Anyway I think Cybersecurity Awareness Month actually worked this year.
Kevin Collier
@kevincollier.bsky.social
I cover digital threats for NBC News. Tip me! @kevincollier.01 on signal, kevin.collier@nbcuni.com. NYC, from West Virginia.
It's notable openai could have done this before its agents hacked huggingface et. al but they just... didn't.
Securing our frontier model training environment
OpenAI explains how we strengthened containment for frontier model training and evaluation, including offline environments and high-compute red-teaming.
openai.com
Total respect for NBC's Monica Alba, who asked Trump exactly the question he needs to answer. By refusing to answer, and attacking her, he has effectively told the world that no, sexual abuse allegations do no mean a thing to him. Imagine if she wasn't there. We'd be the poorer for it.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · yesterday😳 WOMAN REPORTER: Do sexual abuse allegations mean nothing to you, sir? TRUMP: Wait. Wait! Wait wait wait. Slow down. Who are you with? REPORTER: NBC, sir. But they are very serious sex abuse allegations TRUMP: Quiet! Isn't she a fresh person? You're a horrible little reporter, aren't you?
It's literally US/FCC policy that normal advertisers can't do this to people on the Do Not Call list but it's ok as long as it's politics and it's technically a person hitting send each time/not a 100% automated system.
ceej@ceej.online · 2d agoit's cool that you can send "STOP" to instantly block an automated political fundraising text message so they have to text you from a different number five minutes later
New: the PHP vulnerability might be incredibly scary — I've never seen the NSA tell the world they should take their websites down until they're patched — but eight leading cyber companies tell me they've not seen anybody hacked through it (so far).
Hackers appear to be struggling to exploit PHP flaws after global cybersecurity crisis
The vulnerabilities are devastating, in theory. But experts say they are also technically very difficult to hack.
nbcnews.com
This is so misleading I'd count it as irresponsible journalism. Conflates people using personal agents for banking (not something I'd do, but you do you) with rogue AI swarms roaming banking networks, which would be an actual worrying thing and for which there is not currently evidence.
Scoop: Unvetted AI agents are accessing U.S. bank accounts
Banks including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and others are racing to contain agent risks.
axios.com
Medical testing giant Quest Diagnostics said it's been hit by a cyberattack & has paused its Quanum LSM system that some of its customers use for placing tests & looking up results. In an SEC filing, the company said it believes hackers "accessed certain patient records." www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Arch...
The US gov's messaging on this has been really weak. UK and European agencies were telling people to freak out while we were all asleep. NSA tweeted about it 15 minutes before the patch came out. CISA's statement came after the patch released, then they deleted it, then they put up another.
Eric Geller@ericjgeller.com · 3d agoI've asked major agencies how they're dealing with the PHP vulnerabilities. No one has given me an answer. HHS referred me to NSA, which is strange, since CISA is supposed to be in charge of managing incidents like this.
In any other admin, this would probably be the most outrageous official statement ever made by a sitting FCC director: Strongly implying that the government forbids broadcast networks from reporting on the president's falling poll numbers. (Sorry to paste from twitter but that's where he posts.)
The funniest thing about these PHP vulns freaking out much of the internet is the NSA releasing a formal recommendation people take their sites offline until they can patch...via a tweet sent 15 minutes before the patch went live.
Seeing a lot of shit talking on here from people I assume have never had shine. It's...fine.
Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 5d agoWASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court agrees to review Reconstruction-era ban on distilling spirits in private homes.
Kept hearing from Flock prostesters that they didn't understand how cameras went up with their tax dollars and without their knowledge. I read dozens of contracts and found 55 times the company testified their product is unique (despite the other ALPR cameras on the market) to avoid bidding process.
How Flock’s cameras spread through government deals that bypassed public scrutiny
An NBC News review found government contracts priced just below approval thresholds and dozens of deals awarded without competitive bids.
nbcnews.com
For the first time this year, data centers have become targets for bombardment in global conflicts. Our analysis shows at least 27 such attacks in 2026. Experts worry the targeting of data centers opens a Pandora's box that cannot be closed. www.nbcnews.com/tech/securit...
" A judge of Brazil’s top electoral court ruled Thursday that Meta must adopt measures to immediately secure equal treatment of the two presidential candidates ahead of an Oct. 25 runoff." www.nbcnews.com/world/south-...
