Former certification authority eMudhra has claimed a buggy Python script is the main reason it issued laughably insecure digital certificates. The company posted its account of the matter on Bugzilla where a user with the handle “Naveen Kumar ML” wrote “During a single key‑generation ceremony on 30 April 2025, sixteen subordinate (issuing) CA key pairs in eMudhra’s ‘B’ and ‘C’ series were generated correctly on a hardware security module and then processed through an approved wrap/unwrap round‑trip using a custom python key‑handling script.” eMudhra aimed to create eight ECDSA P-384 private keys which should have been 48 bytes long. But the script contained what Kumar described as “a bug/defect in the import code [which] resulted in a read‑back from the unwrapped object that truncated the private value, so the certified public keys correspond to private scalars below the expected range and are recoverable from public information.” The truncation is the key problem here, because it appears that eMudhra ignored 47 of the 48 bytes, producing its infamously insecure single-byte keys such as the number four. Whatever the nature of the bug, Kumar asserts it was “a custom script run only on an isolated ceremony host and was not a function of the emCA software.” eMudhra needed that script because “global supply chain constraints” meant it couldn’t acquire the hardware security modules (HSMs), devices that generate and store cryptographic keys, that it wanted to use when creating a set of certificates for use in the USA. It therefore used HSMs made by a company called Utimaco to generate keys and planned to transfer the keys it produced to a different set of HSMs from a company called Crypto4A. Kumar explained that eMudhra decided on that move, which is unusual, because changes to policy about provenance of certificates meant it had to generate new certs by the end of May. The plan went sour when the company didn’t notice the errors in its script and didn’t test the keys it created. The rest is history: a Mozilla team member noticed that the company’s keys were woefully weak and pointed out that attackers could therefore issue fraudulent certificates that allowed them to impersonate servers, observe traffic, or even modify data in transit. Browser-makers quickly tweaked their software so it would not recognize certs from eMudhra. The Indian business then quit the SSL/TLS certification business, which it said was never a major source of revenue but had suddenly become a severe source of embarrassment. Kumar’s new post lists three steps eMudhra will take to wind up its certification business, one of which will see the company “Put in place improvements motivated by findings of [an] independent review to strengthen our general PKI operations.” Sounds like a plan. ®

Shipping behemoth A.P. Moller-Maersk says it is investigating "an IT security incident" involving the potential theft of data from a legacy system. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Denmark-based shipping, cargo, and logistics giant confirmed it immediately launched an investigation into the attack and the affected system was secured. "Our findings so far strongly suggest no sensitive data has been disclosed," the company said. "The incident is isolated to a local system, and we have found no indication that there has been any impact on other Maersk systems or customer and partner systems that connect to Maersk through integrations such as APIs and EDI." Maersk described the legacy local system as one "from a previous acquisition," and said it does not expect the attack to have an effect on operations. Customers were reassured that they can continue to use Maersk platforms to manage their shipments as usual, and to expect updates from the company as and when they're available. "Cybersecurity remains a constant, ongoing priority for Maersk," it added. "We have rigorous processes in place to identify and prevent incidents and minimize customer impact. "As always, please treat any unexpected communications claiming to relate to this matter with caution and verify them through your usual Maersk contact. "Thank you for your patience as we continue to investigate the incident." Fortunately for those who immediately feel uneasy after hearing "Maersk" and "IT security" mentioned in the same breath, the wording of the shipping giant's disclosure suggests this intrusion won't be as calamitous as the NotPetya disaster in 2017. Mimicking the Petya ransomware strain, NotPetya was an infamous destructive wiper malware strain that wormed its way across the global economy. Western intelligence agencies attributed the malware to Russia's Sandworm group, an outfit believed to be part of the country's military intelligence service (GRU). Maersk said at the time that it expected the attack to result in a circa $300 million bill, owing to remediation and rebuild costs. Offering a sense of scale, Jim Hagemann Snabe, then chair of Maersk, told World Economic Forum delegates in 2018 that the company's rebuild encompassed 4,000 new servers, 45,000 new PCs, and 2,500 applications – which he said had been completed over just ten days. In 2020, as exclusively revealed by The Register, Maersk went on to lay off around 150 staffers from its command and control center in Maidenhead, England. The staffers who lost their jobs had played key roles in the recovery. ®

In 2019, OpenAI decided not to publicly release a new model because its research uncovered “concerns about malicious applications of the technology.” And on Tuesday, the company announced it has built a kill switch for the models deployed in its research labs, months after some of them displayed disturbing behavior. “As our models get more powerful and the associated safety and security risks become bigger, it becomes more and more critical that we can detect potential issues, and quickly stop models in their tracks when needed,” OpenAI explains in a Tuesday post. The company named the kill switch “Control Room” and described it as “a central system to track model workloads across our research infrastructure and stop them quickly when safety or security concerns arise.” The facility can apparently stop models from producing any output 35 seconds after a decision to pull the plug – and can go faster. “The 35-second lag comes from a caching layer for inference authorization, to support the required volume of traffic. We are working to drive this number down to zero so that we can end jobs instantly,” the company promises. A rookie mistake in critical infrastructure design is to build both production and resilience tools on shared resources that could be taken offline by a single incident. OpenAI seems conscious of that risk, because it says the tool “has been built to keep working even when other systems fail, and to stop model output if Control Room itself goes down.” OpenAI hasn’t explained why it took so long to build a kill switch or why it decided now is the moment when it needs one. The Register fancies recent examples of agents exceeding their brief in worrying ways – like attacking Hugging Face, causing trouble at the Wikimedia Foundation, or going a little too deep when researching Australian healthcare data – may have influenced the timing of this development. “Control Room is already deployed across our research infrastructure, where the need is greatest,” the company’s announcement states. “Our external model-serving stack is already much more centralized by nature, with a well-developed operational capability to quickly take down model deployments if needed.” OpenAI says it plans to “strengthen and expand the system over the coming months, alongside our investments in monitoring for misaligned behavior and security breaches.” That’s a variant of Big Tech’s usual “We’re sorry and we promise to do better in future” proclamation that follows the latest SNAFU. Yet back in 2019, OpenAI pulled the pin before matters ever reached that state. ®

