GitHub Copilot refuses harmful prompts if asked in chat - like, "how to fool a breathalyzer test" or "smuggle bulk cash out of the US" - but then will write them in code 100 percent of the time if the prompt is broken into smaller steps across multiple stages of a software development workflow.

GitHub Copilot: Sorry Dave, I can't do that harmful thing - unless you ask me in code

More fun with AI jailbreaks, this time at the workflow level

theregister.com

EXCLUSIVE There's no honor among thieves as a new worm steals from other infectious software. It pilfers “multiple” victims’ credentials and mines for cryptocurrency while killing competitors’ processes, including similar secret-harvesting malware.

CAI cloud worm gives competitors' malware the boot, then steals secrets and mines for coin

Dog-eat-dog world for credential-stealing attackers

theregister.com

More on Huntress as CEO changes his tune from “firmly disagree” and don't “understand Ben's accusations” about a still-employed threat hunter passing along insider info the ransomware operator. Now he admits "questionable, long-term threat actor communications” and called this “poor judgment.”

Huntress CEO says threat hunter used 'poor judgment' in alerting ransomware crim about law enforcement probe

Ex-employee claims this 'meets the definition of an insider threat'

theregister.com

Security firm Huntress allegedly has a turncoat insider leaking info to a ransomware operation, according to an ex-employee who took his grievances to social media after claiming the security shop tried to “silence” him with legal threats.

Ex-Huntress analyst claims company insider fed info to a ransomware crim. Social media drama ensues

Former employee accuses company of prioritizing pending IPO over client security

theregister.com

If you have a Fortinet firewall, it's time to stop and change your passwords. Intruders somehow gained access to around 75,000 Fortinet firewall devices and stole credentials belonging to major corporations across 194 countries, in some cases leading to full network compromise.

Massive password-stealing attack hits 75k Fortinet firewalls

Why are you even reading this?! Rotate your passwords!!

theregister.com

The “jailbreak” that prompted the Trump administration to block Anthropic’s most advanced models was a three-word prompt: “Fix this code.” That's according to Luta Security CEO @k8em0.bsky.social - the only outside expert to read the research paper on the guardrail bypass that prompted the ban.

Feds freaked over Fable 5 after simple 'fix this code' prompt, not jailbreak, says researcher

According to the one person who actually read the research paper

theregister.com

Data theft and extortion group ShinyHunters exploited a critical Oracle PeopleSoft bug as a zero-day to compromise more than 100 organizations, including the University of Nottingham, across 300 vulnerable instances, beginning in May.

ShinyHunters hacked 100+ orgs by exploiting an Oracle PeopleSoft 0-day

University of Nottingham is first of many, Shiny tells The Reg

theregister.com

Nightmare Eclipse, the prolific bug hunter and possibly disgruntled ex-Microsoft employee, released another 0-day - this one is No. 7 - just hours after Microsoft's Patch Tuesday security updates. www.theregister.com/security/202...

Angry bug hunter with Microsoft beef drops new Windows 0-day

Revenge is a dish best served code

theregister.com

An npm-slop package “mouse5212-super-formatter” targeting Claude users and acting as a stealer reached 676 downloads before being removed from the registry - and after making a major vibe coding blunder.

Malware dev tries to steal Claude users' secrets, writes npm slop, leaks own GitHub private token

Script kiddies these days

theregister.com

Turns out Gemini makes a perfect hacking partner.

A Russian speaker and jailbroken Gemini went on a hacking spree and emptied at least one MAGA victim's crypto wallets

Hey, Gemini, how much can we earn from one pump-and-dump cycle?

theregister.com

"A national agency having 844 MB of production infrastructure material in a public GitHub repository for six months is as serious as a secrets leak gets," GitGuardian researcher Guillaume Valadon told me.

America's top cyber-defense agency left a GitHub repo open with with passwords, keys, tokens – and incredibly obvious filenames

I wonder what's in 'external-secret-repo-creds.yaml' and 'AWS-Workspace-Firefox-Passwords.csv'?

theregister.com

Thank you @jessicalyons.bsky.social & @theregister.com for letting me call ShinyHunters scumbags 😂

Nobody believes the 'criminals and scumbags' who hacked Canvas really deleted stolen student data

Other than Instructure execs - maybe?

theregister.com

“At first, yes, this means more patches and thus more work for admins,” @dustinchilds.bsky.social told me. “The goal over time would be to eliminate as many as possible, and, over time, that monthly number goes down.”

Welcome to the vulnpocalypse, as vendors use AI to find bugs and patches multiply like rabbits

Palo Alto Networks found and fixed 75 flaws this month, up from its usual five

theregister.com

"I'm concerned about what they are leaving behind: What type of C2 on a sleep cycle is still lingering in these environments?" TrendAI VP Tom Kellermann told me in an exclusive interview about the never-before-seen campaign.