Brazil’s Lula wins electoral court challenge against Meta for alleged pro-Bolsonaro algorithm bias
A judge ruled that the tech company must adopt measures to immediately secure equal treatment of the two presidential candidates ahead of an Oct. 25 runoff.
nbcnews.com
Feel like this artisanal chicken skin snack company didn't do a ton of research deciding on their branding
After Trump's DHS cut all money to the EI-ISAC (the biggest election threat intel sharing platform) and said states could not use federal funds to buy their own, now they say as early voting is about to start that states can use federal funds for after all.
Federal Cybersecurity Grant Funding Available for MS-ISAC Membership and Services, Expanding Access to Critical Cyber Defenses for State and Local Governments
State and local governments can now apply SLCGP funding toward MS-ISAC membership and services to strengthen cybersecurity capabilities.
cisecurity.org
New this morning: @citizenlab.ca has identified an Israeli ad tech company — one that's placed ads on NBC News — that ran a secret side platform to let spyware companies plant malicious code to hack people browsing those sites. 45 Al Jazeera employees and journalists were infected!
Israeli ad company helped a spyware firm target Al Jazeera through online ads, researchers say
Researchers say Discover-Tech used online ads to deliver zero-click spyware, the first public evidence of the technique, with its ads reaching nearly 200,000 websites and apps.
nbcnews.com
Also the original claim doesn't really make sense if you think about it. Plenty of social media activity is clearly inauthentic, sure, but people think it's substantially IRA-style ops that are routed solely through some particular Yandex data centers? Or they're AI agents that live in them?
Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 2w agoNEW: I wrote about why so many people wanted to believe that Ukrainian airstrikes on a Russian data center reduced troll and bot activity online, even though it's almost certainly not true. Featuring @noupside.bsky.social: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Two big bits of news today: You're not allowed to be mean to one of the main AIs anymore and also the president says you're not allowed to say AI anymore.
Hayden Field@haydenfield.bsky.social · 2w agoExclusive: Anthropic is updating its usage policy for the first time in over a year. The new rules prohibit sustained "abusive or cruel behavior" towards Claude & add new restrictions about propaganda campaigns, surveillance & weapon development. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
🔥New takedown report🔥 We just took down two deceptive networks that were running unusually sophisticated false fronts and deceptive personas. Threat report by OpenAI: openai.com/index/disrup...
Disrupting AI-enabled “false front” operations
OpenAI disrupted two AI-enabled influence operations that used false-front journalists and a think tank to spread geopolitical messaging.
openai.com
DOJ is already using "Super Intelligence" instead of Artificial Intelligence and it reads ridiculous. www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr...
justice.gov
CISA would like you to today become aware of cybersecurity. Some might argue it has recently been unaware of cybersecurity. Regardless, upon reading this, awareness of cybersecurity washes over you.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2026 Kickoff
YouTube video by CISA
youtu.be
Using Google Translate to try to talk with Dutch authorities about the ShinyHunters hack and this is truly the most ridiculous fake language. "Mijn excuses," "de hackersgroep ShinyHunters," can these people can hear themselves??
A spokesperson for ShinyHunters, the prolific cyber extortionists who hacked the FBI's job portal last week, tells me they now won't release any more data from that hack. They also sent this somewhat confusing statement that indicates they maybe think they've bitten off more than they can chew.
.@williamturton.bsky.social, best known as my former intern, got Susan Collins to say "shame on Pro Publica."
Ron Filipkowski@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · last mo.Sounds guilty to me.
In 2024 the former CEO of a defense contractor made a stunning confession to two FBI agents. He alleged that was the ringleader of a massive pay-to-play operation, bribing senators with campaign contributions in exchange for govt contracts. www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...
The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way
After the FBI caught a defense contractor’s CEO making illegal campaign contributions, it sought to launch a sweeping political bribery probe involving Collins and others. Then the second Trump admini...
propublica.org
All the best, Lorenzo!!! ✊Massively looking forward to the book!!!
Serious props to the reporters on this story (they are not active on Bluesky so I'm not tagging them). We are all genuinely lucky that news illustrating what can go wrong when militaries rely on hallucination-prone LLMs got published before something worse happened.
Exclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say | CNN Politics
The episode shows the risks of using this new, relatively poorly understood technology in the middle of the Iran war
cnn.com