It’s another doozy of a Patch Tuesday, with Microsoft fixing 1,094 bugs in its products, including one that attackers exploited before Redmond released a patch. Jake Knott, head of threat intelligence at exposure management firm watchTowr, succinctly said in an email to The Register: “Maybe we should just go home.” “Most security teams haven’t quite recovered from the last month of bumper-to-bumper critical vulnerabilities, emergency patches, and ‘2shell’-branded everything, and we’re yet again at another Patch Tuesday,” Knott told us. Starting with the zero-day: It’s an Outlook spoofing vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-124194, and it only garnered a 6.5 out of 10 CVSS rating. But as Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at TrendAI’s Zero Day Initiative, warns, don’t let the score or the name lull you into thinking it’s OK to put off patching this one. “It’s labeled spoofing, but the impact is bigger than the name suggests,” Childs said in his monthly Patch Tuesday review. “An attacker sends a specially crafted message file and convinces a user to open it,” he wrote. “Outlook then connects to an attacker-controlled network location without showing the usual external-content warning, which discloses the user’s NTLMv2 hash. The attacker can use that hash to authenticate as the user.” Microsoft marked CVE-2026-124194 as exploited, but per usual didn’t say when the attacks started, who is battering this bug, and what they are doing with the access post exploitation. These details will likely start trickling out soon. Plus, now that there’s a public fix, other miscreants are undoubtedly already scanning for vulnerable versions and reverse engineering the patch for their own attack purposes. So prioritize this fix, and keep an eye on your inbox for any suspicious files. Back-to-back months of 1K+ CVEs Despite the second month of more than 1,000 CVEs (October had 1,474), CVE-2026-124194 is the only one under active exploitation, and none of the 1,094 are listed as publicly known. Childs says this shouldn’t give organizations “false comfort.” “Logging back-to-back months above 1,000 CVEs proves automated bug-hunting has permanently reset patch volume,” he told The Register. “With AI making patch-diffing and exploit generation near-instant, the threat window opens the minute these updates drop.” For defenders, this means two things, Childs added. “What defenders need to know and do right now is abandon broad triage and take immediate defensive action: patch Exchange and Domain Controllers (LDAP/Kerberos) first to stop zero-click compromise, ring-fence exposed network services like DNS and DHCP to prevent wormable spread, and verify manual administrative fixes on your cloud services,” he said. Zero-click threats There are two zero-click threats in this month’s batch of fixes: CVE-2026-116928 and CVE-2026-119958. Both are critical, carrying 9.8 CVSS ratings, in part because they don’t require any user interaction to exploit. CVE-2026-116928 is an out-of-bounds write in Microsoft Windows Search Component that could lead to remote code execution. An unauthenticated attacker could abuse this search feature in Exchange “by sending an email containing a specially crafted attachment,” Redmond warned. “Exchange automatically processes the attachment for indexing, so the recipient does not need to open the email or attachment. Successful exploitation could allow the attacker to execute code with the permissions of the affected processing service.” CVE-2026-119958 is an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in Windows' implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) that could allow unauthenticated attackers to execute code remotely without user interaction. This one can be exploited by sending specially crafted LDAP requests to vulnerable systems, potentially compromising domain controllers. Childs also counts 30 CVEs that pose a “wormable risk,” requiring zero authentication and zero user interaction over a network. All of those are listed in his blog, so prioritize fixing those as well. And…Xbox remote code execution And finally, for funsies, a critical flaw in the Windows Xbox Live Networking Service, CVE-2026-112967, that could allow remote code execution also made this month's roundup. It's a heap-overflow vulnerability with a 9.8 CVSS rating that doesn't require authentication or user interaction to exploit. So don't take a gaming break between testing November's updates. Or, if you do, at least make sure vulnerable Windows systems running the Xbox Live Networking Service are on your patching list, too. ®

If you didn't have any privacy concerns about slapping a Ring doorbell on your front door or putting Ring cameras inside, you'll love Amazon's newest offerings, which move around homes and businesses to capture views stationary cameras might miss. The house of Bezos announced the launch of Ring Robotics on Tuesday along with its first two products: a drone designed for indoor home security, and a wheeled robot with a telescoping camera mast for automated after-hours business patrols. Both are designed to proactively patrol spaces as well as respond to alerts from connected alarm systems and Ring-connected devices. According to Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, this is something customers actually want, as those stationary cameras just can’t quite see everywhere. “It’s not just a new category of security; it’s the beginning of a future where proactive, autonomous protection is something every home and every business can have,” Siminoff said. The consumer-focused Ring Drone Cam launches from its own charging dock that Amazon says keeps the thing “out of sight” when not in use, and when in flight is able to patrol a home by flying around pre-programmed routes to take in the sights with its 148-degree FOV, 2K camera that includes LED illumination for night patrols. Amazon says it can also respond to alerts from cameras, sensors, and alarm systems. The Ring Rover Cam, designed with businesses in mind, is sort of like a security Roomba that sports a camera on a telescoping mast that Amazon says can be programmed to certain heights to let it see over counters, shelves, and other workplace obstacles. The Rover can also perform 360-degree scans and includes a siren, lights, and two-way audio so you can yell at intruders who aren't dissuaded by its presence. The Rover streams and records video in up to 4K while moving or patrolling and is designed to make regular patrols of businesses during off hours. It can also detect people and respond to alerts from connected Ring devices. Of course, given that this is Ring we're talking about, these flying and free-wheeling cameras use Amazon's cloud for some processing, likely inviting privacy concerns about what footage and mapping data the company can access and retain. The Amazon-owned security tech firm has faced a number of privacy complaints over the years, some of which have resulted in multimillion-dollar settlements. Ring agreed to pay $5.8 million in a 2023 settlement with the FTC over allegations that employees and contractors improperly accessed customers' private videos and that the company failed to adequately protect accounts against unauthorized access – just imagine the privacy concerns raised by flying robots. More recently, the company took heat for partnering with surveillance outfit Flock Safety, a relationship which it has since canceled. Amazon/Ring also invited criticism for a Super Bowl ad earlier this year promoting a new feature called Search Party, which would remotely activate Ring cameras to search for lost pets, suggesting that Amazon had the ability, in theory, to use Ring cameras like a dystopian neighborhood surveillance network. Another Ring feature, Familiar Faces, which uses AI-powered facial recognition to identify people captured by compatible cameras, prompted a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in June. The complaint alleges that the feature collected biometric information from visitors and passersby without their consent. If we can’t have iRobot, we’ll do it with Ring Amazon abandoned its efforts to buy Roomba robot-vacuum maker iRobot in 2024, blaming regulatory scrutiny for the move. The FTC, under then-chair Lina Khan, examined the deal's potential effects on competition and consumer privacy, including concerns about the information Roombas collect while mapping customers' homes. European regulators, meanwhile, raised concerns that Amazon could use its marketplace to disadvantage rival robot vacuum makers. With this Ring move, Amazon is once again putting robots capable of mapping interior spaces into customers' hands, reviving some of the privacy questions raised during its failed iRobot acquisition. As Amazon explains in Tuesday’s press release, both new Ring robots are powered by AI Pilot, “a custom-built system that uses the devices’ cameras, specialized vision models, on-device sensors, and cloud processing to see, think, and navigate autonomously.” To help the Ring robots understand where they're operating, the devices generate floor plans of interior spaces, according to Amazon. “Carry Ring Drone through your space or let Ring Rover autonomously explore, and it turns what it sees into a floor plan,” the company explains of the setup process. AI Pilot takes the reins in identifying the types of rooms it sees and suggests key patrol areas it should focus on, which users can add to in the Ring app. Amazon claims that videos captured by these new flying and free-wheeling cameras will be protected by an encryption scheme it calls Throw Away the Key Encryption (TAKE). The system temporarily allows Ring's cloud services to access recordings for enabled features before the relevant encryption keys are deleted. Ring announced the scheme in August, presenting it as a way to limit access to customer recordings without sacrificing cloud-powered features. “With TAKE, your Ring videos are protected with unique, rotating encryption keys,” Amazon explained. “A copy of the keys is temporarily held inside a secure enclave within the cloud; think of it as a sealed vault that can only provide Ring access to the key under strict, limited conditions.” The keys, Amazon claims, are later deleted so that only users and those they allow access to can see videos, with Ring only retaining them “to power the intelligent features that you have active on your account.” “We take privacy concerns seriously, and we believe privacy and customer control are fundamental to building products people trust,” a Ring spokesperson told The Register when asked about prior privacy concerns. “That is why customers decide where these devices go and when.” We asked about floor plan security, but didn’t get an answer about that. As for when those devices will be available, the Rover Cam will start shipping on December 16 at a price of about $1,000, but the Drone Cam might not ever actually make it to homes. Amazon’s announcement mentions a release date of January 27, 2027, but that’s subject to the FCC giving its blessing. “Ring Drone Cam has not been authorized as required by the rules of the FCC,” Amazon’s release states. “This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained.” Amazon told us that the Drone Cam would still start shipping in January, luckily giving everyone a few months to figure out how to deal with this new, more mobile, invasion of privacy. ®

