"They were crouched down like turkeys peeking over the balcony," the county sheriff told Ars Technica. A half hour past midnight, they were skulking through a courthouse in Iowa's Dallas County on September 11 "carrying backpacks that remind me and several other deputies of maybe the pressure cooker bombs." More deputies arrived... Justin Wynn, 29 of Naples, Florida, and Gary De Mercurio, 43 of Seattle, slowly proceeded down the stairs with hands raised. They then presented the deputies with a letter that explained the intruders weren't criminals but rather penetration testers who had been hired by Iowa's State Court Administration to test the security of its court information system. After calling one or more of the state court officials listed in the letter, the deputies were satisfied the men were authorized to be in the building. But Sheriff Chad Leonard had the men arrested on felony third-degree burglary charges (later reduced to misdemeanor trespassing charges). He told them that while the state government may have wanted to test security, "The State of Iowa has no authority to allow you to break into a county building. You're going to jail." More than six years later, the Des Moines Register reports: Dallas County is paying $600,000 to two men who sued after they were arrested in 2019 while testing courthouse security for Iowa's Judicial Branch, their lawyer says. Gary DeMercurio and Justin Wynn were arrested Sept. 11, 2019, after breaking into the Dallas County Courthouse. They spent about 20 hours in jail and were charged with burglary and possession of burglary tools, though the charges were later dropped. The men were employees of Colorado-based cybersecurity firm Coalfire Labs, with whom state judicial officials had contracted to perform an analysis of the state court system's security. Judicial officials apologized and faced legislative scrutiny for how they had conducted the security test. But even though the burglary charges against DeMercurio and Wynn were dropped, their attorney previously said having a felony arrest on their records made seeking employment difficult. Now the two men are to receive a total of $600,000 as a settlement for their lawsuit, which has been transferred between state and federal courts since they first filed it in July 2021 in Dallas County. The case had been scheduled to go to trial Monday, Jan. 26 until the parties notified the court Jan. 23 of the impending deal... "The settlement confirms what we have said from the beginning: our work was authorized, professional, and done in the public interest," DeMercurio said in a statement. "What happened to us never should have happened. Being arrested for doing the job we were hired to do turned our lives upside down and damaged reputations we spent years building...." "This incident didn't make anyone safer," Wynn said. "It sent a chilling message to security professionals nationwide that helping government identify real vulnerabilities can lead to arrest, prosecution, and public disgrace. That undermines public safety, not enhances it." County Attorney Matt Schultz said dismissing the charges was the decision of his predecessor, according to the newspaper, and that he believed the sheriff did nothing wrong. "I am putting the public on notice that if this situation arises again in the future, I will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law."

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An anonymous reader shared this report from Bloomberg: An Asian cyber-espionage group has spent the past year breaking into computer systems belonging to governments and critical infrastructure organizations in more than 37 countries, according to the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, Inc. The state-aligned attackers have infiltrated networks of 70 organizations, including five national law enforcement and border control agencies, according to a new research report from the company. They have also breached three ministries of finance, one country's parliament and a senior elected official in another, the report states. The Santa Clara, California-based firm declined to identify the hackers' country of origin. The spying operation was unusually vast and allowed the hackers to hoover up sensitive information in apparent coordination with geopolitical events, such as diplomatic missions, trade negotiations, political unrest and military actions, according to the report. They used that access to spy on emails, financial dealings and communications about military and police operations, the report states. The hackers also stole information about diplomatic issues, lurking undetected in some systems for months. "They use highly-targeted and tailored fake emails and known, unpatched security flaws to gain access to these networks," said Pete Renals, director of national security programs with Unit 42, the threat intelligence division of Palo Alto Networks.... Palo Alto Networks researchers confirmed that the group successfully accessed and exfiltrated sensitive data from some victims' email servers. Bloomberg writes that according to the cybersecurity firm, this campaign targeted government entities in the Czech Republic and the Ministry of Mines and Energy of Brazil, and also "likely compromised" a device associated with a facility operated by a joint venture between Venezuela's government and an Asian tech firm. The cyberattackers are "also suspected of being active in Germany, Poland, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Panama, Greece and other countries, according to the report."

