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The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday confirmed active exploitation of the recently patched PHP2Shell flaws by adding them to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. The PHP vulnerabilities, both rated 9.2 on the CVSS scoring system, facilitate unauthenticated remote code execution on affected deployments - CVE-2026-109618 - An out-of-memory Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

The University of Copenhagen in Denmark confirmed that hackers accessed one of its test environments containing personal data belonging to 525,000 people. [...]

South Korean police identified seven suspects linked to a cybercrime operation that breached more than 90 organizations in the country, with ARTEX AI pentesting framework used in most of the attacks. [...]

OpenAI has launched GPT-6.1 Terra, a new model focused on computer use, visual reasoning, coding, and everyday work, while costing significantly less than its larger models. [...]

DreamHost has forced password resets for email and FTP/SFTP users following an incident that disrupted connections to the File Manager interface. [...]

An unknown threat actor has infected 953 online stores, most of them running Magento, as part of a long-running campaign active since July 2025. According to Dutch e-commerce security company Sansec, the activity is designed to add a small piece of code to the store's pages that, when visited by unsuspecting users, serves malicious JavaScript loader code through Magento CMS blocks. "When you Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

PHP has rebuilt its official Windows packages for PHP 8.2 through 8.5 to fix CVE-2026-111497, a flaw in the Brotli compression library that the packages include. The flaw can let an attacker corrupt memory and potentially run code. PHP says the flaw can be reached through the cURL extension when the extension decompresses HTTP responses automatically. cURL leaves that off by default, but Swati Khandelwalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

A critical flaw dubbed 'HTTP2Shell' in Brotli, the C decoder library built into Node.js, could allow attackers to corrupt memory and access sensitive data. [...]

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to what they say is a "recurring social engineering pattern" across hundreds of cases in which threat actors use Microsoft Teams' external chat creation feature to conduct impersonation scams or to deliver malware. "A consistent pattern of attacker behavior has emerged across these incidents: the use of the same throwaway tenants, the same 'IT Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Microsoft is adding a new AI-powered security feature to Teams aimed at detecting phishing, scams, and identity theft by analyzing conversations, Bleeping Computer reports.

Instead of primarily checking for malicious links and files, the tool will be able to identify suspicious behavior in the messages themselves, Microsoft said. The feature will primarily be used for new contacts, as they pose a higher security risk.

The new security feature follows earlier warnings from Microsoft about attackers impersonating help desk staff in Teams to trick users into granting them remote access.

In a Microsoft 365 Message Center post (mirror), the company said, “During initial quality validation, detection may run in the background without showing warnings to users. After validation, users may see a warning when potential phishing is detected.”

According to Microsoft, no messages will be saved or used to train AI models. The tool will also be used solely for security purposes — not, for example, for surveillance or advertising.

The rollout will begin in early November 2026 and is expected to be generally available during the first half of December. IT teams do not have to configure the feature; it will be automatically enabled.

This story originally appeared on Computer Sweden.

Related:

• New malware turns Microsoft 365 and Azure into its control center
• Video: How modern work is creating a cybersecurity nightmare

Microsoft released emergency .NET security updates to patch a critical vulnerability known as Broccoli2Shell, also tracked as Node2Shell and HTTP2Shell. [...]

Apple watchers predicted something like this: The company is ending October with a triple-whammy of new products, starting with its newly introduced iPad mini with OLED display. The rest of the week is expected to feature new Macs, specifically an M6 MacBook Pro and iMac and Apple’s first touchscreen MacBook Pro.

There’s no disputing how popular the iPad mini has become among some business users. Professionals use it as a digital notebook, many use it as a second display for their Mac, and some industries, particularly logistics, hospitality and field services, make extensive use of these things. 

If you want something smaller and lighter than a full-weight iPad, the iPad mini fills the gap, though its high build-quality means it comes at a price — starting at $699 with 128GB storage. That’s up from the $599 price tag on the previous model. Thanks to RAMaggedon, it’s the second price hike so far this year: two years ago, the device held a $499 starting price.

The new 256GB model costs $799, while the 512GB iteration sets you back $999. A fully specified 512GB iPad mini with Wi-Fi, cellular, and nano-texture glass costs $1,249.

What’s new in the iPad mini?

Apple has focused deeply on making the new iPad mini thinner and lighter than before. (Here’s what I I thought about the previous model when I reviewed it.) The new iteration is 5.4mm thick, compared to 6.3mm, and weighs 0.58 pounds, in contrast to the previous model’s 0.66 pounds.

