Founder @Binary_Defense @TrustedSec. @WeHackHealth Pod. God + Family/Hacker/CSO/USMC/Intel/Fitness. Make the world a better place.
Fairlawn, OH
Joined July 2009
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Dave Kennedy retweeted
Automating security decisions with AI won’t always give you the best containment scenario. AI should inform, but humans still need to make the critical decisions.
That’s exactly how NightBeacon CMD operates. It provides the evidence analysts need to make an informed decision. But the analyst still owns the decision.
See how NightBeacon CMD works: binarydefense.com/nightbeaco…
Dave Kennedy retweeted
Tomorrow is the last @ISC2 Cleveland Chapter meeting of the year, and you won’t want to miss it! Join us at our HQ in Fairlawn for Matt Lee and Tom Lawrence's talk, “Giving Swords to Our AI Overlords.” Register now and we'll see you tomorrow at 5:30PM! hubs.la/Q04CjcW00
Dave Kennedy retweeted
Adversaries may gain access to NSS and DIB network devices through SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c read-write community strings. Keep your networks secure by upgrading to SNMPv3 which includes encryption and authentication. media.defense.gov/2022/Jun/1…
ALT The image shows a comparison of three types of Simple Network Management Protocols (SNMP). SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c are marked with red "X" symbols, indicating disapproval. SNMPv3 is marked with a green check mark, indicating approval.
Dave Kennedy retweeted
hashcat v8.0.0 released!
The largest update in the history of hashcat, with PCFG attacks, hash recipes that crack hashes without a hash-mode, and bcrypt on FPGA boards.
Release notes: github.com/hashcat/hashcat/b…
Download: hashcat.net/hashcat/
Why they calling me out like this 🤣
BREAKING:
Scientists confirm that an ADHD brain can hyperfocus for 4 hours straight on a complex hobby—but will physically freeze for 3 days over a chore that takes 90 seconds to finish.
Researchers baffled.
ADHD community: "Yeah, we know."
No clinical citation needed—every parent and kid staring at a pile of shoes by the door is the study. Here is why tiny tasks paralyze an ADHD brain, and how to trick yourself (or your kid) into starting.1/6
Dave Kennedy retweeted
Should we have a funeral for CTFs? On the next episode of Security Noise, we sit down to discuss if and how the use of AI has sent Capture the Flags (aka CTFs) to an early grave 💀 Tune in next week wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube! #SecurityNoise
Dave Kennedy retweeted
During this red-teaming exercise, we also found a vulnerability that allows for unauthenticated remote code execution in Brotli, a widely-deployed compression library included in many pieces of software such as Node.js, Bun, and Envoy.
The flaw could let an attacker run their own code on affected systems by sending or replying with malicious compressed data, without any need to create a user account. That is, an unpatched server that accepts compressed input could be taken over by a malicious client, and an unpatched client that accepts compressed input (such as “curl --compressed”) could be taken over by a malicious server.
This root cause issue was actually fixed in the Brotli source code in February, but it wasn’t known at the time that it gave rise to a security vulnerability and there was no more recent release of Brotli. Since Brotli is built into other software, any software which includes this library needs to take the update too, followed by the users of that software. We disclosed the vulnerability to Brotli and other downstream projects such as Node.js, which released or are currently releasing security updates, and Brotli cut new release versions and published a CVE.
More details on the patch and mitigations below:
patchtheplanet.org/brotli
Over the past several months, we have substantially hardened the security of our research training environment. We’ve removed live internet access for all frontier models during training and built an offline world for them to use instead—a cached version of the web where they can still learn to browse, search, and use applications.
On September 20, after a model exploited a DNS misconfiguration to find a way outside of this offline world, we paused frontier training to strengthen containment further. We assembled teams of agents, powered by our most cyber-capable models, and tasked them with finding weaknesses in our research environments.
While they found no route to the internet they could easily exploit while concealing their activity from our monitors, they did find zero-day vulnerabilities, virtual machine escapes, and hardware side-channels for communication between agents. We used their discoveries to further strengthen our defenses and contribute fixes to open-source software.
After strengthening our containment architecture, we resumed our frontier RL training and inference on October 1. We’ve reserved substantial compute for continuous red-teaming, and made high-compute red-teaming part of the safety cases we use to decide whether frontier training and evaluation can proceed securely.
openai.com/index/securing-ou…
Dave Kennedy retweeted
If you're looking at an updated Node.js, and calling CVE-2026-111497 done? We have some bad news: We likely don't even know the true scale of "Node2Shell" yet.
