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A Chinese-speaking threat actor has been exploiting vulnerabilities in ZyXEL GS1900 Smart Managed Switches and WordPress to steal sensitive data from 996 devices and more than 18,500 records stored in backend databases. [...]

Microsoft said Tuesday that it led an industry-wide disruption of a subscription-based scam platform that used an AI chatbot to compromise 12,000 Microsoft accounts over a few-month span.

Named EvilTokens, the platform was introduced over a Telegram channel in February and charged an initial $1,500 fee and a recurring $500 charge each month after that. EvilTokens provided a single service for streamlining most steps required to compromise email accounts in large numbers. From there, the platform helped customers analyze inboxes, select targets that would provide the biggest potential payouts, and draft follow-up emails that provided realistic ruses for tricking company employees into transferring funds to attacker-controlled accounts.

Minutes, not days

“While EvilTokens helped cybercriminals access email accounts, at the center of the service was an AI-style chatbot that could analyze a victim’s inbox and help criminals identify trusted relationships, payment authorizations, and sensitive responsibilities, as well as other circumstances where fraud was most likely to succeed,” Microsoft said. “The platform could even recommend fraud strategies, including drafting messages that impersonated trusted contacts to help criminals trick victims into taking action.”

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The ShinyHunters extortion gang claims it breached FBI systems using a new Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day vulnerability, gaining access to internal services and stealing sensitive data on employees and job applicants. [...]

Attackers exploited a previously unknown flaw in Check Point's Security Management Server in a handful of targeted attacks on July 23, the company said. The flaw, CVE-2026-93616, allows an attacker who can access the server's web service to run scripts on it without logging in. Check Point released a fix on September 22 for the server that controls firewall policies for the Check Point Swati Khandelwalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

A new Windows malware named ClosedQuorum uses Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen, and Mistral AI models to autonomously determine the actions to take during post-compromise stages of an attack. [...]

WordPress has fixed a critical flaw in its core software that lets an attacker with no account make a site load a PHP file from outside its theme folders. On some servers, that can go further, allowing the attacker to run their own code. The fix shipped on September 22 in WordPress 7.1.2, with fixes for every branch the project still supports, back to 4.7, and WordPress is telling site owners Swati Khandelwalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a malicious npm package named "tw-pkgprobe-7731" that masquerades as a security tool targeting developers integrating Twilio into their applications, while stealthily attempting to harvest sensitive data. The package, named "tw-pkgprobe-7731," was first uploaded to the npm registry in mid-August 2026 by an npm account named "twdepprobe7731." Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Shadow IT can leave security teams unaware of unmanaged endpoints, unauthorized software, and other assets that fall outside existing monitoring. Wazuh explains how endpoint inventory, agentless monitoring, and centralized analysis can help organizations identify and reduce these visibility gaps. [...]

Microsoft on Tuesday announced the takedown of the EvilTokens device code phishing service that it said used artificial intelligence (AI) "at every step of the attack chain." The action, carried out with authorization from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, involved the efforts of Health-ISAC, alongside Cloudflare, Coinbase, OpenAI, Railway, SpyCloud, The ShadowserverRavie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

I’m old enough to remember when Macs were friendly little machines. While a little underpowered and equipped with some platform-unique foibles, they were really good at some things, highly secure, and had the best user interface of any PC. 

That was then; this is now. And while the platform is still unique, still highly secure, and still has the best user interface, Apple’s all-new Mac Studio is a beast of a machine. It’s incredibly powerful and would crackle with energy if it weren’t so energy efficient. 

TL;DR review

No matter what pro workflow you follow, the M5 Ultra Mac Studio is more than you need.

Longer review

Apple hasn’t changed the design of the Mac Studio.

It’s 7.7-inch square, 3.7-inch high aluminum box with two USB-C and one SDXC port on the front, and an array of ports — four Thunderbolt 5, two USB A, 10Gb Ethernet, HDMI, and headphone — at rear. It brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, supports up to eight displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz, or four Studio Display XDR units. 

Basically, this one box can power a bank of displays, and for those using it in a live video production environment, Apple has also introduced generator locking (a.k.a. genlock) over USB-C, which lets the on-display image synchronize precisely with a pro video camera for the most precise editing and playback you’ll find. 