It has a large 8.5 inch Super Retina XDR display (up from 8.3 inches), but this fits in the same footprint thanks to thinner bezels. The move to OLED means it delivers higher contrast and more than 2x higher peak brightness than the previous generation. Apple promises pixel-level lighting control for much deeper blacks and support for the P3 wide color gamut for more vivid and accurate images.

The display also weaves in some additional tech: Apple calls it an “Acoustic Display” because it has placed specially designed woofers and tweeters underneath. The company says this delivers better sound clarity and volume.

As expected, the new iPad mini hosts the 2-nanometer A20 chip, with Neural Accelerators in each GPU core and Dual 16-core Neural Engine — which means it should be pretty good at running AI. It also offers double the unified memory bandwidth. You should see performance boosts across the board; Apple promises it’s up to 60% faster for photo editing or working across apps.

The product is highly water- and dust-resistant with an IP67 rating, which means it can handle being under up to one meter of water for up to 30 minutes. This makes the iPad mini an even better fit for logistics and field services, while also being the iPad you’ll use by the pool. (The new iPhone Duo has an even stronger IP68 rating.)

Additional features include:

• 12MP Center Stage front camera on the landscape edge.
• 12MP Wide back camera.
• 1,200 nits peak brightness, 1 nit minimum.
• Weighs 255 grams, down from 293 grams.
• Nano-texture display option is available.
• Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread thanks to Apple’s N1 chip.
• Cellular models use Apple’s C2 chip, which Apple says provides up to 50% faster cellular data speeds compared to the previous generation of iPad mini.
• eSIM support.
• Available in Midnight and Starlight finishes.

What Apple said

“iPad mini is beloved for its fantastic portability, performance, and display by a wide range of users, from creators and small business owners to doctors, field service workers, and gamers,” said Dave Pakula, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Engineering.

iPad Mini users are extremely loyal and with Duo now on the market they are getting apps that will feel more custom than in the past. The updates are also a good reminder that iPad Mini is a size choice not a price one https://t.co/n1iMipsWJY

— Carolina Milanesi (@caro_milanesi) October 26, 2026 What the critics are saying

The main criticism currently being leveled against the new iPad mini is the lack of a 120Hz refresh rate — though Apple has not confirmed this. Others note that while the device does support fast charging, you must buy a 35-watt adapter to use it — though you do get a polishing cloth.

“One key detail worth noting is that the new iPad mini uses a binned A20 Pro chip in all but the high-end 512GB model. Not only does the binned chip have only 5 CPU cores rather than 6, it also lacks the Dual 16-core Neural Engine. Instead, you get the standard 16-core Neural Engine,” noted 9to5Mac.

My take?

A significant upgrade, which when used with Apple Intelligence and Siri AI make the system an incredibly flexible companion device. However, the price will inevitably dampen demand.

All the same, if I were to get one of these for Christmas, I’d be pretty happy. There aren’t enough Duos to go round, and this has a bigger display. Available for pre-orders from October 28 to ship November 6.

Now please subscribe to my daily, human-curated Apple-related news headline feed at The Core, or follow me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, or Mastodon.

This2Shell, That2Shell, Everything2Shell. That's pretty much how the last week went. Critical bugs that let attackers run code remotely are showing up everywhere. Hackers are scanning for targets, some flaws are already being used in attacks, and security teams have more urgent patches than they can keep up with. And that's not even the full story. A leaked key led to a software supply-chain Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

A new NIST, CISA, and NSA guide treats runaway agents as incidents to be rehearsed. The hard part of the response is answering whose authority the agent used, and that answer has to exist before the incident does. [...]

A Chinese national was arraigned in California after being extradited from the Netherlands for his alleged involvement in a cryptocurrency investment scam that stole nearly $37 million from 174 victims in the United States. [...]

Two critical flaws in Wasmtime, a WebAssembly runtime that can be built into other software, could allow a malicious WebAssembly module to escape the sandbox intended to contain it, the project's maintainers say. An attacker would first need a vulnerable Wasmtime build to compile a module they control, and one of the flaws affects only ARM64 systems. Fixed versions were released on Swati Khandelwalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Every SOC struggles with a pile of alerts. Very few of those alerts explain how an attack started or how it progressed. Network data, like that from a network detection and response (NDR) platform, connects individual alerts into one timeline, and it feeds the defensive systems that can tie all events together into one coordinated view. SOC teams often first see the shape of an intrusion [email protected]

Kali Linux has released version 2026.3, its third release this year, featuring six new hacking tools, desktop environment improvements, refreshed build scripts, and more. [...]