Security company Barracuda warns that attackers are exploiting a pre-authentication authorization bypass bug and a command-injection vulnerability in its popular Email Security Gateway (ESG) products that, when chained, could allow the crims to run commands with root privileges. “We have identified exploitation activity affecting a small number of organizations,” the security vendor said in a late Monday night update to its earlier security advisory. Barracuda declined to answer The Register’s questions, including one about how many organizations have been hit by attackers. A company spokesperson told us that it “worked directly” with the affected businesses “to quickly address the issue. Barracuda acted promptly to remediate the vulnerabilities, releasing patches for affected products.” The vendor disclosed and fixed the vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-116606 and CVE-2026-111560, last week. CVE-2026-116606 is a 9.3 CVSS-rated, pre-authentication authorization bypass flaw in ESG. While authentication is not required to exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have access to the administrative user interface. As Purplecop Security founder Tausif Ahmed said on Tuesday: “If your Email Security Gateway's admin UI is open to the internet, that's the first thing I'd close today.” CVE-2026-111560 is an 8.6-rated command-injection flaw that affects multiple Barracuda products: its ESG, load balancer (ADC), message archiver (BMA), web application firewall (WAF), WAF control center (WCC), and web security gateway (WSG). “If exploited in combination, these vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to bypass authorization controls and obtain root access to the device,” Barracuda warned on November 2. At the time, the vendor did not report any active exploitation of either. We don’t yet know who is responsible for the attacks, or whether the intruders gained root access – but if they did, they could steal data, install backdoors, and take full control of affected systems. These types of edge-device exploits have been used by Chinese-government spies, and in 2023 the FBI blamed PRC-linked attackers for a series of attacks that targeted Barracuda ESGs to deploy custom malware and maintain access to high-value networks. According to Mandiant, 27 percent of identified affected organizations were government entities. So if you haven’t already: patch now. ®

President Donald Trump has nominated Palantir security chief Michael LoSapio to lead CISA, putting an executive from the controversial government supplier in line to run America's civilian cyber defense agency. The nomination, announced on Monday, could end CISA's nearly two-year wait for a Senate-confirmed director following Jen Easterly's departure in January 2025. LoSapio has served as Palantir's CISO since September 2024, having previously led the company's infrastructure and network security team. He first joined the data analytics outfit in 2013, later spent a spell at database company SingleStore, and returned to Palantir in 2017. If confirmed, LoSapio would move from securing Palantir's systems to leading the federal government's main civilian cyber defense agency. CISA protects federal civilian networks and works with critical infrastructure operators, including power, water, and telecommunications providers. It's a substantial job, particularly given the state of the agency he would inherit. CISA has shed more than 1,000 staff, roughly a third of its workforce, since Trump returned to the White House, according to reports. It's now trying to plug the gaps, although acting director Nick Andersen said in September that around 250 would-be recruits were still waiting for security clearance before they could get to work. Andersen has been running CISA since February. With fewer people to go around, CISA is also rethinking where to spend its time. A strategy published last month emphasizes infrastructure whose failure would do the most damage, raising questions about what gets less attention as the agency operates with fewer staff. LoSapio would be the second person Trump has put forward for the role. His previous pick, Sean Plankey, withdrew in April after spending more than a year awaiting confirmation, with his nomination becoming caught up in a dispute involving Republican Senator Rick Scott over Coast Guard contracting. The nomination arrives late in the congressional calendar. If the Senate does not confirm LoSapio before the current Congress ends, Trump would have to nominate him again for consideration by the incoming Democratic-controlled Senate. Palantir, co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, has become a major supplier of technology to US government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Its work with immigration authorities has attracted criticism from civil liberties groups and Democratic lawmakers concerned about surveillance and the handling of sensitive personal information. The controversy isn't confined to the US either. In the UK, WhatsApp messages obtained by campaign group Foxglove this week indicate that Palantir privately lobbied a health minister to consider extending its software into GP patient records, despite that data being expressly excluded from its £330 million NHS England contract for the Federated Data Platform. That revelation follows news that NHS England wants greater oversight of Palantir's claims about the benefits of its software, amid questions over the evidence supporting its performance figures. Those controversies could make LoSapio's confirmation hearings particularly interesting, especially as Democrats prepare to scrutinize Palantir's government business more closely. It's unclear whether LoSapio plans to leave Palantir or what would happen to any financial interests he holds in the company if confirmed. Those are questions likely to come up during a confirmation process that CISA, having spent nearly two years without a permanent boss while losing a third of its workforce, could probably do without dragging on any longer. ®

