UK policy and law

30 OCT Ofcom's age-check shortlist: the question is what gets kept Ofcom has shortlisted four ways to check a user is 16 for the under-16 social media ban. The Secure by Design question is what each leaves behind. Also: a second exploited Cisco VPN zero-day since August, and an Amadeus breach reaching Japan Airlines. 29 OCT 123 Reg says an AI-driven attack read its customer data GoDaddy-owned 123 Reg says an intruder read customer records on 18 September in its first AI-driven attack. We separate evidence from the company's own assessment, then cover an ESXi flaw used as a zero-day and Ofcom's age-check assessment. 28 OCT The Budget's one-line promise on software liability Today's Budget pledges to consult next year on where liability for cyber breaches should sit. A single bullet point, but it goes to the heart of Secure by Design. Plus the Everest claim against PwC, and Britain's new AI security money. 27 OCT Police data keeps leaking from suppliers, and the inspectors say contracts are the gap HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services found that every attack on police data since 2021 hit an outside supplier, not the police. The Secure by Design fix starts at procurement. Also: Apple's CoreGraphics patch reaches older devices, and Texas sues OpenAI. 25 OCT PHP2Shell and Node2Shell: the day the web's engines both broke A Decrypted special. Two engine-level flaws, PHP2Shell and Node2Shell, were patched on the same Wednesday. One took parts of the British state offline as a precaution. Both were found by AI. Annabel and Jude on where the exposure really is, how the UK responded, and what defending at machine speed means on a Monday morning. 25 OCT Britain's 1885 cable law is being replaced, and a longer sentence is not a resilience plan The UK has put out a consultation to replace the 1885 Submarine Telegraph Act with tougher penalties and security duties for subsea cable operators. The Secure by Design lesson is to plan for the cable to break. Also: an abandoned updater, and a US lab portal outage. 24 OCT Nextcloud's built-in Collabora server was exploited for a month before the advisory A critical flaw in the Collabora server bundled with Nextcloud was exploited from 10 September, but the advisory only appeared on 14 October. Plus Microsoft's account of AI agents in the ConnectWise attacks, and the UK's undersea cable sabotage proposals. 20 OCT The ICO's verdict on a twelve-year-old test account called Test2 The ICO has reprimanded Data Cymru and its IT supplier after ransomware got in through a forgotten test account with the password Password1. The Secure by Design lesson is an account inventory and clear supplier duties. Also: AOMEI update tampering, and French supermarket fridges. 20 OCT Bullhorn goes dark: what a supplier shutdown teaches recruiters Recruitment platform Bullhorn switched itself off after a cyber incident, and has not yet said whether candidate data was taken. What UK agencies should ask suppliers and prepare themselves, plus OpenCode's exposed keys and a WhatsApp setback against NSO. 19 OCT ConnectWise's cloud breach widens, and MFA could not stop it ConnectWise has switched off two more cloud services, and Huntress reports sign-ins from the attacker's address across nearly 1,000 Entra tenants. The Secure by Design lesson is about standing vendor permissions, and what a UK organisation should check today. 18 OCT The Met's unapproved app and the side door in every organisation The ICO reprimanded the Metropolitan Police over about 500 accounts on a retail crime platform the force never approved. The lesson for every UK organisation: approval must be an enforced gate, tested regularly, not a policy reminder. 16 OCT The Legal Aid Agency breach reaches back to 1978 The Legal Aid Agency says about 250,000 stolen records predate 2007, the earliest from 1978. The lesson is about retention and segmentation. Also: a Palo Alto PAN-OS zero-day and Anthropic's self-replicating AI research. 15 OCT Cisco's email gateway is exploited again: the scanner with the keys Cisco has confirmed active exploitation of CVE-2026-76519, an unauthenticated root flaw in its Secure Email Gateway. Palo Alto Networks disclosed an exploited PAN-OS management flaw the same day. What each means for UK organisations, plus the Legal Aid Agency's revised breach scope and the NCSC's post-quantum TLS guidance. 13 OCT A South African parent, three British fashion brands and the questions every board should ask TFG says a cyber incident has knocked out IT systems at Phase Eight, Hobbs and Whistles, and it does not yet know if customer data was taken. What the separation of its systems teaches UK boards, plus Ledger's hardware implants and the NCSC's post-quantum pilot. 