Kali Linux has released version 2026.3, its third release this year, featuring six new hacking tools, desktop environment improvements, refreshed build scripts, and more. [...]

Introduction

AI agents and associated tooling are becoming increasingly common in corporate infrastructure. Agents can perform a range of actions with the user’s privileges, such as accessing data, running commands, and interacting with external services. This creates new security risks, especially when these tools are used without the security team’s oversight or well-designed policies.

Detecting, tracking, and controlling AI agents is becoming one of the most pressing tasks for security teams today. We closely follow technological developments and continuously update our solutions to respond to new threats in a timely manner amid a rapidly changing technology landscape. This post describes new expertise built into Kaspersky products that helps counter the threats posed by the proliferation of AI agents. We approach this problem from several angles.

First, you need to thoroughly understand the threat you are dealing with. To this end, we added profiles to the Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal that describe various AI agents and how attackers exploit them. At their core, AI agents are programs (processes) that run in the operating system on endpoints and can also launch other processes. This means that Endpoint Detection and Response solutions are among the key endpoint controls for this threat. These solutions detect the presence and launch of AI agents, track their activity, and identify potentially dangerous behavior. When needed, they also take action, such as stopping a suspicious process, blocking the activity, or isolating the host, to reduce the likelihood of an incident escalating. For this purpose, we developed specially adapted detection rules.

You can use Kaspersky Endpoint Security, now also available as Kaspersky Next, to control and restrict the launch of AI agents. This solution uses two components to detect AI agents and control how they are used. Application Control categorizes the application processes launched on endpoints, and Web Control manages access to specific categories of web resources for users on endpoints.

Finally, even harmless AI agents can contain malicious instructions (skills), such as those downloaded from unsafe external sources. Kaspersky Scan Engine analyzes installed applications to detect these threats and also checks LLM files for malicious code. Let’s take a closer look at these solutions and technologies.

Popular AI applications and services in organizations

Tools from Anthropic and OpenAI take the top spots in the September 2026 ranking of AI agents by popularity among Kaspersky users. This list is based on telemetry from Kaspersky solutions. It shows the number of users who had the relevant AI vendors’ products installed at the time of the study.

# AI product 1 Claude 2 Claude Code 3 Codex 4 OpenCode 5 Zed 6 Wispr Flow 7 LM Studio 8 ZCode 9 Chatbox 10 Cherry Studio

The data shows that agentic systems, especially AI agents for software development, are the most popular AI applications. The TOP 10 also includes an application for running large language models locally (LM Studio) and a voice note-taking app (Wispr Flow).

According to open sources, these are the most widely used AI services in 2026:

# AI service 1 ChatGPT 2 Google Gemini 3 Claude 4 Grammarly 5 DeepSeek

While analyzing the most popular and widely used apps, our experts also noticed a sharp rise in vulnerable versions of AI-related software and services. From 2025 to date, more than 2500 vulnerabilities have been published:

Number of published vulnerabilities in LLMs, AI tools, and plugins with similar functionality, 2025–2026 (download)

* Data for previous quarters was updated and may differ slightly from previously published data.

Application Control and Web Control

To enforce the organization’s security policy for AI agents and other AI applications on the corporate network, Kaspersky products offer application control based on KL categories. These categories classify installed software and give you granular control over which approved applications can run in the organization.

Application Control analyzes the processes launched on endpoints, tracking which AI agents are running in corporate systems at any given moment, on which hosts, and under which accounts. Application Control also shows how long a given program has been in use.

This makes it easier for the Kaspersky Security Center (KSC) administrator to control applications. Administrators can use KL categories to allow or block AI agents inside the company for specific groups of employees.

Here is what this functionality looks like to KSC administrators:

KL categories available when configuring Application Control

For details on how to configure Application Control in KSC, follow this link.

In Kaspersky Endpoint Security (KES), Application Control can operate in two modes:

• Denylist. In this mode, Application Control lets users run any applications except those blocked by Application Control rules. This is the default mode.
• Allowlist. In this mode, Application Control blocks users from running any applications except those explicitly allowed by Application Control rules.