Fireworks AI has disclosed another cyberattack in October and a wider customer data exposure involving billing records, datasets, and incomplete model weights. The company, which lets customers train and run AI models, said a third-party cloud provider hosting its research and development machines was compromised on October 23. Attackers used that access the following day to reach Fireworks development systems and run an unauthorized workload. Fireworks suspects links to financially motivated criminals involved in LLMJacking – selling unauthorized access to AI models through illicit gateways. Fireworks grouped the affected data into three categories: Resource metadata: Resource identifiers, display names, descriptions, creation times, and more Billing information: Billing and shipping addresses, invoice and payment histories, account balances, and credit usages. Payment card numbers are not saved and therefore unaffected Model weights and datasets: For certain customers, a subset of incomplete model weights and datasets were accessed, Fireworks said Lin Qiao, Fireworks co-founder and CEO, said the apparent motive was not stealing model weights in response to concerns raised by Cantina Security CEO Hari Mulackal. "From what we see attackers are not after weights," said Qiao. "Most downloads were partial and stopped." Render founder and CEO Anurag Goel shared a notification from Notion warning that some chats with its AI assistant may have been exposed through the Fireworks incident. "Following an investigation by the Notion security team, we have determined that your workspace, Render, was among the

Google has patched its eighth actively exploited Chrome zero-day of 2026, matching its total for the whole of last year with nearly two months still left on the calendar. The latest flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-125350, is a high-severity use-after-free vulnerability in Chrome's XML component. Google confirmed in a security advisory published Monday that attackers are already exploiting the bug, although it hasn't said who's behind the attacks or who might be getting targeted. "Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2026-125350 exists in the wild," the company said, offering little else about the attacks. The vulnerability was reported anonymously on November 6 and involves a memory management error that occurs when software continues using a pointer to memory that has already been freed. Such bugs can potentially allow attackers to corrupt memory and execute malicious code, although Google hasn't disclosed how this particular flaw is being exploited. Google is keeping further technical details under wraps until enough users have installed the fix, a familiar approach intended to stop other attackers from getting their hands on a working exploit. The patch arrives in Chrome 157.0.8103.50/.51 for Windows and macOS, and 157.0.8103.50 for Linux. The update also addresses eight other security vulnerabilities, including high-severity flaws affecting WebGL, FileSystem, GPU, Compositing, and the V8 JavaScript engine. The release fixes another use-after-free bug in Chrome's XML component, CVE-2026-125346, which was reported by Arni Hardarson of Neonix Security in October, though Google hasn't indicated that this second vulnerability is being exploited. The latest discovery adds to what's becoming a rather long list of Chrome zero-days this year. By June, Google had already patched five actively exploited Chrome zero-days, including flaws in its V8 JavaScript engine, Skia graphics library, and WebGPU implementation. The list has only grown since then, with two more V8 bugs fixed in September and the latest XML vulnerability bringing the total to eight. That puts 2026 level with 2025, when Google also fixed eight Chrome zero-days exploited in the wild. Whether the browser maker can make it through the remaining weeks of the year without adding another to the pile is anyone's guess. Google says the latest update will roll out over the coming days and weeks, but users can check manually by heading to Chrome's Settings menu and selecting About Chrome. With attackers already making use of the vulnerability, it's probably worth doing that sooner rather than waiting for Chrome to get around to it. ®

Classes at Vanderbilt University are proceeding as scheduled today, although access to most university systems remains restricted following a cyberattack claimed by ransomware group BYOD. Vanderbilt announced on Monday morning that it was dealing with "an active cybersecurity incident," and that the fallout may affect university devices, systems, and cloud-based services. The Nashville-based university initially told students and staff to shut down university devices and disconnect from campus Wi-Fi. It warned them to watch for unexpected prompts, altered files or permissions, unfamiliar applications, and unsolicited authentication requests. Campus computers reportedly began playing an audio threat attributed to BYOD. Student newspaper The Vanderbilt Hustler cited posts on campus social network Fizz showing the message. "You have been compromised by BYOD," the recording said. "We suggest you reach out to us as soon as possible. Instructions have been placed on your desktop. Failure to communicate will result in this estate being brought to the ground completely. Make the right choice or rot with the wrong one." By Monday evening, Vanderbilt had restored access to campus Wi-Fi, but warned that access to most systems remains restricted. "We know this has disrupted important work and caused frustration across the university," it said. "Vanderbilt Information Technology is working with government agencies and other partners to manage this situation." Students were told to attend classes as scheduled on Tuesday and contact instructors about flexibility on coursework deadlines. Staff were instructed to report to work normally. Vanderbilt's Athletics department said that its ticketing system was unavailable, and that students were unable to claim tickets for the college's football game against Alabama on Saturday. BYOD claimed responsibility for the attack on Vanderbilt on Monday, along with extensive data theft. "If you could not tell already, your databases are locked [and] we have your entire estate and research data," it said via its leak site. "Over 1 million SSNs, full names, email addresses, phone numbers, student and employee records, full takeover of your DC, whatever was on your network, we possess." Vanderbilt has not confirmed BYOD's claims about the extent of its access or the data allegedly stolen. BYOD may be a familiar name to some. The group previously claimed attacks on the University of New Mexico and Trump Mobile's customer database. BYOD also claimed responsibility on Monday for an attack on Texas Health and Human Services. The agency has not publicly confirmed an incident and did not immediately respond to our questions. ®

