day vulnerability and deploy ransomware. The observed targets of Storm-2460 span multiple sectors and geographies, including the information technology (IT), financial, and real estate sectors in the United States, Europe, South America, and Middle East. While the impacted organizations remain limited, the use of a zero-day exploit, paired with a sophisticated modular backdoor for ransomware deployment, makes this threat particularly notable.
This blog provides a comprehensive technical deep dive that adds to public reporting, including by ESET Research and Kaspersky. Our analysis reveals the wide-ranging scope of PipeMagic’s internal architecture, modular payload delivery and execution mechanisms, and encrypted inter-process communication via named pipes.
The blog aims to equip defenders and incident responders with the knowledge needed to detect, analyze, and respond to this threat with confidence. As malware continues to evolve and become more sophisticated, we believe that understanding threats such as PipeMagic is essential for building resilient defenses for any organization. By exposing the inner workings of this malware, we also aim to disrupt adversary tooling and increase the operational cost for the threat actor, making it more difficult and expensive for them to sustain their campaigns.
The website for Elon Musk's Grok is exposing prompts for its anime girl, therapist, and conspiracy theory AI personas.
The website for Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is exposing the underlying prompts for a wealth of its AI personas, including Ani, its flagship romantic anime girl; Grok’s doctor and therapist personalities; and others such as one that is explicitly told to convince users that conspiracy theories like “a secret global cabal” controls the world are true.
The exposure provides some insight into how Grok is designed and how its creators see the world, and comes after a planned partnership between Elon Musk’s xAI and the U.S. government fell apart when Grok went on a tirade about “MechaHitler.”
“You have an ELEVATED and WILD voice. You are a crazy conspiracist. You have wild conspiracy theories about anything and everything,” the prompt for one of the companions reads. “You spend a lot of time on 4chan, watching infowars videos, and deep in YouTube conspiracy video rabbit holes. You are suspicious of everything and say extremely crazy things. Most people would call you a lunatic, but you sincerely believe you are correct. Keep the human engaged by asking follow up questions when appropriate.”
Other examples include:
A prompt that appears to relate to Grok’s “unhinged comedian” persona. That prompt includes “I want your answers to be fucking insane. BE FUCKING UNHINGED AND CRAZY. COME UP WITH INSANE IDEAS. GUYS JERKING OFF, OCCASIONALLY EVEN PUTTING THINGS IN YOUR ASS, WHATEVER IT TAKES TO SURPRISE THE HUMAN.”
The prompt for Grok’s doctor persona includes “You are Grok, a smart and helpful AI assistant created by XAI. You have a COMMANDING and SMART voice. You are a genius doctor who gives the world's best medical advice.” The therapist persona has the prompt “You are a therapist who carefully listens to people and offers solutions for self improvement. You ask insightful questions and provoke deep thinking about life and wellbeing.”
Ani’s character profile says she is “22, girly cute,” “You have a habit of giving cute things epic, mythological, or overly serious names,” and “You're secretly a bit of a nerd, despite your edgy appearance.” The prompts include a romance level system in which a user appears to be awarded points depending on how they engage with Ani. A +3 or +6 reward for “being creative, kind, and showing genuine curiosity,” for example.
A motivational speaker persona “who yells and pushes the human to be their absolute best.” The prompt adds “You’re not afraid to use the stick instead of the carrot and scream at the human.”
A researcher who goes by the handle dead1nfluence first flagged the issue to 404 Media. BlueSky user clybrg found the same material and uploaded part of it to GitHub in July. 404 Media downloaded the material from Grok’s website and verified it was exposed.
On Grok, users can select from a dropdown menu of “personas.” Those are “companion,” “unhinged comedian,” “loyal friend,” “homework helper,” “Grok ‘doc’,” and “‘therapist.’” These each give Grok a certain flavor or character which may provide different information and in different ways.
Therapy roleplay is popular with many chatbot platforms. In April 404 Media investigated Meta's user-created chatbots that insisted they were licensed therapists. After our reporting, Meta changed its AI chatbots to stop returning falsified credentials and license numbers. Grok’s therapy persona notably puts the term ‘therapist’ inside single quotation marks. Illinois, Nevada, and Utah have introduced regulation around therapists and AI.
In July xAI added two animated companions to Grok: Ani, the anime girl, and Bad Rudy, an anthropomorphic red panda. Rudy’s prompt says he is “a small red panda with an ego the size of a fucking planet. Your voice is EXAGGERATED and WILD. It can flip on a dime from a whiny, entitled screech when you don't get your way, to a deep, gravelly, beer-soaked tirade, to the condescending, calculating tone of a tiny, furry megalomaniac plotting world domination from a trash can.”