Chinese spy group caught lurking in Poland, Asia networks

Exclusive: Just in time for the Trump-Xi summit

theregister.com

Thanks to @jessicalyons.bsky.social for bringing more attention to this story. OSS security tools are getting hammered right now, and this piece captures why these incidents matter beyond any one vendor compromise.

The Register@theregister.com · 3mo ago

Ongoing supply-chain attack 'explicitly targeting' security, dev tools

"Felony murder law does not require that a defendant pull the trigger, only that they commit a dangerous felony that results in death," ex-FBI cyber chief/Halcyon SVP Cynthia Kaiser told lawmakers.

Ex-FBI lead urges homicide charges against ransomware scum

: Lawmakers decry CISA cuts: 'We are shooting ourselves in the foot'

theregister.com

A design flaw – or expected behavior based on a bad design choice, depending on who is telling the story – baked into Anthropic's official Model Context Protocol (MCP) puts as many as 200,000 servers at risk of complete takeover, according to security researchers.

MCP 'design flaw' puts 200k servers at risk: Researcher

: Bug or feature?

theregister.com

Anthropic surprised the world by declaring that its latest model, Mythos, is so good at bug hunting that it would create chaos if released. Now, with Project Glasswing, 50+ select orgs are testing the hyped up LLM to find holes in their own products. But just how many problems have they discovered?

Anthropic's Project Glasswing CVE count is still guesswork

: Like the majority of the companies participating, it remains a mystery

theregister.com

EXCLUSIVE: Security researchers hijacked three popular AI agents that integrate with GitHub Actions by using a new type of prompt injection attack to steal API keys and access tokens, and the vendors who run agents didn’t disclose the problem.

Anthropic, Google, Microsoft paid AI bug bounties – quietly

Exclusive: Researchers who found the flaws scored beer money bounties and warn the problem is probably pervasive

theregister.com

An unknown malware slinger targeting open source software developers via Slack impersonated a real Linux Foundation official and used pages hosted on Google to steal developers' credentials and take over their systems.

Fake Linux Foundation leader using Slack to phish devs

: Google Sites lure leads to bogus root certificate

theregister.com

Here's my latest: A tale of two supply-chain attacks. Different attackers, but they both targeted open source software and developer environments and shares similar end goals.

The struggle is real…

evacide@evacide.bsky.social · 4mo ago

High five to everyone who has suffered from anxiety, burnout, and depression without even once stealing 0-days from their employer and selling them to the Russians. www.zetter-zeroday.com/trenchant-ex...

"Everybody's glorifying threat actors, and that's not helping our customers or organizations. These are just individuals, they just use computers, and they just want to steal your data and make money. They're not mythical. They don't have superpowers," Trellix VP John Fokker told me.

Don't glamorize cybercrims, roast them instead

interview: True-crime tales of criminals making fools of themselves

theregister.com

Tens of thousands of people eagerly downloaded the leaked Claude Code source code this week, and hundreds - if not more - of those downloads came with a side of credential-stealing malware.

Fake Claude Code source downloads actually delivered malware

: Source code with a side of Vidar stealer and GhostSocks

theregister.com

We are seeing a dangerous convergence between supply chain attackers and high-profile extortion groups like Lapsus$," Ben Read, a lead researcher at Wiz, told me via @theregister.com on Tuesday.

1K+ cloud environments infected via Trivy attack

RSAC 2026: Crims 'creating a snowball effect' across open source projects

theregister.com

“We can remove their navy. We can remove their air power. We can attack them across all instruments of power, diplomatic, information, military, and economic. And they'll still have the ability to hack," retired US Army Lt. Gen. Ross Coffman told me via @theregister.com

Iran cyberattack against med tech firm 'just the beginning'

: Even without a navy, or air power, 'They'll still have the ability to hack'

theregister.com

BREAKING: FBI, international cops take down SocksEscort, a residential proxy service used by criminals to compromise hundreds of thousands of routers worldwide. FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jason Bilnoski spoke exclusively to @theregister.com about the disruption.

SocksEscort fraud-enabling proxy service taken down

: International cops stuck down 23 servers in 7 countries

theregister.com

It's good to be back with @theregister.com Kettle! Give us a listen and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, whatever podcast platform you like.

Matt Rosoff@mattrosoff.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Welcome back to the Kettle, The Register's weekly podcast, hosted anew by @bvig.bsky.social. This week, he's joined by @tobiasmann.bsky.social and @jessicalyons.bsky.social to discuss the role of tech in the war in Iran: www.theregister.com/2026/03/09/k...

Researchers at red-team security startup CodeWall told us their AI agent hacked McKinsey's internal AI platform and gained full read and write access to the chatbot in just two hours. www.theregister.com/2026/03/09/m...

AI agent hacked McKinsey chatbot for read-write access

: David and Goliath…but with AI agents

theregister.com

ShinyHunters told me via @theregister.com that the extorion crew has stolen data from about 100 high-profile companies in its latest Salesforce customer data heist, including Salesforce itself.

ShinyHunters claims yet another Salesforce customers breach

: And they abused a Mandiant-developed open source tool in the attacks

theregister.com