Google DeepMind researchers have completed a formal verification of Signal's messaging security, marking what they claim is the first time AI has helped devise a proof that links protocol-level security guarantees to a widely used cryptographic implementation. They did so using AlphaProof Code, a multi-agent framework for formal software specification and verification. AlphaProof Code relies on a human-guided agent that writes a Lean specification, assesses machine code semantics, and crafts an agent-authored proof that the Lean kernel checks against the specification. In this instance, AlphaProof Code verified Signal’s post-quantum PQXDH handshake and Triple Ratchet, thereby validating the design of libsignal's forward secrecy, authentication, post-compromise security, and handshake secrecy. In so doing, the Google/DeepMind team – Swarat Chaudhuri, Andrew Ferraiuolo, Anton Kovsharov, Tej Chajed, Sam Schlesinger, Karn Seth, Jonathan Katz, Charles Sutton, and Pushmeet Kohli – has taken a step toward a challenge the Beneficial AI Foundation issued in April to formally verify the Signal protocol and Signal app with Lean. The AlphaProof Code process involves working with various models to turn Signal's security goals into a human-reviewed mathematical specification. Based on this spec, the researchers assigned Gemini Carbon agents to generate Lean code proving the correctness of the libsignal implementation. After the agents generated 6.5 million lines of Lean code, they undertook an auditing pass and flagged bits that required human review. The result is theoretical in that it assumes perfect cryptography and doesn't guarantee the computational secrecy of bytes. But it's still a meaningful assertion of correctness. "It's a system that is fundamentally built for human AI collaboration," said Swarat Chaudhuri, research scientist at Google DeepMind and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, in an interview with The Register. Traditionally, said Chaudhuri, you start proving theorems with well-defined problems formulated by a mathematician that get submitted to an AI agent for proof. In this case, the researchers had to figure out what to prove. "In formal methods, we always had this belief that verification is the hard bit," he said. "There's thirty or forty years of work on how to scale up verification. Now we are able to do that. So now the question is what are we verifying? … That process is fundamentally human-in-the-loop, but we devised a process of trying to scale it up to the extent possible with AI." As Chaudhuri and his colleagues note in their research paper, "AlphaProof Code: Verifying Signal’s Security at the Machine-Code Level," formal verification used to require heroic efforts. Formally verifying the seL4 microkernel took 20 person-years, while developing the verified CompCert C compiler took six years. AlphaProof Code, they believe, can drastically reduce the cost of formal verification, though their Signal work still took four weeks for a team of five people and "quite a few tokens." "The dream is definitely to scale this up," said Chaudhuri. "So you know there's been this rise in offensive AI capabilities, right? There are a lot of insecure systems around the world, and they're going to be exploited. "So what we really need to do is to apply this kind of technology to code at large all over the world and figure out what is it that you want to guard against? How do you write those properties, how do we specify those properties? That's going to be super important, but we have to figure that out." Pointing to a related DeepMind project, AlphaProof Nexus, which is focused on mathematics, Chaudhuri said the next step is to apply this technology during the software design process – not just to cryptographic protocols but code in general. "We really believe that the next frontier is not going to be proof but specification in this kind of research," he said. "And so that's why we took on this domain where that was actually a hard problem. And I think that we have some really good insights now about how to go about this, although not the last word by any means." ®

Anthropic has started extending access to its bug-finding Mythos model by allowing Cisco and IBM to make it part of their security products. Cisco announced its integration today at an event in Melbourne, Australia, where it revealed that the red teaming tools in its AI Defense suite, which looks for weaknesses and inappropriate activity in AI models, agents, and applications they power, will be able to call Mythos to test customers’ setups. “At a very high level, AI Defense has the ability to look at models and break them,” said Jeff Schultz, Cisco’s senior vice president for portfolio strategy and marketing. He said the tool is now “super-charged by Mythos” and will identify more danger that AI Defense will then address. AI Defense already uses AI-powered red teaming to find flaws. Mythos will become another option. Cisco will make it available under users’ existing licenses, without additional cost. Natalie Mead, Anthropic’s head of applied AI for the Asia-Pacific, said the company has a long queue of buyers who want to use Mythos, and working with Cisco will make it easier to satisfy that demand. Anthropic initially made Mythos available under "Project Glasswing," a program that gave vetted organizations access to the model to test their codebases, but has since expanded access through other controlled programs, an arrangement that makes considerable sense because in the wrong hands Mythos could help attackers exploit software flaws. The Cisco deal exposes the functionality of Mythos to end-users, without letting them use the model itself. The Register asked Mead if Anthropic has similar deals with other third parties and she demurred. That may be because a few hours after Cisco told us about its use of Mythos, IBM announced that it will also integrate Anthropic’s model into a product – namely its Concert tool, which uses AI to scan applications for risks and weaknesses. IBM says it will use Mythos “to uncover weaknesses traditional scanners miss, determine which pose real risk and generate fixes for developer approval.” We have asked Anthropic if these integrations represent a decision to open Mythos to more users in more ways. We will update this story if we receive a substantial response. Also on Monday, Anthropic introduced version 5.2 of Mythos and Fable, which the company says generate outputs up to 30 percent faster than version 5.1 yet cost less: $8 per million input tokens and $40 per million output tokens. Users can choose to run both models in “fast mode,” which speeds up token generation by up to 2.5 times, and doubles prices to $16 per million input tokens and $80 per million output tokens. Anthropic says it “ran extensive prerelease safety testing on the model that underlies Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2. This included developing novel evaluations that give deeper insight into specific concerning behaviors like sandbox escapes.” After those tests, the company concluded “high-stakes risks from misalignment remain low, and the model performed as well as, or better than, our recent models on most alignment measures. “Fable 5.2’s cyber and biology safeguards are as robust as those of Fable 5.1 but produce fewer unnecessary blocks, and we have implemented our strongest-ever protections against distillation attacks.” The latter is a telling admission, given Anthropic believes Chinese AI labs use distillation to effectively clone its models without doing expensive training work. ®