Pros and cons

Pros

• Massive CPU/GPU power capable of handling the most demanding 3D and AI tasks.
• Neural accelerators and unified memory make it ideal for training and running large LLMs on-premises privately.
• Doubled read/write performance over the previous generation via a new storage controller and fast NAND.
• Inclusion of four ProRes accelerators (handling up to 33 streams of 8K) and genlock over USB-C for precise sync.
• High performance at low wattage; runs quiet and cool compared to high-end PC alternatives.
• Features Thunderbolt 5, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 6.
• Works exceptionally well as a headless AI or rendering server.

Cons

• Extremely high retail price ($12,299 for the top spec).
• Neither the RAM nor the SSD can be upgraded or replaced by the user.
• No keyboard or mouse included, which feels odd for a five-figure machine.

For my review, Apple loaned me a top-of-the-line M5 Ultra Mac Studio equipped with a 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU. It has 256GB memory, 4TB storage, and carries a retail price of $12,299. At that price and with those specifications, it is of little surprise that this is such a great computer.

It’s also intended for some of the most demanding 3D and AI tasks you’ll find out there, rather than for people who spend their time writing about tech — though this machine can open multiple tabs in Chrome without stuttering, so unleashes real productivity boosts even at my level. 

Apple Let’s get one thing out the way

That’s not to say some pro users lack reservations about it. Many are frustrated that neither the RAM nor SSD are user serviceable, while the lack of a keyboard and mouse in the box chimes oddly in a computer that costs five figures.

In Apple’s defense, in these pro markets most users probably already own better keyboards and mice than you’d find in the box, while the massive performance benefits you’ll find with the M5 Ultra chip are in part realized because RAM in Macs is built to be part of the processor itself.

That SOC design boosts efficiency, cuts heat dissipation, and makes for great performance at low wattage relative to other machines. Changing the way memory is installed on the chip would compromise Apple’s silicon architecture, which Apple doesn’t want to do. 

It’s all about the architecture

The Mac is powered by a quad-die chip built using Apple’s UltraFusion process. Inside is an engineering marvel. The 80-core GPU brings neural accelerators, making these Macs truly phenomenal machines for building, developing, training, or running AI models. Apple’s unified memory tech is a godsend for tasks like these as it scales to handle… well, most anything you throw at it. Efficiently. 

Apple’s coupled chip speed with performance across the system. That means an advanced storage controller, superfast NAND, and really fast, next-gen SSDs for twice the read/write performance of the last model. This basically means the chip can grab big dollops of data and very swiftly push them around the system all the way from storage to display. Then there’s the rest of the advanced tech to consider, including the inclusion of four ProRes accelerators, which means my test Mac can deal with up to an incredible 33 streams of 8K ProRes video. 

This is a machine that can happily handle massive multi-camera editing, racing through dozens of high-res angles at once to field the perfect shot. Think live sports, concerts, and movie shoots. Not only this, but all those streams are at normal res, no conversion required — no sitting around waiting for low-quality proxy files. 

Apple A bicycle for several minds

I’m thinking a full-flight video rendering data server in an 8-inch box that consumes perhaps 10 cents an hour at peak power (c. 480 watts). I’m also thinking of it as an on-premises AI system for me, the family, or any enterprise. 

Compared to the previous equivalent mode, the M3 Ultra, Apple says the chip brings up to 4.3x faster AI performance, up to 1.8x faster GPU performance, and up to 1.3x faster CPU performance. It’s also almost ten times faster than the M1 Ultra for AI.

None of this is accidental. All of it is designed. This whole creation is architectural; it leans heavily into Apple’s software and hardware integration, which now also extends to the design of the processor itself. Making the RAM user-serviceable would limit the performance of the machine, which at this price and in this sector of the market seems a little counterintuitive.

Sure, you can build yourself something pretty powerful using a Ryzen 9 chip that consumes 900 watts at peak and runs hot. Or you can put Apple’s silver box on your desk and barely hear a thing as it crunches through ‘god tier’ AI models your Ryzen can’t handle without additional GPU’s. All the same, if you want to configure your own memory you do have a choice — it’s just not a Mac. 