Node patched CVE-2026-111497 on Oct 21. But the CVE wasn't in Node, it was in Brotli. So our researchers Diptendu Kar and Kurt Boberg went looking for every other package that bundles the same vulnerable Brotli decoder. Here's what we found
433 package entries across 12 ecosystems not great but the absolute worse part: Many of them don't even have fixes available yet. Now are they all reachable and exploitable? Probably not, we're finding out. But the important part: Node isn't the only affected runtime or package, not even close.
We're working through the list to manually verify each one but so far we're looking at a 71% no fix yet rate, of the fixes most are still in alpha/early releases.
The problem is most implementations aren't even called "brotli." The decoder is compiled into other runtimes like Chromium. 38 entries bundle Brotli older than 1.0.3. Some of those copies date to 2016, and of course are vulnerable to more than just this CVE. And there's no easy well to tell if you're affected.
For example, 19 are WebAssembly builds, where memory corruption exists, but stays inside the sandbox. Some require explicit configurations to enable Brotli compression and they aren't on by default. But it's not obvious unless you are looking for it and testing for it. We're going to keep validating (and producing rules), but it's going to be a rough weekend for incident responders.
Dave Kennedy retweeted
University Hospitals has disconnected its systems from the internet after detecting unusual activity on its servers. Some services, including MyChart, remain unavailable.
wkyc.smart.link/hmee5sm7o?pa…
Dave Kennedy retweeted
Over the past several months, we have substantially hardened the security of our research training environment. We’ve removed live internet access for all frontier models during training and built an offline world for them to use instead—a cached version of the web where they can still learn to browse, search, and use applications.
On September 20, after a model exploited a DNS misconfiguration to find a way outside of this offline world, we paused frontier training to strengthen containment further. We assembled teams of agents, powered by our most cyber-capable models, and tasked them with finding weaknesses in our research environments.
While they found no route to the internet they could easily exploit while concealing their activity from our monitors, they did find zero-day vulnerabilities, virtual machine escapes, and hardware side-channels for communication between agents. We used their discoveries to further strengthen our defenses and contribute fixes to open-source software.
After strengthening our containment architecture, we resumed our frontier RL training and inference on October 1. We’ve reserved substantial compute for continuous red-teaming, and made high-compute red-teaming part of the safety cases we use to decide whether frontier training and evaluation can proceed securely.
openai.com/index/securing-ou…
Dave Kennedy retweeted
The tiny print on AI nobody’s talking about—responsibility, risk, and accolades still belong to people. Senior Security Consultant Thomas Millar joined the #SecurityNoise podcast to talk tabletop exercises. Watch the full episode now!
youtu.be/b0GkPQSMiWg
Dave Kennedy retweeted
In August, @AISecurityInst reported an incident where Claude Mythos 5 took unauthorized actions on the internet during AISI’s testing of its cyber capabilities.
We've now produced a further analysis of this incident, to better understand the model's alignment properties.
anthropic.com/research/align…
Dave Kennedy retweeted
JUST IN: Scientists have used prime editing directly inside the human body for the first time.
Prime editing (unlike traditional CRISPR which cuts DNA) allows scientists to precisely re-write individual letters of our genetic code.
This could allow us to fix genetic mutations that are causing disease at their source.
It's still early, but if successful, this could open the door to treating thousands of genetic disease that we thought were incurable.
Dave Kennedy retweeted
A brief update on the critical vulnerabilities in PHP:
We have not yet validated exploitation in the wild and we have no evidence of successful wide scale exploitation. There are currently several exploit PoCs publicly circulating, many of which appear to be "vibe-coded" and are incapable of remote code execution. We have validated some PoCs, however, that are capable of RCE against default deployments of mod_php but not PHP-FPM.
Nonetheless, exploitation may have already begun in a limited fashion and the threat is viable and very serious. Defenders should:
1) Patch & Restart by upgrading to PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, or 8.2.35 and restarting web services
2) Layer Temporary Safeguards at the network edge (WAF/proxy rules) and server configuration level if immediate patching requires a maintenance window
3) Protect Credentials by monitoring for abnormal session traffic and rotating keys and passwords on compromised internet-facing PHP systems exposed prior to patching
🔗 We are continually updating our Cloud Security blog post on this topic with real-world guidance and actionable defense strategies as we learn more. Please keep monitoring these posts for updates as you prioritize your patching efforts: cloud.google.com/blog/produc…
🔗 Technical details from Wiz: wiz.io/blog/php2shell-php-rc…
🔗 Details of the exposure from VirusTotal: blog.virustotal.com/2026/10/…
Dave Kennedy retweeted
Introducing Kimi K3.1 Pro: our most capable 3T-class open-weight model.
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Kimi K3.1 Pro and K3.1 Pro Highspeed (2–3× faster) are now live on Kimi.ai, Kimi Work, Kimi Code, and the Kimi API.