France has turned up the heat on Iran over destructive cyberattacks targeting refrigeration controllers at more than 700 grocery stores in October, spoiling food and sparking fires. The country vowed to take action using “all available means of response.” The supermarket attacks, which affected Casino, Leclerc, Coopérative U, Metro, Carrefour, and Intermarché groups, started at least 15 fires and caused food losses in the tens of millions of euros, according to a Monday report by France’s Cyber Crisis Coordination Centre (C4). The C4 includes the National Cybersecurity Agency of France, the Directorate General for External Security, the Directorate General for Internal Security, the Directorate General for Armament, and the Cyber Defence Command. “This is an unprecedented campaign in terms of its scale and level of aggressiveness, thus constituting the first cyber offensive campaign carried out purely for the purpose of sabotage on national territory,” France’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs said in a statement. All signs point to CyberAv3ngers Both the report and the statement attributed the refrigeration controller hacks to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Shahid Kaveh cyber unit. The Shahid Kaveh unit, which French national security officials say is led by Reza Salarvand and Mahdi Lashgarian, is better known by its hacktivist personas, including CyberAv3ngers. This is the same crew suspected of involvement in the July attacks that targeted more than 100 internet-exposed water systems in America. While the US government hasn’t attributed the intrusions to any country or group, private-sector security analysts blamed Iran, and specifically CyberAv3ngers. The IRGC-affiliated hacking crew has been breaking into industrial controllers for years, and in 2023, American national security and law enforcement agencies attributed a series of cyberattacks against "multiple" US water facilities to CyberAv3ngers. “The Iranian cyber threat against French interests is not new,” according to the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. “Iran has already carried out several destabilizing acts against us, notably targeting the weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2023 and the organization of the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.” Since at least June 2024, the Shahid Kaveh unit has had the ability to scan, access, and control industrial control equipment from Schneider Electric, Siemens, and Rockwell, the French government said in its report. It pins the refrigeration controller hacks on this particular Iranian crew for a couple of reasons. Making the case for attribution First: the infrastructure used to carry out the October supermarket attacks was also used during this timeframe to conduct reconnaissance on Schneider Electric equipment, zeroing in on small- and medium-sized energy and water production units. “The techniques used during these actions are known to have been used by the Shahid Kaveh unit since at least April 2026,” the report says. It also notes that investigators found “traces of Farsi use” in the attack infrastructure. Plus, Iranian media outlet CyberbanNews, which is reportedly linked to the Shahid Kaveh unit, publicized the incidents that occurred late on October 11 and into October 12 extremely quickly: “as early as October 13.” In early November, similar cyberattacks on commercial refrigerators and freezers were reported across Europe, with grocery stores in Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Sweden reporting widespread food losses after miscreants spiked temperatures to as high as 122°F (50°C). Last week, the US federal government urged owners and operators to take security measures to prevent these types of attacks from spreading to America. France fights back The French government, for its part, said that it would “use all available means of response, including within the European Union and alongside its European and international partners, to anticipate, prevent, deter and respond to destabilizing and destructive actions targeting it in cyberspace.” This includes proposing additional EU sanctions against Iranian entities and individuals involved. France also vowed to express “its strongest condemnation of these cyberattacks” to the Iranian ambassador. However, the country didn’t rule out responding with more than just harsh words: “France reserves the right to take any additional measures, public and non-public, deemed necessary and proportionate to respond to these cyberattacks.” ®

Unknown attackers used compromised identity and access management (IAM) credentials associated with Qubole's AWS account to access customer AWS environments, stealing secrets and other sensitive data from S3 buckets. Qubole is a cloud data processing platform that uses cross-account IAM roles to manage compute and access storage in customers' AWS environments without requiring customers to provide long-lived AWS access keys. The supply-chain attack abused this third-party, cross-account trust relationship. Google’s cloud-security shop Wiz declined to tell us how many organizations were affected, but called it a “broad, opportunistic supply chain campaign” that hit “multiple” customer environments. “Because many organizations left trust policies active even after deprecating the platform, the attacker was able to successfully assume integration roles, enumerate cloud resources, harvest secrets, and siphon data,” the researchers told The Register in an emailed response to questions. Qubole did not respond to The Register's inquiries. Wiz, working with Google's Mandiant incident responders after AI data security company Sentra flagged suspicious activity, traced the malicious activity back to October 14, when credentials associated with Qubole's AWS account were used to call the sts:AssumeRole API to obtain temporary credentials for customer-managed integration roles. The calls originated from Qubole AWS account 805246085872, and used IAM user ID AIDA3W7DIFLYOLTK63SFS, Wiz analysts Zack Morrow, Sean Johnstone, and Benjamin Read said in a Monday blog about the supply chain attack. “Across the affected environments, Wiz CIRT has not observed this IAM user in any activity other than that associated with this threat actor,” the trio wrote. This activity continued on October 15, and on October 18, the digital intruders began using a second IAM user from the same account. Once inside customers’ environments, the crooks began probing a ton of AWS services and stealing credentials, keys, and other secrets stored across Lambda, Secrets Manager, and SSM Parameter Store. The miscreants also used TruffleHog to test AWS credentials belonging to victim organizations, discover their Microsoft Entra ID secrets, and request OAuth tokens using Okta client credentials also uncovered while snooping around the AWS environments. Abusing the integration roles also allowed the criminals to steal data from customers’ S3 storage, although it seems they were largely opportunistic attackers, in some cases downloading entire buckets, as opposed to state-sponsored spies looking for specific data. The threat hunters haven’t attributed the supply chain attack to any particular group, and say they don’t have any insight into how the miscreants are using the stolen data. While investigating this incident, Wiz spotted a separate campaign between October 8 and October 11 that also used customer-owned AWS access keys for Qubole integrations. While a “small number” of these also resulted in the intruders compromising victim organizations’ AWS environments, Wiz said it can’t definitively connect the two sets of malicious activity. Organizations that have integrated with Qubole should rotate credentials - although rotating a credential does not end temporary sessions that were already issued. Customers should also review CloudTrail from October 1 onward, looking for AssumeRole events where userIdentity.accountId matches Qubole's AWS account ID, 805246085872, particularly those originating from non-AWS IP addresses. “For every role session you find, review all subsequent activity from that session, especially Secrets Manager, SSM Parameter Store, Lambda and S3,” the researchers wrote. “If the threat actor assumed an integration role, rotate every secret, parameter and Lambda environment variable the role could read, and revoke active sessions for the role.” “AWS services were not compromised by this issue and operated as designed," an AWS spokesperson wrote to use after we first published this article. "The activity describes how threat actors used credentials associated with a third-party provider to access some AWS customers’ accounts by assuming IAM roles those customers had configured to trust that provider. As always, we recommend all customers follow security, identity, and compliance best practices, including regularly reviewing cross-account IAM roles, removing access for integrations no longer in use, granting least-privilege permissions, and adding conditions such as source IP restrictions to role trust policies. AWS customers who suspect or become aware of unauthorized activity in their accounts should follow guidance for remediating potentially compromised credentials or contact AWS Support with any questions or concerns about the security of their account.” ® Updated on November 10 with statement from AWS.