Below are the steps to configure Application Control to block AI tools.

Configuring Application Control for the AI Tools category in KES

With this setup, when a user tries to launch an AI agent, they get a notification and the agent doesn’t start.

KES notification about an attempt to launch an AI agent

For more on how to configure Application Control in KES, follow this link. Our public portal also lets you explore information on KL categories and the applications that fall under them, in particular details on how AI agents are categorized and how popular they are.

AI Tools KL category

The View applications drop-down list shows products for a specific vendor.

Similarly, Web Control lets you manage user access to web resources. If a user tries to open a denylisted website, KES blocks access and shows a warning.

KES notification about an attempt to access a prohibited web resource

When configuring access, the administrator can block websites that provide AI as a service.

Website categories

For more on configuring Web Control, follow this link. The help portal also provides information on website categories that can be assigned to resources to configure access control.

Kaspersky Endpoint Detection and Response

To an EDR solution, an AI agent is a regular process. It has its own executable, a tree of child processes, and network communications, all of which need to be monitored for suspicious activity. An attacker can use an AI agent as an automation tool. An AI agent installed as a legitimate user tool can also be leveraged in a ClickFix attack, where it executes a malicious instruction received from an untrusted source, such as a document, web page, or email. That said, unsafe actions by an agent do not always indicate an attack. There may be no malicious intent in the chain at all. An incident can result from what looks like an ordinary instruction from a user who doesn’t fully understand the consequences of having it executed. The mere fact that an agent was launched does not reveal whether it is being used in an attack. That is why Kaspersky EDR (KEDR) uses both conventional behavioral rules and rules written and adapted to detect AI tools. The latter identify risky agent actions and settings, and help determine which AI tool was involved in suspicious activity.

Conventional KEDR rules detect the vast majority of familiar malicious techniques, including when performed by an AI agent. A suspicious PowerShell launch, persistence via Task Scheduler, or an attempt to steal credentials leaves clear, identifiable traces. These traces look the same no matter what initiated the actions. The rules analyze launch parameters, process relationships, affected files, network activity, and other telemetry events.

For example, in a recent Armored Likho campaign, we found signs that AI had been used to create loader and dropper samples, which were later compiled with NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System). The key telltale artifacts were icons in the scripts and excessive comments on every function, which is uncharacteristic of human-written code. In addition, the group continues to generate new modules for its BusySnake Stealer and BusySnake RAT samples. For example, the attackers used AI to develop a module that runs multiple checks for virtual environment artifacts and calculates a score. Depending on the score, the sample either runs or exits with code 0. Even though the initial access samples, payloads, and their modules were AI-generated, the commands they execute via rundll32 and PowerShell are detected by the shell_creation_by_rundll32 and suspicious_powershell_cmd_or_script_spawning rules.

So, for detecting an attack like this, it is not important who wrote the loader, the payload, or its modules: they are given away by the commands they execute, process relationships, and other traces of activity in the system. AI can be involved both in preparing the code and in carrying out the attack directly on the device.

In the latter case, the attacker uses the agent to carry out their tasks and lets it choose and run the required commands within the privileges it has. For effective protection, it is critical to link suspicious actions back to the AI tool and the conditions under which it operates. In KEDR, several specialized rules handle this task.

We have created separate rules for popular AI agents, ai_agent_*_access_to_sensitive_file_**, where * is the tool name and ** is the operating system. They generate alerts when an agent accesses files that contain credentials, tokens, or keys.

ai_agent_opencode_access_to_sensitive_file_win Tap to previewTap to hide

The ai_agent_dangerous_execution_mode rule detects agents launched with auto-approval of all actions (so-called YOLO mode) or with the sandbox disabled. These settings do not indicate an attack on their own, but they let the agent perform dangerous actions without user confirmation.

ai_agent_dangerous_execution_mode Tap to previewTap to hide

The suspicious_mcp_server_artifact rule triggers when MCP server scripts are created or modified in hidden, temporary, or cache directories. Attackers can place an MCP server in these locations to quietly connect it to the agent: through the MCP server, they can pass instructions to the agent, call third-party tools, and access the user’s data.

suspicious_mcp_server_artifact Tap to previewTap to hide

The llm_api_access_by_unusual_apps rule generates an alert when an application on Windows, Linux, or macOS connects to the API of a known external LLM service, unless this activity falls under predefined exclusions. This helps spot model access by applications that do not normally behave this way.