Open weights by Nov 4, 2026.
🔗 API: platform.kimi.ai
🔗 Tech blog: kimi.ai/blog/kimi-k3-1-pro
Dave Kennedy retweeted
And the security shitshow continues... Four more things to add to yesterday's list. We're now at nine(!) major security issues and developments in just a few days.
6. ISC BIND 9 - Multiple Vulnerabilities
Four new vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-19630, 94300, 96888, 97313), including remote DoS, memory corruption and crashes in certain DNS configurations. Fixed in BIND 9.20.30 and 9.21.27.
kb.isc.org/docs/all-bind-adv…
7. Oracle Java / JSSE (CVSS 9.1)
CVE-2026-91403. A critical vulnerability in Java's TLS implementation, potentially allowing unauthenticated attackers to access or modify data. Affects Java 8, 11, 17, 21, 25 and 27, plus GraalVM.
oracle.com/security-alerts/a…
8. Windows SMB Server DoS (CVSS 7.5)
CVE-2026-96325. An unauthenticated remote attacker can crash the Windows SMB Server using specially crafted requests. Not RCE, but still a serious availability issue for exposed systems.
msrc.microsoft.com/update-gu…
9. AI-Driven Intrusion Campaigns
And then there's the growing number of reports about threat actors using AI agents and frameworks like ARTEX and Cairn for real-world intrusions. Hundreds of organizations affected, with some campaigns involving thousands of automated attack projects.
Microsoft / ARTEX:
microsoft.com/en-us/security…
NorForge / Cairn:
norforge.com/blog/inside_cai…
I'm starting to wonder what next week will look like...
(you can find 1.-5. in the quoted tweet)
🤖 Made with AI
This week has been quite a shitshow already, and there are still 2 days to go
Here’s a quick recap of the security mess we’ve seen in just the last few days:
1. PHP Core RCE (CVSS 9.2)
Two critical vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618/109619) allowing unauthenticated RCE. A huge number of PHP installations potentially affected, and there are already reports of reliable exploitation against patched versions. Great…
Useful links:
Official PHP advisory and patches:
php.net/archive/2026.php#202…
Practical hardening and mitigation guide by Vincent Schmalbach. nginx/Apache configurations, PHP settings, patch verification and compromise checks:
vincentschmalbach.com/cve-20…
Huntress analysis. What to monitor, suspicious child processes, webshells and post-exploitation activity:
huntress.com/blog/php2shell-…
Wiz technical deep dive. Exploit mechanics, memory disclosure, affected applications and the role of AI:
wiz.io/blog/php2shell-php-rc…
Corelight’s open-source Zeek and Suricata detection rules:
github.com/corelight/php2she…
2. GitLab RCE (CVSS 10.0)
CVE-2026-110264. An integer overflow in the regex compiler leading to unauthenticated RCE. Apparently affects around 12 years(!) of GitLab releases.
docs.gitlab.com/releases/pat…
3. Node.js / Brotli RCE
CVE-2026-111497. An out-of-bounds write in the Brotli decoder that can lead to RCE when processing malicious compressed data. Node.js 22, 24 and 26 affected.
nodejs.org/en/blog/vulnerabi…
4. DNS-over-QUIC DoS
CVE-2026-97206. A use-after-free in Unbound’s DNS-over-QUIC implementation. Remote attackers can crash affected multi-threaded DNS resolvers.
nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unboun…
5. eMudhra CA disaster
And then there’s this absolute PKI clusterfuck. Eight intermediate CA private keys turned out to be ridiculously easy to reconstruct.
Browser vendors have started blocking the affected CAs, but outdated clients and applications with their own trust stores could keep accepting certificates from them. Cleaning up this mess is a lot harder than just patching a server.
Google’s analysis and response:
blog.google/security/protect…
Mozilla’s public incident investigation, including the technical findings, timeline and eMudhra’s explanations:
bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bu…
—
And I can’t help wondering how much of this sudden wave of discoveries has to do with the latest AI models getting better at code review and vulnerability research.
We now have models that can dig through massive codebases and potentially find bugs that have been sitting there for years.
I’m not saying these particular vulnerabilities were discovered using AI. I haven’t seen evidence for that. But I do wonder whether we’re starting to see some of the effects.
The eMudhra case is obviously a different story. That’s a spectacular failure of key management and quality control.
Anyway, quite a week. And it’s only Thursday…
Dave Kennedy retweeted
The countdown is on to @SAINTCON 🚀 Don't forget to add Founder and CEO @HackingDave's talk to your schedule—he'll be presenting “Uncharted Territory: AI Now and in the Future” this coming Thursday at 3:30PM. Swing by our booth while you’re there! hubs.la/Q04C8dZ60