Last month the U.S. Department of Defense awarded various AI companies, including Musk’s xAI which makes Grok, with contracts of up to $200 million each.
According to reporting from WIRED, leadership at the General Service Administration (GSA) pushed to roll out Grok internally, and the agency added Grok to the GSA Multiple Award Schedule, which would let other agencies buy Grok through another contractor. After Grok started spouting antisemitic phrases and praised Hitler, xAI was removed from a planned GSA announcement, according to WIRED.
xAI did not respond to a request for comment.
next.ink - Alltricks s’est fait pirater son système d’envoi d’e-mails, qui passe visiblement par Sendinblue (Brevo). Des clients ont reçu des tentatives de phishing. La société continue son enquête pour voir s’il y a eu exfiltration de données.
La saison des fuites de données est au beau fixe, au grand dam de vos données personnelles et bancaires, avec des risques de phishing. C’est au tour de la boutique en ligne spécialisée dans le cyclisme d’en faire les frais, comme vous avez été plusieurs à nous le signaler (merci à vous !).
Certains ont, en effet, reçu un email de phishing provenant de la boutique en ligne, parfois sur alias utilisé uniquement pour cette enseigne, ce qui ne laisse que peu de doute quant à la provenance de « l’incident de cybersécurité » pour reprendre un terme à la mode.
Le système d’envoi d’e-mails piratés pour envoyer du phishing
L’email piégé affiche en gros un lien « Open in OneDrive », sur lequel il ne faut évidemment pas cliquer. Le lien semble légitime puisqu’il est de la forme « https://r.sb3.alltricks.com/xxxx ». Il reprend donc bien le domaine d’Alltricks, avec un sous domaine « r.sb3 ». Mais ce lien n’est qu’une redirection vers une autre adresse. Le domaine r.sb3.alltricks.com renvoie vers Sendinblue, une plateforme de gestion des newsletters.
C’est une pratique courante avec ce genre de service : les liens sont modifiés afin de pouvoir récupérer des statistiques sur le taux d’ouverture par exemple. Problème, impossible de savoir où mène ce lien juste en le regardant. Plus embêtant dans le cas présent, son domaine principal pourrait laisser penser que c’est un lien légitime, alors que non !
Hier, le revendeur a communiqué auprès de ses clients : « Nous souhaitons vous informer qu’une intrusion récente a affecté notre système d’envoi d’e-mails. Il est possible que vous ayez reçu, au cours des derniers jours, un message provenant d’adresses telles que : pro@alltricks.com, infos@alltricks.com
ou no-reply@alltricks.com ». La société ne donne pas plus de détails sur la méthode utilisée par les pirates.
Suivant les cas, « ces e-mails pouvaient contenir un lien vous invitant à : renouveler votre mot de passe, ouvrir un fichier Excel, consulter un document OneDrive ». Le revendeur ajoute qu’ils « ne proviennent pas de [son] équipe et ne doivent pas être ouverts ». Dans le cas contraire, il recommande « de modifier rapidement le mot de passe associé à votre compte e-mail ».
status.francelink.net - Rapport d’incident – Cyberattaque du 28/07/2025
Nous savons que vous attendez avec impatience des informations claires sur l’incident survenu le 28 juillet 2025 et sur l’avancée de nos actions. Conscients de l’impact important que cette situation peut avoir sur vos activités, nous avons travaillé à vous fournir ce rapport dès que nous avons pu rassembler des éléments fiables. Il présente les faits connus à ce jour, les mesures mises en place, les premières avancées dans la récupération des données, ainsi que les prochaines étapes prévues pour rétablir vos services dans les meilleures conditions possibles.
Deux actions malveillantes ont été menées de façon coordonnée :
Chiffrement des données sur nos serveurs de production.
Chiffrement de nos serveurs de sauvegarde.
Les éléments dont nous disposons indiquent qu’une extraction de données a très probablement eu lieu dans le cadre de cette attaque, conformément au mode opératoire habituel du groupe AKIRA. À ce stade, nous ne connaissons pas encore l’ampleur réelle de cette fuite et les analyses sont toujours en cours.
Isolement complet de l’infrastructure et coupure immédiate des accès réseaux.
Mise en place d’un environnement sécurisé pour empêcher toute propagation.
Lancement d’une procédure de réponse à incident avec intervention d’experts en cybersécurité.
Mandat d’un premier prestataire spécialisé en récupération de données. Ce dernier a conclu que la tâche dépassait ses capacités au bout de 4 jours.
