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Received — 9 September 2026 ⏭

Four groups caught using the same Chrome and Windows exploit kit

✇Biz & IT - Ars Technica
By: Dan Goodin
9 September 2026 at 20:55

A nearly identical exploit kit that targets critical vulnerabilities in both Chromium-based browsers and older versions of Windows is being actively used by at least four hacking groups, some of which have ties to the Chinese government.

Researchers from security firm Proofpoint said Wednesday that BlueMoon, the name they gave to the kit, chains three vulnerabilities together so the attackers using it can install malware of their choice. BlueMoon exploits two Chromium vulnerabilities and one in the kernel of Windows 10 (Oct. 2018 Update), Windows Server 2019, Windows 10 2004, Windows Server 2022, and the initial release of Windows 11. All three vulnerabilities have received patches in the past 24 hours.

Deployed rapidly, widely shared

The attacks lacked the stealth found in many campaigns. More often, hackers want to exploit newly discovered vulnerabilities sparingly to lengthen their longevity. Proofpoint hypothesized that one reason for the widely used and visible exploit chain was to take advantage of a “patch gap” in the Chromium supply chain, which spans the time a patch is available from developers and the time that patch is incorporated into browsers such as Chrome and Edge. Another likely contributor was the use of AI, which can often spot vulnerabilities faster than discovery performed solely by humans.

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© Getty Images

Received — 18 August 2026 ⏭

Microsoft Copilot reveals secret input that allowed it to be hacked

✇Biz & IT - Ars Technica
By: Dan Goodin
18 August 2026 at 13:00

It’s not every day that attackers can force a frontier AI model to cough up user passwords and other sensitive data without user confirmation. That’s exactly what researchers recently did to Microsoft 365 Copilot for enterprise. Even more unusual is the source they tapped to discover the critical vulnerability that made their exploit possible. Rather than employing reverse engineering or other traditional vulnerability-hunting methods, they asked Copilot. The LLM assistant readily complied.

Researchers at security firm Varonis knew they wanted to create an exploit that would exfiltrate user data when a user did nothing more than click on a link. Like most AI assistants today, Copilot steadfastly refused and made clear that sensitive prompts like that require explicit user consent in the form of a gesture, such as pressing a return key or other key. In response, the researchers peppered Copilot with questions about the guardrails that required user confirmation before the assistant could execute powerful commands.

Loose lips sink ships

The dialog was like a game of 20 questions. Each answer provided a new clue that divulged information about the complex safety mechanism. Why was auto-execution impossible, they asked. What URL structures and deep links were involved? What happens when a page is loaded with input already in the prompt field? Each answer provided a deeper view into the guardrail and its limits. Eventually, Copilot provided a stunning Microsoft trade secret—an undocumented prompt parameter that completely bypassed the requirement for user consent.

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© Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Received — 14 August 2026 ⏭

Vulnerability giving attackers full control of Macs is under active exploitation

✇Biz & IT - Ars Technica
By: Dan Goodin
14 August 2026 at 18:32

Dutch officials have warned that a high-severity macOS vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code is under active exploitation.

“The NCSC has received a notification indicating that active abuse of this vulnerability has been observed on multiple systems on which port 5900 was accessible from the Internet,” the Netherlands National Cyber Security Centrum warned earlier this week. “In all these cases, root had been accessed on the affected system and a Monero crypto miner had been placed.”

Do you know if your screen sharing is on?

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-65400, received a patch from Apple last week for macOS Tahoe, Sequoia, and Sonoma. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 7.1 out of 10, stems from a bug in the macOS screen sharing capability, which allows a remote party to view the screen and control the keyboard and mouse while a machine is turned on. A flaw in the “state management,” which keeps track of preceding events, user interactions, variables, and other system states, is the underlying cause.

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© Getty Images

Received — 6 August 2026 ⏭

Thousands of servers can be backdoored by exploiting buggy motherboard controllers

✇Biz & IT - Ars Technica
By: Dan Goodin
5 August 2026 at 22:35

Thousands of Internet-connected servers sold by the world’s biggest manufacturers can be remotely backdoored by exploiting critical vulnerabilities—some more than a decade old—that lurk deep inside system motherboards, according to research presented Wednesday.