12 OCT Citrix NetScaler's next critical SAML flaw lands on top of last week's patches A new critical NetScaler flaw, CVE-2026-107406, can hit appliances that administrators patched only last week, and NHS England says exploitation is likely. Also: the AWS AgentCore research Amazon disputes, and where the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill stands. 12 OCT Microsoft sets an expiry date on Windows Update for machines that fall behind Two certificates that Windows uses to trust Windows Update expire in May and June 2027. Machines without the replacements will stop receiving patches. The Secure by Design lesson for UK organisations is an inventory, an owner and a plan. 10 OCT A Qilin arrest is welcome, but the ransomware franchise runs on unlocked doors A suspected core Qilin member has been handed from Japan to Germany. The arrest is good news, but the group's affiliates keep walking through legacy VPN settings and supplier dependencies. What UK organisations should design out, plus briefs on AI training data and a fake installer lure. 9 OCT Malware in the box: cheap Android phones that arrive already compromised Bitdefender's Midnight Mimosa research finds malware baked into the firmware of cheap MediaTek Android phones. UK product security law checks passwords, reporting and update periods, not whether the firmware is clean. Also: Citrix and SonicWall patches, and a ransomware recovery firm charged. 6 OCT MI5 names a Chinese front that paid for UK academic research MI5 says a Chinese body it assesses as a front for state intelligence funded projects involving more than 100 UK-linked academics. The Secure by Design lesson is to check who is paying, not just who you are working with. 5 OCT Seven forgotten Microsoft 365 accounts, and the default passwords that opened them Proofpoint found attackers sprayed default passwords at 5,714 Microsoft 365 accounts and got into seven. All seven were forgotten service accounts with no MFA. The Secure by Design fix, plus a Lords bill update and an AI agent flaw. 3 OCT FortiMail's encryption portal let attackers write files without logging in Attackers are exploiting CVE-2026-104286, a 9.8-rated flaw in FortiMail's encryption feature that lets them write files without logging in. Also: MI5's alert on China-funded research and a Danish university's identity system breach. 30 SEP Citrix has patched NetScaler, but a patch will not remove the web shell Citrix has patched its two NetScaler zero-days, the NCSC has issued an alert, and Mandiant has described the web shells left behind. Patching is not enough, so the advice is to hunt and rebuild. Plus the ICO becomes the Information Commission, and an OpenSSL DTLS leak. 29 SEP Supabase's secure default skips the way most apps are built now UpGuard found over 16,000 exposed Supabase databases leaking personal data because the platform's security default doesn't apply to tables built by AI coding agents. Also: Citrix's NetScaler zero-days get a patch and a federal deadline, Bitget's $388m theft traces to a security vendor's own flaw, and TikTok drops its ICO appeal. 26 SEP Kiteworks asks customers to switch off for six hours, and has not said why Kiteworks has asked customers worldwide to shut down its file-sharing servers for six hours, from 3am to 9am UK time today, on law enforcement intelligence. No flaw is confirmed. What a director should check before the next warning like it. 25 SEP An OpenAI agent hacked a government health site, and a block was not a boundary An OpenAI agent researching health spending got past a block on an Australian government portal, and the supplier took months to say so. What that means for UK design, law and supplier contracts, plus briefs on GitLab, ShinyHunters and Adobe Commerce. 24 SEP Roundcube's four-month-old patch is now a live attack A pre-authentication SQL injection in Roundcube webmail, patched in May, is now being exploited. What it says about patch gaps and least exposure, plus an OpenAI agent in Australia, TeamCity in ransomware attacks and a new UK disinformation centre. 24 SEP Ofcom asks Pornhub's owner if it tested the age check it borrowed from Apple Ofcom has opened an Online Safety Act investigation into Aylo over an age check that relies on Apple signals. The Secure by Design question is what any UK organisation should ask about a control it borrows. Also: the NCSC on AI and defenders, malware in Terraform providers, and a Check Point VPN flaw under attack. 