llm_api_access_by_unusual_apps Tap to previewTap to hide

Some Kaspersky EDR rules tag events for investigation but do not generate alerts. For example, the ai_agent_**_execution rules flag launches of known agents on Windows, Linux, and macOS. The local_ai_model_artifact rule records the creation or modification of AI model files in typical application, runtime, and cache directories. These events reveal AI tools on the device, including tools that run on local models and never call an external API.

local_ai_model_artifact Tap to previewTap to hide Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal AI agent profiles

The Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal offers a large number of software profiles, including profiles of AI agents. You can sort them by the ai_ prefix:

AI agent profiles on Kaspersky TIP

The profile of an AI agent such as Claude Desktop includes a detailed description of the software, the privilege level required to run it, supported platforms, and threat actor groups known to use it. It also lists tactics and techniques mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, with descriptions of the procedures the tool can be used for.

Claude profile on Kaspersky TIP

The description also lists ways to detect the software through standard system auditing mechanisms:

• Windows: events from standard audit logs and Sysmon events
• Linux: syscall audit events and Sysmon events
• Network auditing: a set of protocols and the traffic generated by the software

The detection section lists the main artifacts the software leaves in the system: command lines, possible launch parameters, names of the services and scheduled tasks it creates, and the key network artifacts.

Detection section in the Claude profile

Hunt Hub

In December 2025, the Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal added Hunt Hub (HH), a repository of detection rules. This is a unique Kaspersky project, and we developed it in response to growing market demand.

This functionality is available in the Threat Landscape section of the portal. It gives analysts access to detection rules: their descriptions and their mapping to MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques, as well as to the associated cybercriminal groups.

In the Hunt Hub section, customers can explore the detection logic of EDR, NDR, and NGFW products, including the logic for detecting AI agents.

Rules in the Hunt Hub repository

The rule card provides:

• Detailed description
• Rule’s severity level, confidence level, and alert format
• Detection tips
• Description of possible false positives
• Platforms the rule can run on
• Tactics, techniques, and sub-techniques covered by the rule
• Groups that use the technique covered by the rule
• Detection logic that shows what exactly triggers the rule

Detection rule card in Hunt Hub

Kaspersky Scan Engine

Skills are a key component of the AI agent ecosystem. They’re prewritten sets of natural-language instructions that extend agent functionality. We previously covered the risks that malicious skills pose to agent users. A skill can require the usage of additional programs and services, come with helper scripts (for example, written in Python), or contain a malicious command embedded right in the instruction text. This means that adding skills to an originally harmless AI agent opens up several new ways for malicious code to enter the system. To prevent this, any skills obtained from external sources must be scanned. Kaspersky Scan Engine is well suited for this task. This is a cyberthreat detection and response solution that seamlessly integrates with various applications. It can detect malicious code in agent skills, associated scripts, and in files generated by running agents.

Detection of a malicious agent skill in Kaspersky Scan Engine

Trained LLMs come in many formats. Some of them (PTH, PT, PKL, KERS, and others) also store parameters and weights (training datasets). These files can also contain malicious code, so it’s critical to scan them before running and using them. Kaspersky Scan Engine scans potentially dangerous LLM formats for infected data. It can deserialize and analyze models to detect malicious code regardless of model size.

Detection of an LLM with malicious code in Kaspersky Scan Engine

Conclusion

AI agents are rapidly making their way into corporate environments: they help employees work faster and take on a wide range of tasks, but they also open up new opportunities for attackers. To take advantage of this technology without compromising security, organizations need to build multi-layered protection and minimize risks. A range of Kaspersky solutions can help with this:

• Kaspersky TIP keeps you up to date on current scenarios in which attackers use AI agents, and its Hunt Hub section provides rules for detecting suspicious AI agent activity.
• Kaspersky EDR detects AI agents in the infrastructure and monitors their activity on endpoints. If it detects potentially dangerous actions, the product can log the event, notify the SOC, and take response actions, such as stopping the process or isolating the host.
• Application Control in Kaspersky products can fully restrict the use of AI agents within the company by using application categorization. The Web Control component can restrict access to AIaaS web resources.
• Kaspersky Scan Engine can be integrated into various company processes to detect malicious code in any files, including AI agent skills and LLMs.

When companies combine the tools described above in a comprehensive approach, they can adopt AI agents in an informed way: with an understanding of the associated risks and effective means of minimizing them.