Choice is nice

I know what I’d choose. Based on a weekend of using the Studio, I’ve found what it does is beyond most of the feeble tests mere mortals like me can cook up, so I thought you might want some benchmarks:

Geekbench 7

• Single-core CPU: 3,771
• Multi-core CPU: 52,350
• GPU (Metal): 360,019
• GPU (OpenCL): 214,466

Cinebench

• CPU (Multi-thread): 18,052
• GPU: 141,480

Putting these numbers into context, Apple explains what these numbers mean when compared to the M1 Ultra Mac Studio: 

• 2.4x faster project builds in Xcode
• 4.7x faster render performance in Redshift
• 9.8x faster time to first token performance in LM Studio
• 15.4x faster CopyCat ML training in Foundry Nuke

Storage is fast, really fast

Of course, with these machines built to work with and manipulate huge files, one roadblock to performance will be storage, right? Not on this Mac. Apple says it has deployed a new storage controller tech in the computers, which works with the speediest NAND memory it could find to deliver twice the read and write performance we got from the last generation of this system. 

This gives it plenty of horsepower for flinging files about, with Blackmagic’s Disk Speed test giving me exceptional results: 13,941MB/s write and 11,350MB/s read speeds. These speeds are indeed double the performance of the previous generation. 

It also means this Mac Studio can handle data transfers faster than almost anything out there, making it happy to handle multiple streams of uncompressed 8K RAW video, heavy compositing workloads and, of course, AI development, machine learning, or running your own on-premises AI models. Install the models you want to use and use them to your heart’s content. Run it headless if you like. I did.

Apple Headless, no hanging

I know a lot of you will end up wanting to run some kind of headless setup using this Mac. You’ll have it working furiously as your domestic or business AI server, chewing through your data, vibe coding opportunistic app creations, rendering video off your main Mac, and more. In my own little experiment, I found myself typing sentences for this review (this sentence, actually) on a Mac mini using a keyboard on a MacBook that happens to have the Mac Studio in its active window over vnc, and nothing ran slow. It means that if you run this Mac headless, it’s no slouch.

Better yet, once you have the Mac set to run as a headless unit, you’ll be able to download LM Studio, install your choice of AI, and chat to your heart’s content. Your AI running privately and securely for you on your device, and — one more thing — it’s fast and responsive. What’s not to like? I used it to design and develop a capability test to put the Mac through its paces.

Apple’s focus on AI is strategic, of course. Apple knows its hardware has pretty much occupied the AI development space, to the extent that almost any LLM you use was probably at least in part made on a Mac. AI is up there with CAD and medical imaging among the most demanding tasks you can do on any PC, let alone a Mac. And these Macs can handle all those tasks. I did want to try stringing four of these Macs together to run as an AI cluster, but at $12,000+ each that wasn’t going to happen.

Buying advice

Most of us don’t need this Mac. We probably never will — which is why cost is not the point here. This Mac is about performance, full stop, and that shows at every layer: a faster processor, blistering SSD storage, unified memory that scales to the task, and a storage controller fast enough to leave most other PCs gasping in the dust. From the software to the silicon, it feels like Apple’s engineers raided every high-end tech they had and crammed it inside this good-looking silver box. 

The real question isn’t whether this Mac is impressive — it obviously is — but if it’s impressive enough to justify an upgrade if you already own the previous model. Things get a little more nuanced if that is the case. The M5 Ultra is a genuine step up: the processor gains are significant, and the storage speed increase alone will matter to plenty of pro workflows. But last year’s Mac Studio was already so far ahead of most computers that “significantly better than the best thing available” doesn’t automatically mean “worth $12,000+ to replace.”

My take: if you’re still on an older computer and need the extra processing power or storage throughput for demanding work, this machine delivers in spades. If you bought last year’s M3 Ultra model and it’s handling your workload fine, there’s no urgency. You’re not falling behind, you’re just not on the bleeding edge. All the same, I so wish AI-driven price inflation hadn’t pushed these systems quite so high in price.

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

A “human error” in the IT department led to Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) losing data from maternity records over an 11-year span.

The data loss occurred on August 18, the English hospitals announced in a blog post on Monday spotted by The Register. The blog said the problem is “the result of human error” during routine technical work while “creating a copy of a radiotherapy database for reporting purposes.”