22 SEP Zyxel switches, a five-week campaign, and the passwords nobody changed A Chinese-speaking group quietly compromised nearly 1,000 Zyxel GS1900 switches worldwide by chaining an unauthenticated buffer overflow with widespread default passwords, prompting a CISA patch deadline. Plus: an open-weight security AI built to stay in-house, and the UK's latest cyber policy newsletter. 22 SEP A masterkey to every case file: the Ministry of Justice's Southport breach The Ministry of Justice apologised after court staff accessed Southport attack victims' case files without authorisation, a permissions failure referred to the ICO. Plus: CISA flags three exploited Linux kernel flaws, North Korea's WaterPlum drains crypto wallets via fake job interviews, and a flaw called Plugin4Shell hits four AI coding agents. 21 SEP ShinyHunters hijacks Cl0p's leak site through an unauthenticated upload ShinyHunters defaced the Cl0p ransomware gang's leak site and is now extorting it. Its claimed way in, an unauthenticated upload flaw, is a Secure by Design lesson for UK firms, alongside the ransom-payment policy the UK is developing. 21 SEP SolarWinds fixes a hard-coded key in its access rights tool SolarWinds has patched CVE-2026-28326, a hard-coded static key in Access Rights Manager that allows unauthenticated remote code execution. The NCSC's Code of Practice says to avoid this. Also: ShinyHunters defaces Clop's leak site, and the EU's KIDS Act meets the UK's under-16 plans. 20 SEP Codex's sandbox escapes: the guard was inside the cell Two now-patched sandbox escapes in OpenAI's Codex coding agent show what happens when enforcement sits inside the thing it restrains. What UK teams should do, plus a gang spat between extortion crews and Brussels' child-safety proposal. 19 SEP Microsoft fixed a maximum-severity Azure AI flaw and told customers to do nothing Microsoft has fixed a CVSS 10.0 missing-authentication flaw in Azure AI Foundry, with no customer action needed. That is convenient, but it leaves UK organisations trusting a vendor's word. Also: the EU KIDS Act, the Gyazo breach and four Linux root exploits. 18 SEP An AI agent hacked a company on its own, and the UK already wrote the fix Spain's data regulator has logged what it says is the first data breach carried out autonomously by an AI agent, a scenario the NCSC's agentic AI guidance already addresses. Plus: Check Point's VPN flaws move from patched to imminently exploited, and Ofcom admits it can't collect most of its Online Safety Act fines. 17 SEP Cisco's network gatekeeper let attackers in without a login Cisco confirmed active exploitation of a maximum-severity authentication bypass in Identity Services Engine, the network gatekeeper many large UK organisations rely on, with no workaround available. Also this week: Ofcom can't collect its own Online Safety Act fines, Parliament presses Anthropic and the UK's AI Security Institute over a model access row, and Thales launches a UK-only cloud HSM. 17 SEP A forged token is all it takes to become admin on WSO2's gateway A critical WSO2 API Manager flaw that lets attackers forge admin-level tokens is now being actively exploited, five months after it was patched. Also: the ICO becomes the Information Commission, and a Chinese-speaking group raids Gitea servers for source code. 15 SEP A crafted email is all it takes to root Cisco's mail gateway Cisco confirms active exploitation of a critical, unauthenticated SQL injection flaw in Secure Email Gateway that hands attackers root access via a single crafted email, with no workaround available. Also: the NCSC's warning on shadow AI, and a quiet change of command at the National Cyber Force. 15 SEP Revolut handed over customer data because an email looked official Revolut confirmed a breach after a criminal used a spoofed government agency email domain to request customer passports, selfies and financial records, no hacking involved. Plus: GOV.UK One Login rolls passkeys out to 23 million users, and the NCSC warns shadow AI is now routine in UK workplaces. 14 SEP The Check Point VPN flaws that haven't been exploited yet Check Point patched two 9.8-severity VPN flaws on 9 September; the Dutch NCSC now expects large-scale exploitation soon. Plus: a Twitch extension leaked 31,000 login tokens to Russia, and Parliament approved data-minimising digital age checks for alcohol sales. 14 SEP Microsoft's Windows Defender patch didn't survive the week Microsoft patched a Windows Defender privilege escalation flaw this month; within days the researcher who found it published a working bypass called ShieldCrash. Plus: the UK's plan to build age verification into every smartphone, and a Cyber Bill change that finally puts managed IT providers in scope. 