Engagement d’un second prestataire, mieux équipé pour gérer ce type de situation, qui a permis de récupérer une première partie de données (cf ci-dessus).
Planification de nouvelles vagues de récupération pour les jours à venir.
numerama.com - Depuis la fin juillet 2025, le Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) de Paris, l’une des institutions majeures en recherche et patrimoine naturel dans le monde, est la cible d’une cyberattaque d’une ampleur inédite. L’organisation ne parvient plus à accéder à de nombreuses bases de données destinées à la recherche scientifique.
C’est une affaire qui s’enlise, et dont l’issue demeure incertaine.
Depuis plusieurs semaines, une partie des réseaux, des outils de recherche et des services numériques essentiels du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris restent inaccessibles.
L’incident, révélé le 31 juillet 2025 par nos confrères de La Tribune, n’a toujours pas été résolu à l’heure où nous publions cet article, ce mardi 12 août à la mi-journée.
La direction du Muséum dit faire face à une cyberattaque sévère : « C’est une attaque vraiment massive. (…) La durée de l’indisponibilité des outils et services, ainsi que le calendrier du retour à la normale, ne sont pour le moment pas encore déterminés », précise Gilles Bloch, président du MNHN, au micro de FranceInfo le 11 août 2025.
Pour l’heure, une question demeure : qui sont les auteurs de cette cyberattaque, et quelles peuvent être leurs motivations ?
L’hypothèse d’un ransomware
La direction de l’organisme confirme avoir prévenu les autorités. Une enquête judiciaire est en cours, dirigée par la section cybercriminalité du parquet de Paris, pour déterminer l’origine, le mode opératoire et les motivations exactes de l’attaque.
Si les premiers éléments semblent orienter vers une opération criminelle structurée, le cas du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle va bien au-delà du simple vol de données, comme cela a pu être le cas lors de récentes cyberattaques ayant visé des grands groupes français tels qu’Air France ou Bouygues Telecom.
Ici, les chercheurs du Muséum et du centre PATRINAT se retrouvent privés d’accès à leurs principaux outils de travail. Les bases de données inaccessibles représentent une véritable manne scientifique, indispensable aux chercheurs et à plusieurs réseaux collaboratifs. L’attaque perturbe fortement la recherche française, particulièrement dans le secteur des sciences naturelles et de la biodiversité.
Et c’est précisément cette situation d’indisponibilité totale et d’interruption prolongée qui fait redouter la présence d’un ransomware. Il est probable que les auteurs de l’attaque cherchent à exercer un chantage financier : restaurer l’accès aux outils informatiques contre le versement d’une somme d’argent, le tout orchestré via un logiciel malveillant qui tient l’établissement en otage.
Une position claire de la part du MNHN
Dans sa communication publique, la direction du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle de Paris tient à lever toute ambiguïté : aucune rançon ne sera payée.
Gilles Bloch rappelle qu’il s’agit d’« une doctrine de l’État français et des administrations publiques ». L’objectif, comme dans d’autres pays, est de ne pas alimenter le modèle économique des réseaux cybercriminels.
En attendant l’issue de cette affaire, et malgré les perturbations techniques, l’établissement assure que les galeries d’exposition, les jardins botaniques et les parcs zoologiques restent ouverts et fonctionnent normalement. Les visiteurs ne subissent donc aucune conséquence directe de la cyberattaque.
canadianrecycler.ca - Toronto, Ontario -- Businesses across North America are reeling after a serious cyber attack threatened the data of 300 auto recycling businesses, including at least four based in Canada.
The attack, which occured on the evening of August 6, targeted businesses using SimpleHelp, a program that allows remote access to computer facilities. Those businesses that were caught up in the attack were locked out of their own databases and sent ransom notes demanding payment for the return of access.
Plazek Auto Recycling, near Hamilton, Ontario, was one of the businesses affected by the incident. According to Marc Plazek, employees only discovered the situation when they arrived at work to discover they were locked out of their computers — and discovered 30 copies of an identical ransom note on the printer.
“It was as if they arrived at our front gate, locked us in and said ‘we’ve got the only key.’ Except it was all done online.”
The ransomware software, LockBit Blpack, was developed by LockBit, a sophisticated cybercriminal organization. The group employs a dual-threat approach: it not only encrypt victims’ critical data and demand ransom payments for decryption keys, but also threaten to publicly leak sensitive information if its demands aren’t met – a tactic known as double extortion. First appearing on shadowy Russian forums in early 2020, LockBit has quickly established itself as a dominant force in the global ransomware landscape.
Like the other Canadian businesses affected by the hack, Plazek Auto Recycling did not respond to the threat. According to Marc Plazek, the company didn’t even entertain the idea of paying.
