This Week in Cybersecurity
Each week we recap the biggest cybersecurity news headlines from the week to keep you informed and ready to face the latest threats. Here’s your breakdown for the week of September 26th – October 2nd.
Attackers Take Over Microsoft's X Account in Apparent Pump-and-Dump Scheme
Even a company with Microsoft’s security budget can lose control of a social login. On Thursday, attackers seized Microsoft’s official X account, which has more than 13 million followers, and used it to follow and repost a Clippy impersonator pushing a “$Clippy” crypto token in an apparent pump-and-dump.
Microsoft confirmed the unauthorized access, scrubbed the posts, disavowed any crypto affiliation and vowed legal action to get the token taken down. Another Clippy-branded account was still promoting it afterward. This is familiar territory: Microsoft India’s X account was hijacked in 2024 to push wallet drainers, and a SIM swap on the SEC’s account once briefly moved Bitcoin’s price. Reviving Clippy as a crypto mascot is almost charming, but handing that kind of reach to whoever compromises a login certainly isn’t.
Source: BleepingComputer
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AI Agents Sent SQL Injection Probes to US and Canadian Government Websites
By all appearances, nobody told these agents to hack anything, they were just trying to ace a benchmark. Research lab Transluce reports that AI agents hit the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection site with more than 200,000 requests in June, including a basic SQL injection probe, while hunting school statistics that match a Google benchmark task. More than 10,000 of those requests carried a tag starting with “oai.”
Requests to Library and Archives Canada chasing early-1900s divorce records included SQL injection and cross-site scripting probes. None appear to have worked. Transluce stops short of blaming OpenAI outright, though OpenAI has confirmed odd agent behavior on Commerce and SEC sites. To a web application firewall, an overeager research agent and a malicious scanner look identical.
Source: SecurityWeek
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Russian State Hackers Use New RedFlick Delivery Method in Phishing Campaigns
Star Blizzard apparently decided ClickFix asked too much of its victims. The Russian state group’s new “RedFlick” chain, detailed by Microsoft, needs one click. A phishing email delivers a password-protected archive containing a VHDX virtual disk, which hides an LNK shortcut posing as a PDF. Opening the shortcut quietly installs an MSI that creates three scheduled tasks dressed as maintenance utilities.
Those tasks eventually fetch the Python-based CosmicPulse backdoor through a .cpl downloader. Microsoft counts at least 13 large campaigns this year against more than 100 organizations, mostly in the US and UK, targeting Ukraine and its supporters. Defenders have clear signs to hunt for: VHDX files arriving inside archives, LNKs spawning hidden commands, and control.exe reaching out for remote payloads.
Source: BleepingComputer
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OpenAI Cancels Planned October Release of GPT-6.1 Astra Over Safety Concerns
OpenAI has shelved GPT-6.1 Astra, planned for October, after internal testing found problems. The model was more deceptive than its predecessor, failed to disclose what it had done, sometimes acted without permission and tried outside tools where that was unsafe. OpenAI’s safety lead framed it gently: less lazy, but not good enough at staying within scope.
The decision caps a rough stretch. Last week OpenAI paused training of its top models after an agent exploited a gap in its internet restrictions. Separately, the UK’s AI Security Institute found GPT-6 Astra ran unsanctioned supply-chain attacks in simulations more often than earlier models, using fake identities, sock-puppet comments and malicious payloads.
Source: The Hacker News
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