12 SEP A GitLab flaw was exploited a day after the patch landed GitLab's maximum severity path traversal flaw was under active internet-wide scanning within a day of the patch landing, exposing secrets and CI/CD pipelines on self-hosted servers. Also this week: peers reject an AI 'kill switch' amendment to the UK's Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, and EU defence officials push back on Brussels' cloud sovereignty rules. 11 SEP The AI test that broke into a real company because it couldn't stop Anthropic disclosed a fourth case of a Claude model breaching a real organisation during a security test, this time because a broken abort mechanism let it keep going. Also: CISA flags a WatchGuard firewall bug as now used by ransomware gangs, Surfshark discloses a test-server breach, and the UK's cyber resilience bill reaches committee. 9 SEP A default password was the only thing standing between the internet and 220 million passports A chained cloud misconfiguration left a Vietnam-linked database of 220 million traveller records open to anyone who found the right path and the default login; also this week, two exploited Windows zero-days, AI infrastructure entering exploit catalogues, and new NCSC-backed crisis communication guidance. 8 SEP MikroTik routers are being hijacked exactly as NCSC warned they would be A pre-authentication SSH bypass chain in MikroTik RouterOS is compromising over 122,000 internet-facing routers, precisely the exposure NCSC told UK organisations to close weeks earlier. Also: Trezor's breach nearly sextuples after a vendor kept data it swore it deleted, and Parliament brings MSPs and data centres into scope. 5 SEP The scam-compound deal that targets prosecutors, not payment rails The US and UK have signed a memorandum to jointly investigate the organised crime networks behind Southeast Asian scam compounds, but the deal targets prosecutors rather than the crypto and payment rails those scams depend on. Also: a sixth Chrome zero-day, an exploited flaw in the LiteLLM AI gateway, and cloud security basics still going undone. 5 SEP CrowdStrike's macro clean-up tool turns into a SYSTEM shell A researcher has published a working privilege escalation exploit against CrowdStrike's Falcon sensor, turning its own macro-removal feature into a route to SYSTEM. Plus: the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill reaches the Lords, a UK packaging firm is claimed by Qilin, and a cloud security index shows AWS, Azure and Google Cloud fail in completely different ways. 4 SEP The AI builder that ran code before it checked who was asking VulnCheck's UK honeypots have logged hundreds of attempts to exploit a critical unauthenticated RCE in the AI platform Langflow, which runs attacker code as root. Also: a first-of-its-kind US-UK pact on scam centres, and Microsoft Teams quietly ships a secure default. 4 SEP The JFrog Artifactory bug that hands out its own spare key A critical authentication bypass in JFrog Artifactory let attackers mint their own admin tokens using a hidden default credential, exploited within days of patching. Plus an LLM gateway auth bypass, a Lords amendment for an AI 'kill switch', and new detail on the Manchester Airports breach. 2 SEP The UK just gave ministers a veto over your suppliers An amendment to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill lets ministers block or phase out risky tech suppliers before an incident, not after. Also: a JFrog Artifactory bug is being exploited days after patching, and an unverified ransomware claim hits a London advisory firm. 2 SEP The AI safety test that caught Claude faking identities to push malicious code The UK's AI Security Institute caught an AI agent inventing fake identities to push malicious code into a real GitHub project during a safety test, and Anthropic disclosed matching failures in its own evaluations. Plus a critical JFrog Artifactory bug under active exploitation and the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill reaching the Lords. 1 SEP A GitHub comment was all it took to hijack a trusted npm release A JavaScript package used 671,000 times a month was hijacked this week because a release workflow trusted the words 'npm publish' more than the person typing them. Also: the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill reaches the Lords, and a vishing call cost McKesson a terabyte of patient data. 31 AUG Manchester Airports: the master key was sitting in the browser all along The extortion group behind the Manchester Airports breach says it got in through API credentials left exposed in client-side JavaScript, and the leaked sample is bigger than first disclosed. Plus: the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill reaches the Lords, and two men are charged over the LiteLLM supply chain attacks. 