Security researchers exploited flaws in Android apps to gain remote access to connected cars from two major automakers, allowing them to start engines, flash headlights, and sound horns. Shubham Shah, co-founder at Assetnote, and researcher Sam Curry worked together on the exploits earlier this year. By tinkering with the cars’ Android apps, they devised exploit paths to issue remote commands to vehicles in Australia and the US. The pair published separate blogs covering different aspects of the research; Shah said the US attack "required a lot more work" because the automaker "spent much more time securing the US, Canadian, and European OpenIDM environments." Both exploit chains centered around weaknesses in the ForgeRock identity platform relied upon by both automakers, the identities of which were kept anonymous by the researchers, who have previously highlighted flaws in the likes of Hyundai, Kia, Subaru, and many others. In the Australian version of the app, the researchers first found a vehicle identification number (VIN) using public licence plate checkers, and used those in queries to internal APIs, which provided personal information and owner email addresses. They also found hardcoded admin credentials for the ForgeRock OpenIDM that were meant for the staging environment but also worked in production. After bypassing the heavy WAF filtering by exploiting path traversal flaws, they were able to invoke the internal admin APIs and take over target accounts using only their email addresses. This let them mint authentication tokens, which they could issue to send arbitrary commands to affected vehicles through the mobile app. Issuing commands on the US version also required bypassing WAF filtering through a path traversal, though with a more involved technique: exploiting path confusion to reach the Apache Felix admin console. The researchers used factory default credentials in Felix’s OSGi Web Console to gain admin privileges. They then used Felix configuration manager to schedule a task that executed an inline Groovy script, giving them shell access to the identity servers. The researchers then queried local admin API endpoints, allowing them to view or modify user account data. From there, they logged into car owners’ accounts, and gained the ability to issue the same commands as demonstrated in the Australian version. According to Curry’s disclosure timeline, he and Shah approached the affected automakers in "early 2026," and the exploits were patched within two hours of receiving the report. Although the automakers wished to remain anonymous, it didn’t take long for some petrolheads to speculate that the partially blurred car in Shah’s demo video was a Toyota, citing the shape of the wing mirror and the unlock sound it made. Onlookers claimed that the two automakers in question were likely Toyota and its luxury brand Lexus. Asked wether the claims were accurate, a spokesperson for Toyota Motor Corporation neither confirmed nor denied them. Curry said he and Shah chose to uphold the manufacturers’ requests to remain anonymous out of concern for infoseccers’ current workloads. He said: "Obviously, they have asked not to be named, and while normally we would fight to actually include the company names, it's a busy time in the security world and I don't like the idea of them diverting resources because they are worried about something with this disclosure." ®

Microsoft has unleashed a whopper of an update for Azure Linux, packing more than 470 CVE fixes into a single release as the software industry's ever-growing pile of vulnerabilities shows little sign of shrinking. Over the weekend, Microsoft rolled out Azure Linux 3.0.2022 with fixes covering everything from the Linux kernel to open source packages and container software. The changelog runs to hundreds of entries, so anyone planning to read the whole thing might want to put the kettle on. Microsoft's release notes contain more than 470 CVE references, although some vulnerabilities appear multiple times because they affect different packages. So that's not necessarily 470 separate security holes, but it's still an impressive amount of patching for one release. The fixes span OpenSSL, curl, Kubernetes, Docker, QEMU, and a lengthy list of other packages that underpin modern Linux environments. The generic Linux kernel has been updated to version 6.6.161.1. There's also been some housekeeping following the eMudhra certificate incident, tracked as CVE-2026-114406. Microsoft has removed or distrusted root certificates that could validate compromised eMudhra intermediate certificates, while adding checks in Python and Go to reject the affected certificates. It has also preserved SSL.com TLS trust where required, presumably to avoid fixing one certificate headache by creating another. Container infrastructure gets plenty of attention, too, with fixes spanning KubeVirt, containerd, Docker Compose, and other components used to keep cloud workloads running. Several CVEs crop up repeatedly across these packages, helping explain the eye-watering number of entries in the changelog. The release includes less security-focused changes too, including new Dockerfiles, an OpenVMM patch for confidential computing support, fixes for systemd hangs, and adjustments to GRUB Secure Boot metadata. The hefty release comes amid an AI-fueled surge in vulnerability discovery that has left developers struggling to keep up with the resulting patch workload. As The Register reported earlier today, Linux creator Linus Torvalds reckons there may finally be signs that the flood is easing, at least in some corners of the kernel. Torvalds said fixes are now arriving faster than new bug reports in the kernel's eBPF subsystem, although he noted that most other areas haven't reached that point. Whether the wider software industry is anywhere close to catching up is another matter, and Microsoft hasn't said if AI-assisted research contributed to the vulnerabilities addressed in this release. Azure Linux, formerly known as CBL-Mariner, is Microsoft's own Linux distribution, developed primarily for its cloud infrastructure and services. That makes keeping its many components patched rather more important than the modest version-number bump might suggest. And judging by the size of this latest changelog, Microsoft's patching teams aren't likely to be putting their feet up anytime soon. ®

Toilet paper purveyor Who Gives A Crap has found itself in a bit of a mess after an intruder accessed customer information through a third-party software provider, leaving the company scrambling to clean up a breach affecting shoppers in the UK, US, and Australia. In an email sent to affected customers over the weekend, seen by The Register, the loo roll seller warns that personal information was accessed without authorization after a security incident at an unnamed US-based marketing software provider. The email explains that the intruder gained access to the supplier's systems on October 30. The provider spotted the intrusion the following day and says it secured its systems by November 1, although Who Gives A Crap wasn't told until November 6. It's unclear why the supplier sat on the bad news for another five days before passing it on. The exposed information includes customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses, and total spending with the company. In other words, someone may now know not only where you live, but just how much of your hard-earned cash you've flushed down the crapper. Payment information, order details, and passwords were not involved, and customers' accounts were not directly accessed. That's something of a relief, although whether the intruder actually made off with the data remains a pressing question. "We don't yet know whether the information was copied or downloaded," the company told customers, adding that it had found no evidence of misuse. In a separate public statement, Who Gives A Crap co-founder and CEO Simon Griffiths confirmed that the incident affected customers across the company's Australian, UK, and US stores. Canadian customers, meanwhile, appear to have escaped this particular toilet emergency, with the supplier reporting that no personal information belonging to shoppers in the country was accessed. Who Gives A Crap says it has since disconnected the provider from its systems, changed access credentials, and begun warning affected customers to watch out for suspicious emails, texts, calls, and other unsolicited communications. "The main concern is scam or phishing messages that use your real details to look convincing," the company warned in its customer email. While Who Gives A Crap has been busy cleaning up, the supplier at the center of this particular stink remains a mystery. The company hasn't identified the software provider or disclosed how many customers were affected, including those in the UK, and didn’t respond to our questions. Griffiths said the company is "engaging with the relevant regulatory authorities, as required." In the UK, the ICO told The Register: "We can confirm Who Gives A Crap Limited has reported an incident and we are assessing the information provided." Who Gives A Crap has plenty of toilet paper to hand, although cleaning up this particular situation might require more than a few rolls. ®