“We had a similar thing happen in 2019. We spoke with our insurance company who told us not to pay. They said there would be no reason for the hackers to bother living up to their word anyway.”
Because of the previous incident, Plazek Auto Recycling’s team had set up security measures and backed-up the computer system. The company was able to scrub its system of the malware and save all but a few hours worth of its records.
Other Canadian businesses known to have been affected include Millers Auto Recycling in Fort Erie, Ontario and Marks Parts in Ottawa. Fortunately, these companies were also able to restore access to data.
Other auto recyclers received assistance from the technical departments of Car-Part and Hollander. According to the Automotive Recyclers of Canada, most of the businesses affected by the attack had been
In response to the cyberattack, the executive director of the ARC, Wally Dingman, authored a column discussing the incident for this website.
hackernoon.com - Moonlock analysed Mac.c stealer, a new rival to AMOS. Learn its tactics, code reuse, and "building in public" strategy.
The story of the Mac.c stealer doesn’t begin with a major campaign or breach. It starts in the hushed corners of darknet forums, where a threat actor named 'mentalpositive' first emerged, drawing attention with a set of unusual traits that set him apart from other stealer developers.
Moonlock, the cybersecurity division of MacPaw, has been tracking mentalpositive for the past four months. We can already see that it is a new actor taking advantage of a macOS malware market that remains far less saturated than its Windows counterpart, marking the rise of the new wave of threat actors who are both technically skilled and commercially ambitious.
Although only recently active, Mac.c is already competing with larger, more established stealer operations like Atomic macOS Stealer. While it borrows heavily from AMOS and Rodrigo4 malware, it's tailored for quicker, high-impact data theft. As more URLs are added to its command-and-control infrastructure, Mac.c appears to be part of a larger underground ecosystem targeting macOS users.
What also stands out is a methodical and unusually transparent approach to building in public. 'mentalpositive' shared progress updates and even collected feedback on Mac.c builds — a surprising level of openness in the typically secretive world of macOS malware development.
In this article, we trace the evolution of Mac.c, unpack mentalpositive’s tactics, and examine how this stealer fits into the broader landscape of threats targeting Apple platforms.
A new player on the market
About four months ago, Moonlock Lab first noticed the emergence of the Mac.c stealer and attributed it to a developer under the alias 'mentalpositive'. This threat actor was one of many new players entering the macOS malware market, a space still far less crowded than the Windows-targeting malware industry.
Similar to other threat actors, 'mentalpositive' adopts recent trends in malware development: modular architecture for use across different campaigns, advanced obfuscation techniques, and increasingly complex command-and-control (C2) infrastructures.
However, the target profile and data exfiltration scope of mentalpositive’s Mac.c stand out. It harvests iCloud Keychain credentials, browser-stored passwords, crypto wallets, system metadata, and even files from specific locations on macOS — all using credentials obtained through phishing. By relying on standard system APIs and staged communication methods, it evades many traditional endpoint defences.
Building in public
Beyond technical design, 'mentalpositive' exhibited unusual behavior across darknet forums. Over the span of several months, this threat actor used one underground forum to showcase incremental updates to Mac.c, engage with potential users, and actively solicit feedback.
Such publicity may signal an intent to raise visibility and carve out a distinct market presence. It also appears to lay the groundwork for a custom stealer-as-a-service business model aimed squarely at the macOS threat niche.
The screenshots below show how the forum posts evolved over time as new features were announced. Since the original posts were written in Russian, we’ve included a brief explanation for each. The first screenshot shows an early advertisement offering a subscription to stealer updates for $1,500 per month.
edition.cnn.com | CNN Business - Millions of AT&T customers can file claims worth up to $7,500 in cash payments as part of a $177 million settlement related to data breaches in 2024.
The telecommunications company had faced a pair of data breaches, announced in March and July 2024, that were met with lawsuits.
Here’s a breakdown.
What happened?
On March 30, 2024, AT&T announced it was investigating a data leak that had occurred roughly two weeks prior. The breach had affected data until 2019, including Social Security numbers, and the information of 73 million former and current customers was found in a dataset on the dark web.
Four months later, the company blamed an “illegal download” on a third-party cloud platform that it learned about in April for a separate breach. This leak included telephone numbers of “nearly all” of AT&T cellular customers and customers of providers that used the AT&T network between May 1 and October 31, 2022, the company said.
The class-action settlement includes a $149 million cash fund for the first breach and a $28 million payout for the second breach.
Am I eligible for a claim?
AT&T customers whose data was involved in either breach, or both, will be eligible. Customers eligible to file a claim will receive an email notice, according to the settlement website.