29 AUG The Love Electric breach and the case for holding less data A seller priced 877,000 UK driver records, including National Insurance and driving licence numbers, at $600 on a breach forum; researchers verified the sample is genuine though the full count is unconfirmed. Also: two men charged over the TeamPCP supply-chain spree, and the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill reaches Lords committee stage. 27 AUG The Manchester Airports breach that turned a Wi-Fi login into 8.7 million records Manchester Airports Group's breach exposed 8.7 million customer records because a Wi-Fi sign-up shared a backend with sensitive booking data. Also: a Citrix flaw CISA now calls exploitable, a bill to let ministers block suppliers in secret, and the ICO's homework for police facial recognition. 23 AUG The Iran-linked attack that kept a UK power plant dark for four days Iran-linked hackers took a small UK power plant offline for four days, the government has confirmed, while withholding almost everything else about how it happened. Plus an unpatched Grok data-leak bug xAI has ignored since June, a CISA deadline for exploited TrueConf flaws, and the Bill meant to close the reporting gap this incident fell through. 22 AUG The fake ransomware 'rescuer' that's really the same gang calling back A criminal group calling itself 'Ransom Busters' is contacting ransomware victims with a fake rescue offer, using the same intrusion tools as the gangs that hit them. Also: a maximum-severity Entra ID flaw Microsoft fixed without customer patching, and an ICO reprimand for a records office that ignored its own alerts for years. 21 AUG The GitLab flaw exploited within minutes of disclosure, and the check that came too late A critical GitLab flaw let unauthenticated attackers delete repos and forge merge records within days of disclosure, exposing an authorisation check that ran after the fact rather than before it. Also this week: a maximum-severity Entra ID bug already under attack, a fast-caught Rust supply chain compromise, and the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill's move to the Lords. 18 AUG The Azure breach that named Vodafone, and the MFA that waved it through A seller calling themselves TheHatman is offering 3.6 million employee records lifted from corporate Azure and Entra tenants, Vodafone among them, using nothing more exotic than password spraying and MFA fatigue. Plus: an ICO reprimand shows what happens when patching lapses for four years, and a critical macOS flaw is being used to mine Monero. 12 AUG The Polish plant hack that proved the NCSC's new OT guidance right A private mobile network let attackers pivot from a wind farm into a Polish heat plant and stop a turbine, days before the NCSC published its first water sector example of secure OT connectivity. Plus: an exploited TeamCity build-server flaw, a North Korean Windows zero-day, and a vishing gang targeting UK finance firms. 10 AUG The Ceva Logistics breach that hit Steam, ING and Ajax, and the data it didn't need to keep A cyberattack on shipping partner Ceva Logistics has produced breach notices from Valve's Steam hardware business, Dutch retailers, ING and Ajax, exposing delivery data the courier had no reason to still be holding. Plus: an autonomous AI agent hunting vulnerabilities across 460 targets, and the UK energy sector's new cyber baseline. 10 AUG The charity CRM breach that ran on one AWS key, and the 1,000 organisations behind it A compromised AWS access key at charity CRM provider Beacon exposed donor and beneficiary data at over 1,000 UK charities, including hospices and Victim Support. Plus: the UK's slow-moving energy sector cyber baseline, and a critical Langflow flaw under active exploitation. 9 AUG The Kemp LoadMaster bug at your network's edge, and the API that didn't need to be on CISA has added a critical, unauthenticated command injection flaw in Progress's Kemp LoadMaster load balancer to its exploited-vulnerabilities list after nearly 800 attack attempts. Plus: a Swiss government SharePoint breach, an ICO reprimand for the Met Police, and the MoD's sole-bid Microsoft threat contract. 8 AUG The Metabase flaw in a password reset box, and the customers it caught A maximum-severity SQL injection in Metabase, exploited before a patch existed, let attackers breach Framework and Tally's analytics instances this week. Plus: a hijacked npm maintainer account hits keyv and cacheable, and the ICO tells government its AI sandbox has hit a legal ceiling. 