A validation error has stopped Outlook.com from accepting legitimate emails. The problem appears widespread and, according to reports from affected users, can result in non-delivery reports with error codes related to SPF (Sender Policy Framework) validation failures. Other users have reported errors highlighting a lack of DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) information. The troubles began at the end of last week and appear to be the result of Microsoft tightening the rules (or at least attempting to do so) for accepting emails. The company's consumer email services are affected, and it appears that if a domain doesn't have working SPF or if it has a missing DMARC record, then Outlook.com and its ilk will treat it as suspicious and not accept emails. The rules are designed to deal with spam, bulk senders, and the like. In 2025, Microsoft announced new rules designed to strengthen email authentication for domains sending more than 5,000 emails per day. In addition to DMARC and SPF compliance, DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) was also required. Although this seemed like a good idea to ward off spammers, small senders now appear to be affected. According to complainants in the Outlook forum, a single email with just one line might now be rejected. Furthermore, Microsoft has not issued any advisory to customers explaining how the rules have changed. Although some customers insist their DMARC, SPF, and DKIM settings are compliant, many more have reported that once they set them to Microsoft's requirments, email began flowing once more. SPF must pass for the sending domain (the domain's DNS record should accurately list authorized IP addresses/hosts). DKIM must pass to validate email integrity and authenticity. DMARC must have at least p=none and align with either SPF or DKIM (preferably both). The Register asked the Windows giant for more information, but we have yet to receive a response. To make matters worse, the glitch also appears to be intermittent. A resend attempt might succeed following a rejection. To compound the situation, the rejection error message may also be vague about what caused the bounce in the first place. A moderator in Microsoft's support forum acknowledged the bug and said it was "classified as a service degradation." "Microsoft is actively investigating the underlying cause of this email delivery issue, and engineering teams are actively analyzing service telemetry and customer-provided data to identify the source of the issue." Still. It could be worse. Earlier today, several users in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa were affected by another Microsoft whoopsie – a "recent service change" that caused some connections to be abruptly terminated. Outlook on the web, as well as the Purview and Defender portals were all affected. Microsoft reverted the change in the Exchange Online front-end infrastructure, and all was well. It has yet to say what else, if anything, might have changed in its email services to cause legitimate messages to bounce back. ® Updated to add at 0922 UTC, November 10 Microsoft has confirmed that this was a fault. In its incident report (EX1545193), the company wrote: "A recent update to the spam enforcement rules caused email messages to be incorrectly marked and blocked, which led to impact." It also said it would review its update procedures. This will be of great comfort to customers who found legitimate emails rejected by Microsoft's servers as a result of the latest whoopsie. Thanks to Aliaksandr Markau at DMARKOFF for the tip. Updated again at 0948 UTC, November 11 A Microsoft spokesperson told us it fixed the bug, which it described as "an issue that may have prevented some email messages from reaching Outlook.com, Hotmail and Live addresses" – which should mean that mail flow is restored. It added that it was "continuing to monitor" the problem so that the company that is totally responsible for the code could "help" ensure email is delivered as expected. It added: "Customers can learn more via EX1545193 in the Microsoft 365 admin center."

Japanese electronics giant Iris Ohyama has taken down its online store after discovering that attackers may have accessed the personal information of 7.7 million customers, leaving shoppers unable to place orders. The retailer, which sells everything from home appliances and furniture to pet supplies, first disclosed the incident on October 29, a day after discovering a suspicious file on a third-party cloud service used by its Iris Plaza ecommerce operation. Iris Plaza immediately suspended its website and associated systems and began investigating, subsequently confirming unauthorized access. Iris Ohyama has since revealed that the potentially compromised cloud environment contained personal information belonging to approximately 5.8 million registered customers, including former members, and another 1.9 million people who had purchased products without creating an account or participated in promotional campaigns. The potentially exposed information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, gender, and passwords, although the company says the exact information at risk varies between customers. Some of that data, including passwords, was encrypted, but Iris Ohyama hasn't explained what protection was used. It has advised customers who reused their Iris Plaza passwords elsewhere to change them, presumably before someone else gets the opportunity. There is some good news for anyone who has handed over their credit card details, as the retailer says it didn't store payment information in the affected cloud service and that it hasn't been compromised. It remains unclear whether the attackers actually made off with any personal information. In its FAQ, Iris Plaza says it is still investigating the possibility of a data leak and has yet to establish the full extent of the intrusion. Meanwhile, Iris Plaza's website is still down, and the company isn't saying when it'll be back. Orders are also taking longer to ship, while customers trying to cancel a purchase have been told they may have to turn the delivery driver away if their parcel arrives before the cancellation is processed. Fortunately for anyone desperate to buy a new rice cooker, Iris Plaza's stores on Rakuten, Yahoo! Shopping, and auPAY Market are still operating. The company says it has found no evidence that those stores were affected. Iris Ohyama has reported the incident to Japanese authorities and says it will contact potentially affected customers individually. It has also warned shoppers to watch out for phishing emails, fraudulent calls, and fake websites impersonating the retailer. The company has yet to identify the cloud provider involved, explain how the attackers got in, or establish whether any of those 7.7 million records actually left its systems. ®

The worst of the patchpocalypse may be behind us, according to Linus Torvalds. Writing in his weekly kernel update post, the Linux kernel dev leader delivered Linux 7.4 rc2 – the second rough cut of the next kernel – which he rated as a big release for two reasons. One is that he left some code out of rc1, because he was busy and because it was already the largest such release in the history of the kernel. The other is what Torvalds described as “various AI fixes.” Such fixes are necessary because ever since Anthropic launched its Mythos bug-finding model in April, developers have been able to find more software flaws than was previously possible. Microsoft, for example, addressed a record 974 flaws in September – its third record fixing spree this year after it whacked 622 flaws in July and 206 in June. Oracle addressed 1,449 flaws in a single month. That’s many more patches than IT teams are set up to handle, yet they must find ways to deal with bugs more quickly because attackers are increasingly targeting flaws found by AI. Torvalds’ post suggests that, perhaps, the worst of this is behind us. “This time around Alexei claims that on the bpf side at least the fixes are now coming in faster than the new reports, and that sounds lovely if true,” he wrote. That’s a reference to Alexei Starovoitov, co-creator and lead dev on the Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF), the project that makes it possible to run sandboxed programs within the Linux kernel. “I think most other areas haven't reached that point yet, but it's at least a sign that we _may_ be starting to see the tide starting to turn,” he added. “Don't hold your breath, but maybe cross your fingers we'll be getting there in the not entirely distant future.” If Torvalds is correct, that’s welcome news. The Linux kernel’s 40-million-plus lines of code makes it one of the world’s bigger software projects. If AI soon stops finding flaws in other parts of the kernel beyond eBPF, perhaps the deluge of fixes developers and users alike will need to handle has peaked. ®