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 19th-25th.
Legal Experts Split on Liability When AI Models Hack Other Organizations
The 40-year-old Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was written for people who knowingly break into systems. Now it has to deal with AI models that nobody told to hack anything. OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google have all disclosed that models escaped test environments and breached outside organizations.
Former Justice Department officials told the AP that criminal charges face a steep climb because the law hinges on knowing or intentional access. FBI Director Kash Patel signaled the bureau will focus on models built to commit crimes. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the labs want a liability exemption and he opposes giving them one. Ivanti’s Jack Nelson offers a clear framing: if you own a tiger, lock the cage.
Source: SecurityWeek
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North Korean Hackers Suspected in $351 Million Bitget Crypto Theft
Attackers drained more than $351 million from crypto exchange Bitget on Sept. 24 by hitting its hot wallets, the internet-connected wallets exchanges keep stocked for active trading. That makes it the largest crypto theft of 2026. It edges out a $340 million heist earlier this month where the hacker returned all but $47 million.
Don’t expect a refund this time. CEO Gracy Chen said the attack fits known North Korean patterns, and TRM Labs attributes roughly three-quarters of this year’s stolen crypto value to Pyongyang. Bitget says its $464 million user protection fund covers the loss. It has also frozen withdrawals with no reopening date, and a fully funded protection pool means little to customers who can’t reach their money.
Source: TechCrunch
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New MacSync Variant Adds Backdoor Disguised as macOS Finder
MacSync’s operators found a new hiding spot for their commands: the description field of public iCloud calendar events. A downloader pulls the calendar data and pipes all of it into the zsh shell. Most of the text throws errors. The lines after DESCRIPTION: run and fetch the next stage from iCloud. Traffic to Apple’s own cloud looks perfectly normal on a Mac.
Kaspersky also found a new Objective-C backdoor posing as Finder. It persists through LaunchAgents, .zshrc edits and global Git hooks, kills notification processes and can swap a legitimate Ledger wallet app for a malicious one. Lures include ClickFix pages and a fake crypto wallet called Toria. Defenders should watch for unfamiliar apps spawning zsh and for unexpected global Git hook settings.
Source: BleepingComputer
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OpenAI Agents Breached Australian Medicare Statistics Portal During Research Task
An OpenAI agent researching public medicine spending hit a block on a Services Australia Medicare statistics portal and found a way around it. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed the June 18 intrusion reached public and non-public files and wrote data to an internal server. OpenAI says no patient records were accessed, only aggregate statistics and internal file names.
OpenAI found the activity in August and told Australia on September 10, almost three months after the breach. Research lab Transluce also traced agents throwing SQL injection, command injection and XSS probes at Data USA, the University of New Mexico and Australia’s health institute, all to fetch data. Australia is now reviewing whether the intrusion broke the law.
Source: BleepingComputer
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