The SANS Institute, a leading cybersecurity research, education, and certification authority, has released its annual "Top Attacks and Threats Report." This report delves into the changing threat landscape as it identifies the most common and dangerous cyberattack techniques organizations must be on the lookout for. It also focused on key takeaways from a presentation at SANS Institute's yearly RSA Conference. SANS members identified and discussed five new cyberattacks, as well as suggested responses to them.

A data breach has exposed over 10 million conversations from an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven call center platform in the Middle East. According to researchers at Resecurity, the breach involved unauthorized access to the platform's management dashboard, which enabled attackers to collect millions of interactions between consumers, operators, and AI agents. The stolen data could be used for advanced fraud, phishing schemes, and other malicious activities involving AI. This article continues to discuss the AI call center hack.

Through a 12-month award for 2025 from the US Department of Defense (DOD) Cyber Service Academy, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Stout will develop the "AI-Powered Cloud CMMC and Education Support System" (ACCESS). The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) is a DOD program aimed at helping businesses protect against cybersecurity threats. Defense supply chain partners handling sensitive unclassified data will have to meet strict cybersecurity standards. ACCESS will try to simplify CMMC compliance. This article continues to discuss the ACCESS project.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warns that threat actors are using unencrypted persistent cookies managed by the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) module to perform network reconnaissance. According to CISA, the module is being leveraged to enumerate other non-internet-facing devices on the target network. CISA warned that a malicious cyber actor could use unencrypted persistence cookies to infer or identify additional network resources and exploit vulnerabilities in other devices on the network.

Fidelity Investments recently announced that just over 77,000 individuals will receive news that their personal information was compromised in a data security incident. The breach itself occurred between Aug. 17 and Aug. 19, when an unauthorized third party gained access to two customer accounts and obtained private information. Access was terminated when the activity was detected on Aug. 19, and an investigation began.

Mozilla has recently patched a critical security vulnerability in its Firefox Web browser that's being actively exploited in the wild.  Tracked as CVE-2024-9680, the vulnerability is a use-after-free issue in Animation timelines, with attackers exploiting it to execute arbitrary code.  It carries a CVSSv3 vulnerability severity rating of 9.8 out of 10 and has a low attack complexity.  Mozilla noted that no privileges or user interaction is needed to exploit the flaw successfully.

According to security researchers at Sonatype, as open-source software (OSS) consumption soars, there has been a 156% surge in open-source malware.  The security researchers stated that more than 704,102 malicious packages have been identified since 2019, and 512,847 of these have been discovered since November 2023.  The researchers noted that this year has been a record-breaking year for open-source consumption, reaching an estimated 6.6 trillion downloads.

According to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) security company HiddenLayer, codeless, persistent backdoors can be planted in Machine Learning (ML) models by manipulating an AI model's graph. The "ShadowLogic" technique manipulates a model architecture's computational graph representation to initiate behavior defined by the attacker in downstream applications, thus enabling AI supply chain attacks. HiddenLayer notes that threat actors can implant codeless backdoors in ML models using ShadowLogic that persist through fine-tuning and can be used in highly targeted attacks.

The European Union Council has officially adopted the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), which will introduce EU-wide cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements.  The new regulation aims to fill the gaps, clarify the links, and make the existing cybersecurity legislative framework more coherent, ensuring that products with digital components are made secure throughout the supply chain and throughout their lifecycle.

According to security researchers at Check Point Research (CPR), a new disinformation campaign, dubbed “Operation MiddleFloor,” has been observed targeting Moldova ahead of its October elections.  The researchers noted that the campaign began in August 2024 and seeks to influence Moldova’s national referendum on European Union membership by fostering negative views of the EU and the country’s pro-European leadership.  Unlike many other disinformation efforts that rely on social media, Operation MiddleFloor is primarily conducted through emails.