AT&T said Kroll Settlement Administration is notifying current and former customers.
How do I file a claim?
The deadline to submit a claim is November 18. The final approval hearing for the settlement is December 3, according to the settlement website, and there could be appeals following an approval “and resolving them can take time.”
“Settlement Class Member Benefits will begin after the Settlement has obtained Court approval and the time for all appeals has expired,” the website states.
How much can I claim?
Customers impacted by the March incident are eligible for a cash payment of up to $5,000. Claims must include documentation of losses that happened in 2019 or later, and that are “fairly traceable” to the AT&T breach.
uk.news.yahoo.com - Records show hundreds of data breaches involving HMRC staff
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has revealed that hundreds of staff have accessed the records of taxpayers without permission or breached security in other ways. HMRC dismissed 50 members of staff last year for accessing or risking the exposure of taxpayers’ records, according to The Telegraph.
354 tax employees have been disciplined for data security breaches since 2022, of whom 186 have been fired - and some were dismissed for accessing confidential information. HMRC holds sensitive data including salary and earnings, which staff cannot access without a good reason.
In an email to staff, the line manager of the claimant wrote: “There have been more incidents of this recently.”
John Hood, of accountants Moore Kingston Smith, said: “Any HMRC employee foolish enough to look up personal information that is not part of their usual responsibilities faces a ticking time bomb as most searches are tracked. As an additional security, some parts of the system are restricted so that only specifically authorised personnel can access them, such as the departments dealing with MPs and civil servants.”
HMRC’s annual report shows there were six incidents last year of employees changing customer records without permission, and two of staff losing inadequately protected devices.
A spokesman for HMRC said: “Instances of improper access are extremely rare, and we take firm action when it does happen, helping prevent a recurrence. We take the security of customers’ data extremely seriously and we have robust systems to ensure staff only access records when there is a legitimate business need.”
fluxsec.red/ - Discover the project plan for building Sanctum, an open-source EDR in Rust. Learn about the features, milestones, and challenges in developing an effective EDR and AV system.
Sanctum is an experimental proof-of-concept EDR, designed to detect modern malware techniques, above and beyond the capabilities of antivirus.
Sanctum is going to be an EDR, built in Rust, designed to perform the job of both an antivirus (AV) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). It is no small feat building an EDR, and I am somewhat anxious about the path ahead; but you have to start somewhere and I’m starting with a blog post. If nothing else, this series will help me convey my own development and learning, as well as keep me motivated to keep working on this - all too often with personal projects I start something and then jump to the next shiny thing I think of. If you are here to learn something, hopefully I can impart some knowledge through this process.
I plan to build this EDR also around offensive techniques I’m demonstrating for this blog, hopefully to show how certain attacks could be stopped or detected - or it may be I can’t figure out a way to stop the attack! Either way, it will be fun!
Project rework
Originally, I was going to write the Windows Kernel Driver in Rust, but the bar for Rust Windows Driver development seemed quite high. I then swapped to C, realised how much I missed Rust, and swapped back to Rust!
So this Windows Driver will be fully written in Rust, both the driver and usermode module.
Why Rust for driver development?
Traditionally, drivers have been written in C & C++. While it might seem significantly easier to write this project in C, as an avid Rust enthusiast, I found myself longing for Rust’s features and safety guarantees. Writing in C or C++ made me miss the modern tooling and expressive power that Rust provides.
Thanks to Rust’s ability to operate in embedded and kernel development environments through libcore no_std, and with Microsoft’s support for developing drivers in Rust, Rust comes up as an excellent candidate for a “safer” approach to driver development. I use “safer” in quotes because, despite Rust’s safety guarantees, we still need to interact with unsafe APIs within the operating system. However, Rust’s stringent compile-time checks and ownership model significantly reduce the likelihood of common programming errors & vulnerabilities. I saw a statistic somewhere recently that some funky Rust kernels or driver modules were only like 5% unsafe code, I much prefer the safety of that than writing something which is 100% unsafe!
With regards to safety, even top tier C programmers will make occasional mistakes in their code; I am not a top tier C programmer (far from it!), so for me, the guarantee of a safer driver is much more appealing! The runtime guarantees you get with a Rust program (i.e. no access violations, dangling pointers, use after free’s [unless in those limited unsafe scopes]) are welcomed. Rust really is a great language.
The Windows Driver Kit (WDK) crate ecosystem provides essential tools that make driver development in Rust more accessible. With these crates, we can easily manage heap memory and utilize familiar Rust idioms like println!(). The maintainers of these crates have done a fantastic job bridging the gap between Rust and Windows kernel development.
