This Week in Cybersecurity
Each week at Applied Tech 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 5th-11th.
Researchers Warn of Double-Digit Odds AI Could "Kill All Humans" Within a Decade
Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned this week, accusing Anthropic and OpenAI of “gambling with our lives” on superintelligence; colleague Evan Hubinger followed with a public estimate of over 10% odds AI could kill all humans within a decade. Skeptics like Melanie Mitchell counter that today’s systems aren’t close to general human-level capability. Meanwhile, Sanders and Casar are pushing the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act in Congress.
Source: The Guardian
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Anthropic Threat Report Details Russian State Hackers' AI-Automated Detection Evasion
Anthropic says it disrupted a Russian state-linked espionage operation (matching Midnight Blizzard’s tradecraft) that used Claude to test malware against security tools and automatically rewrite anything that got flagged, repeating the loop until it evaded detection.
Targets included Ukrainian/European government bodies, drone manufacturers, and hotel Wi-Fi providers used for DNS hijacking, plus hijacked WhatsApp accounts of former Ukrainian officials. Anthropic also flagged a broader trend of attackers targeting AI vendors’ own credentials and infrastructure, including a failed campaign to steal a pre-release Claude model.
Source: SecurityWeek
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Fake Casino and Reward Apps Exploit Google Play's No-Reviews Early Access Loophole
Bitdefender found thousands of deceptive apps exploiting Google Play’s Early Access tier, which blocks public reviews and ratings—including a GTA knockoff that hit 1 million downloads with zero reviews before vanishing.
Fake casino and reward apps dangle payouts that stall right as users near a withdrawal threshold, monetizing purely through ad views, and are promoted via TikTok/Facebook ads using AI deepfakes. The loophole also lets gambling-style apps dodge licensing and age-verification rules.
Source: The Hacker News
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Vishing Campaign Targets Executives With Fake IT Calls to Bypass MFA
Arctic Wolf is tracking PREY-0058, an extortion group that skips malware entirely: attackers cold-call executives posing as IT help desk staff, direct them to lookalike MFA domains, and harvest session tokens via an adversary-in-the-middle flow.
Stolen tokens get replayed from residential proxies matched to the victim’s location, enabling mass data theft from SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, and Box before extortion demands go out. The group shares infrastructure with Mandiant’s UNC6671 and the shifting Cinder/Pink cluster, and targets cluster in U.S. construction, healthcare, and finance.
Source: The Hacker News
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