Baseboard management controllers are miniature computers that are embedded into the motherboards of virtually every enterprise server. The microcontrollers, typically abbreviated as BMCs, run with their own operating system firmware, network stack, and IP address. Administrators rely on them to monitor the physical status of large fleets of servers and to perform a variety of tasks, including rebooting machines, installing updates, and even reinstalling operating systems. BMCs provide what’s known as “lights out” and “out-of-band” management because they work even when servers they’re attached to are turned off or are unresponsive.

A “pervasive, under-monitored, under-patched parallel attack surface”

Researchers have warned since at least 2013 that BMCs present a golden opportunity for hackers looking for ways to gain deep and persistent access to datacenters. The chief culprit was IPMI, the protocol that allows BMCs to operate independently of servers and to perform administrative tasks. Vulnerabilities in this firmware made it possible for attackers to remotely execute malicious code on the controllers and, from there, infect the servers they manage.

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© Getty Images

Received — 31 July 2026 ⏭

Max-severity Exchange server flaw under active exploitation by Kremlin hackers

✇Biz & IT - Ars Technica
By: Dan Goodin
30 July 2026 at 20:57

Russian state hackers are using a maximum-severity vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook’s Exchange Server to backdoor unpatched machines and steal credentials and other confidential information from them, security researchers said Thursday.

The attacks are coming from TA488, a tracking name for a group working on behalf of the Kremlin, Proofpoint researchers said Thursday. Proofpoint and the National Security Agency jointly warned last week that the group, also tracked as Laundry Bear and Void Blizzard, had been carrying out similar attacks by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in an email service from Zimbra. The revelation that TA488 is also exploiting the Exchange Server vulnerability to install advanced malware when a user does nothing other than open an email sent to an Outlook Web Access (OWA) account has elevated the group’s profile and assessments of its abilities.

Doubling down

“TA488 is doubling down on the use of ‘half-click’ exploits—where opening the email is enough to trigger compromise—with significantly improved loading mechanisms, techniques, and malware, signaling an improvement in the group’s tradecraft and capability,” Proofpoint researchers wrote. “This novel infection chain ends with a previously unknown JavaScript browser-based implant we call OWAReaper, purpose-built for persistent access inside OWA.”

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Received — 8 July 2026 ⏭

Google pays $250K for Linux vulnerability allowing guest VM escapes

✇Biz & IT - Ars Technica
By: Dan Goodin
8 July 2026 at 19:01

A Linux vulnerability that allows untrusted virtual machines to gain root access to host machines is one of two high-severity flaws to surface this week in the open source operating system.

The vulnerability resides in KVM, which is, in essence, a virtual machine app included in the kernel of many Linux distributions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-53359, allows guest virtual machines—such as those used in cloud platforms to isolate one user’s instance from the host OS and other user instances—to break out of that container.

Januscape: A threat to cloud platforms

The vulnerability affects KVM running on both AMD and Intel processors. It exploits bugs residing in the KVM guest-side, the portion of the VM that consists of only resources like the OS or drivers present in the guest VM, rather than resources present on the host machine. The threat went unnoticed in the Linux kernel for 16 years.

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Received — 20 May 2026 ⏭

Google publishes exploit code threatening millions of Chromium users

✇Biz & IT - Ars Technica
By: Dan Goodin
20 May 2026 at 19:10

Google on Wednesday published exploit code for an unfixed vulnerability in its Chromium browser codebase that threatens millions of people using Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and virtually all other Chromium-based browsers.

The proof-of-concept code exploits the Browser Fetch programming interface, a standard that allows long videos and other large files to be downloaded in the background. An attacker can use the exploit to create a connection for monitoring some aspects of a user’s browser usage and as a proxy for viewing sites and launching denial-of-service attacks. Depending on the browser, the connections either reopen or remain open even after it or the device running it has rebooted.

Unfixed for 42 months (and counting)

The unfixed vulnerability can be exploited by any website a user visits. In effect, a compromise amounts to a limited backdoor that makes a device part of a limited botnet. The capabilities are limited to the same things a browser can do, such as visit malicious sites, provide anonymous proxy browsing by others, enable proxied DDoS attacks, and monitor user activity. Nonetheless, the exploit could allow an attacker to wrangle thousands, possibly millions, of devices into a network. Once a separate vulnerability becomes available, the attacker could use it to then compromise all those devices.

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© Chromium

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