The post reads:

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A critical vulnerability in Bifrost, an open-source AI gateway that routes requests to more than 20 LLM providers, allows an unauthenticated attacker to run arbitrary commands on the gateway server with a single HTTP request. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-90898 (CVSS score: 9.8), affects all versions of the Bifrost HTTP transport before 2.1.0 when management authentication is Swati Khandelwalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Check Point Software released emergency hotfixes to address a critical Security Management Server vulnerability that could let attackers run arbitrary scripts. [...]

A zero-day proof-of-concept tool that stops Microsoft Defender from installing platform and signature updates by filling all available disk space was published on GitHub on September 19. The tool, called BigDiskBuster, has no patch, no CVE, and no Microsoft advisory. Its author, Abdelhamid Naceri, is a former Microsoft security researcher whose earlier Defender exploits were used in Swati Khandelwalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

The EvilTokens platform that compromised more than 12,000 Microsoft accounts at over 10,000 organizations has been disrupted in an effort led by Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU). [...]

Websites offering fake subscriptions to AI transcription tools, image generators, and other digital assistants could be putting enterprise data at risk, according to researchers at Malwarebytes.

The sites impersonate AI products with solid reputations, including GPT-6 Astra, DaVinci Resolve, PixAI and OpenCut, in addition to some that no longer exist (such as Omegle, a chat service shut down in 2023) or are less reputable.

All the fake websites were polished and incorporate genuine Google authentication elements inviting users to “Sign in with Google” to enhance credibility on the path to charging visitors’ payment cards anything from $10 a month to as much as $2,000 for a year’s access to the promised AI and software services.

“The sites we examined did not use fake password forms or push malware downloads,” Malwarebytes researchers said in a blog post describing their discovery. But some of the sites asked users to upload documents, recordings, or other files in order to unlock the advertised services.

The danger for enterprises is if would-be customers of such services think they’re getting a good deal for their departmental budget and don’t want to involve IT in the buying process. Shadow IT is bad enough when the products are legitimate, but in these cases there’s no knowing where the data gathered will end up.

Malwarebytes’ researchers suspect that all the fake subscription sites it identified are run by the same person or group, since they were all created using the same website creation kit based on identical underlying files and with closely related developer email addresses shared across them.

The website creation kit is a legitimate commercial offering that provides account management, billing, file storage and other administrative functions, Malwarebytes said, noting its makers claim it can launch a website in an hour and that, after a one-time purchase, additional templates cost only about $2 each.

The fake sites use genuine Google sign-in pages rather than fake password forms. Visitors enter their credentials on Google’s website and the applications request basic information such as their name, email address and profile picture. Malwarebytes said the sites it examined did not request access to Gmail or Google Drive.

Google’s consent screen generally identifies the application requesting access and provides developer details, Malwarebytes noted. But on the fake websites, that screen displayed free webmail addresses for the developer contacts instead of addresses belonging to the well-known AI services promised. In the case of the unfamiliar AI brands, the sites provide little independently verifiable information about the businesses selling the subscriptions, the researchers added.

Look past the polish

Malwarebytes recommends that users look beyond a site’s design and the presence of familiar authentication options when deciding whether an AI service is legitimate. These include checking who operates the service, looking for verifiable company information and examining the developer details shown during Google authentication.

It also warned users not to upload sensitive documents, recordings or other data to unfamiliar AI services, particularly when the business behind the site cannot be independently verified.

For services connected through Google, users can review the connections in their Google Account and remove services they no longer trust or recognize to prevent future access.

Tomorrow's webinar examines real Google Workspace breaches involving social engineering and malicious OAuth applications, from initial access through the critical first hours of incident response. Learn which security controls and response decisions can make the greatest difference. [...]

D-Link warned customers of a maximum-severity vulnerability (CVE-2026-86296) with public proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code and no patch, affecting legacy DIR-822A dual-band Wi-Fi routers. [...]

Security teams have spent decades asking whether an identity has too much access. AI agents raise a harder question: how can we determine which paths an autonomous system can discover, given the access it already has? A person may try several ways to complete a task. A deterministic application follows the flow its developer wrote. But an AI agent is relentless in its pursuit of done. In May [email protected]

Attackers are exploiting a new flaw in on-premises VeloCloud Orchestrator (VCO), the server that manages the Edge devices in a VeloCloud SD-WAN, Arista said on September 22. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-93952, may allow a remote attacker with no login access to privilege internal functions and affect the VCO host. Only orchestrators set up to authenticate their Edges with certificates are Swati Khandelwalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]