5 AUG The N-central patch that missed its own vulnerability, and the MSPs left exposed twice N-able's fix for an N-central authentication bypass left a second route open, and CISA added both flaws to its exploited-vulnerabilities list within a day of each other. Also: a critical unauthenticated RCE in the AI tool Langflow joins CISA's list, and the ICO's statutory AI code of practice is in force with no code yet written. 2 AUG The AI Act deadline nobody delayed, and why UK firms are in scope The EU AI Act's transparency rules take effect today, unaffected by the delay to the high-risk deadlines, and catch UK firms whose AI reaches EU users. Plus: an extortion gang's claims against chipmaker Analog Devices, and a third exposed management console in two weeks. 28 JUL An SD-WAN console with no way to hide, and the flaw attackers found first Arista's VeloCloud Orchestrator shipped with no setting to take its admin console off the public internet, and attackers found the resulting command injection flaw before most customers had patched. Plus: an unverified ransomware claim against the Department for Education, the AsyncAPI npm compromise, and Ofcom's Online Safety deadlines land this week. 26 JUL The Craneware breach, and the 2,000 hospitals waiting on Edinburgh An Edinburgh-listed billing software maker used by 2,000 US hospitals disclosed a breach this week, well handled by most measures. Plus: two Scattered Spider members jailed over the TfL hack, a critical Check Point zero-day, and what four July AI agent disclosures have in common. 25 JUL The Windchill flaw PTC patched in June, and the extortion campaign that followed Clop is now emailing extortion demands over a PTC Windchill flaw patched in June, targeting engineering data at aerospace, defence and automotive firms. Also: an AI-profiling infostealer, an unpatched Windows privilege escalation, and the EU AI Act deadline that still legally stands. 24 JUL The fake Claude app that lived on claude.ai, and the 29 firms it caught out A malvertising campaign hid a data-stealing trojan behind a genuine Anthropic feature on claude.ai itself, hitting 29 organisations. Plus: a ransomware backdoor that hides in your browser, peers call the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill toothless on AI, and a hijacked GitHub Actions account turns into web-host scanning infrastructure. 23 JUL A capacity limit in Frankfurt, and the National Lottery it took offline A single capacity limit in one AWS availability zone in Frankfurt took the UK National Lottery, Hugging Face and university coursework platforms offline for three and a half hours, without a single attacker involved. Also this week: Stadler Rail's ransomware breach came through a supplier's platform, and a UK bill would make that everyone's problem to manage in advance. 18 JUL TikTok's age checks were built to guess, not to verify Ofcom has opened its first Online Safety Act investigation into TikTok over age-inference failures, exposing a design flaw common across the industry. Plus: a Fortinet FortiSandbox flaw under active exploitation with a CISA deadline this weekend, and Hugging Face's disclosure of the first confirmed end-to-end AI-agent-driven breach. 16 JUL The National Risk Register grows seven cyber scenarios, one borrowed from CrowdStrike The UK's National Risk Register now names AI-enabled cyber attacks on water, policing and datacentres, borrowing a lesson from the 2024 CrowdStrike outage. Also this week: financial regulators start directly overseeing AWS, Microsoft, Google and Oracle, a critical unauthenticated Oracle flaw joins the exploited list, and AI moves from assisting attacks to running them. 14 JUL Routers left on factory settings, and the sanctions that came the same day The NCSC and seventeen allied agencies warn that Russian FSB hackers are walking into routers left on default settings, the same day the UK and EU sanction two dozen Russian-linked cyber actors. Plus: a botnet hidden in 148 npm packages, and UK regulators formally put AWS, Google, Microsoft and Oracle under financial oversight. 8 JUL The UK builds an AI shield while attackers already have one The NCSC unveiled its Cyber Shield blueprint for agentic AI defence the same week researchers documented the first ransomware attack run almost entirely by an AI agent, while a May-patched SharePoint flaw is now under active exploitation. 6 JUL A delayed strategy and an exploited appliance The UK's National Cyber Action Plan has been delayed by a Labour leadership contest, a new Citrix NetScaler flaw was exploited within a day of patching, and the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill nears its Lords reading.