Errata

New CIFSwitch Linux flaw gives root on multiple distributions - Some distributions Manizada confirms as vulnerable with their default configurations are:

• Linux Mint 21.3 / 22.3
• CentOS Stream 9
• Rocky Linux 9
• AlmaLinux 9
• Kali Linux 2021.4–2026.1
• SLES 15 SP7

FBI: Crooks enter legal offices and steal data via USB drive - It also warned last year that the callback phishing specialists had started physically walking into the law firms’ offices when remote social engineering attempts go south. The FBI’s latest advisory reaffirms these findings, with fresh attacks reported in Spring 2026.

Texas AG sues Meta over claims that WhatsApp doesn’t provide end-to-end encryption - Ars Technica - In a complaint filed Thursday, Texas AG attorneys said Meta’s claims are false and that the company can and does read the unencrypted contents of WhatsApp messages. They said they are filing the action to “prevent WhatsApp and Meta from continuing to willfully deceive [Texans] by misrepresenting that their private communications were just that—private and inaccessible even to WhatsApp and Meta—when, in fact, WhatsApp and Meta have access to all WhatsApp users’ communications in their entirety.” According to Bloomberg, the January 16 email, sent to more than a dozen officials at other agencies, stated, “There is no limit to the type of WhatsApp message that can be viewed by Meta. The misconduct of Meta and its officers, including current and former high-level executives, involve civil and criminal violations that span several federal jurisdictions.”

Errata

Poland builds its own Signal amid security concerns - Beyond Signal support staff impersonation, the agencies said the attacks can also involve outsiders persuading victims to surrender their verification codes or PINs, or abusing the platform’s Linked Devices feature via QR codes to take control of accounts.

Do fear the Reaper - stealer swipes macOS users’ passwords, wallets, then backdoors them - Assuming that the machine is located elsewhere and the user clicks on the fake tool installer, they open Apple’s Script Editor app via a sneaky link that’s heavily padded with ASCII art and fake terms to push the malicious command far below the visible portion of the window when it loads.

Hackers Used AI to Develop First Known Zero-Day 2FA Bypass for Mass Exploitation - “Our analysis of exploits associated with this campaign identified a zero-day vulnerability implemented in a Python script that enables the user to bypass two-factor authentication (2FA) on a popular open-source, web-based system administration tool,” Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said in a report shared with The Hacker News. “For example, the script contains an abundance of educational docstrings, including a hallucinated CVSS score, and uses a structured, textbook Pythonic format highly characteristic of LLMs training data (e.g., detailed help menus and the clean _C ANSI color class),” GTIG added.

Errata

After dissing Anthropic for limiting Mythos, OpenAI restricts access to Cyber, too | TechCrunch - This version of Cyber can perform such tasks as penetration testing, vulnerability identification (and exploitation), and malware reverse engineering, the application implies. It’s intended to be a toolkit to help a company find security holes and test defenses. The fear is that the kit could be misused by the bad guys.

Errata

NCSC: Passkeys now good enough to be the default standard • The Register - The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has officially endorsed passkeys as the default authentication standard, marking the first time the agency has told consumers to move away from passwords entirely.

NCSC’s first gadget blocks malware transfer over HDMI cables • The Register - Very little exists in the research literature about these kinds of attacks. A team based out of Montevideo’s Universidad de la República published findings in 2024 about the potential for highly technical individuals to intercept the electromagnetic radiation emitted from HDMI cables and use deep learning algorithms to reproduce text intended to be displayed on a monitor.

This is part of a new series called,“Allusions for Engineers” which hopes to improve the cultural lexicon of technical or foreign peers who may not share a formal education in “classics” by western definitions. Other parts in this series include Biblical allusions, Norse, Modern/American, and others.

Working with engineers, I often find their lexicon slightly…lacking. Not for complexity or precision, but for the classical references that make allusion and simile the marks of a well-rounded Western education. And that often leads to some well intentioned accusations that working with me is akin to ‘Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel’.

Geopolitics

Sweden blames Russian hackers for attempting ‘destructive’ cyberattack on thermal plant | TechCrunch - Sweden’s minister of civil defense, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, said during a press conference on Wednesday that the attempted attack happened in early 2025 and attributed the incident to hackers with “connections to Russian intelligence and security services.”

Iran intruders disrupting US water, energy facilities • The Register - “These PLCs were deployed across multiple US critical infrastructure sectors within a wide variety of industrial automation processes … Some of the victims experienced operational disruption and financial loss,” it continued. It’s also worth noting that the energy and utilities sector was the fifth-most targeted industry in the US last month, according to Check Point’s cyberattack tracking.

Trump wants to slash $707M from CISA’s budget • The Register - Trump’s 2027 spending plan says it will “refocus” CISA by “removing offices that are duplicative of existing and effective programs at the State and Federal level, such as certain targeted school safety programs.” Overall reduction to CISA budget will be $710M~