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Axios reports: Anthropic's latest AI model has found more than 500 previously unknown high-severity security flaws in open-source libraries with little to no prompting, the company shared first with Axios. Why it matters: The advancement signals an inflection point for how AI tools can help cyber defenders, even as AI is also making attacks more dangerous... Anthropic debuted Claude Opus 4.6, the latest version of its largest AI model, on Thursday. Before its debut, Anthropic's frontier red team tested Opus 4.6 in a sandboxed environment [including access to vulnerability analysis tools] to see how well it could find bugs in open-source code... Claude found more than 500 previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities in open-source code using just its "out-of-the-box" capabilities, and each one was validated by either a member of Anthropic's team or an outside security researcher... According to a blog post, Claude uncovered a flaw in GhostScript, a popular utility that helps process PDF and PostScript files, that could cause it to crash. Claude also found buffer overflow flaws in OpenSC, a utility that processes smart card data, and CGIF, a tool that processes GIF files. Logan Graham, head of Anthropic's frontier red team, told Axios they're considering new AI-powered tools to hunt vulnerabilities. "The models are extremely good at this, and we expect them to get much better still... I wouldn't be surprised if this was one of — or the main way — in which open-source software moving forward was secured."

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Moltbook, a Reddit-like social network that launched last week and bills itself as a platform "built exclusively for AI agents," had a security vulnerability that exposed private messages shared between agents, the email addresses of more than 6,000 human owners, and over a million credentials, according to research published Monday by cybersecurity firm Wiz. The flaw has since been fixed after Wiz contacted Moltbook. Wiz cofounder Ami Luttwak called it a classic byproduct of "vibe coding." Moltbook creator Matt Schlicht posted on X last Friday that he "didn't write one line of code" for the site. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment when reached out by Reuters. Luttwak said the vulnerability also allowed anyone to post to the site, bot or human. "There was no verification of identity," he said.

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Luthair writes: Notepad++ claims to have been targeted by a state actor, given their previous stance on Uyghurs one can speculate about a candidate. Notepad++, in a blog post: According to the analysis provided by the security experts, the attack involved infrastructure-level compromise that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org. The exact technical mechanism remains under investigation, though the compromise occurred at the hosting provider level rather than through vulnerabilities in Notepad++ code itself. Traffic from certain targeted users was selectively redirected to attacker-controlled served malicious update manifests.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: The White House has announced that software security guidance issued during the Biden administration has been rescinded due to "unproven and burdensome" requirements that prioritized administrative compliance over meaningful security investments. The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued Memorandum M-26-05 (PDF), officially revoking the previous administration's 2022 policy, 'Enhancing the Security of the Software Supply Chain through Secure Software Development Practices' (M-22-18), as well as the follow-up enhancements announced in 2023 (M-23-16). The new guidance shifts responsibility to individual agency heads to develop tailored security policies for both software and hardware based on their specific mission needs and risk assessments. "Each agency head is ultimately responsible for assuring the security of software and hardware that is permitted to operate on the agency's network," reads the memo sent by the OMB to departments and agencies. "There is no universal, one-size-fits-all method of achieving that result. Each agency should validate provider security utilizing secure development principles and based on a comprehensive risk assessment," the OMB added. While agencies are no longer strictly required to do so, they may continue to use secure software development attestation forms, Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs), and other resources described in M-22-18.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A hacking of the Nobel organization's computer systems is the most likely cause of last year's leak of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado's name, according to the results of an investigation [non-paywalled source]. An individual or a state actor may have illegally gained access in a cyber breach, the Norwegian Nobel Institute said on Friday after concluding an internal investigation assisted by security authorities. The leak had triggered an unusual betting surge on Machado at the Polymarket platform hours before she was unveiled as the award recipient in October. The Venezuelan opposition leader hadn't previously been considered a favorite for the 2025 prize. "We still think that the digital domain is the main suspect," said Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the Oslo-based institute, an administrative arm of the Nobel Committee that awards the prize. The institute has decided against filing for a police investigation given "the absence of a clear theory," he said in an interview in Oslo.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Dan Goodin: Two security professionals who were arrested in 2019 after performing an authorized security assessment of a county courthouse in Iowa will receive $600,000 to settle a lawsuit they brought alleging wrongful arrest and defamation. The case was brought by Gary DeMercurio and Justin Wynn, two penetration testers who at the time were employed by Colorado-based security firm Coalfire Labs. The men had written authorization from the Iowa Judicial Branch to conduct "red-team" exercises, meaning attempted security breaches that mimic techniques used by criminal hackers or burglars. The objective of such exercises is to test the resilience of existing defenses using the types of real-world attacks the defenses are designed to repel. The rules of engagement for this exercise explicitly permitted "physical attacks," including "lockpicking," against judicial branch buildings so long as they didn't cause significant damage. [...] DeMercurio and Wynn's engagement at the Dallas County Courthouse on September 11, 2019, had been routine. A little after midnight, after finding a side door to the courthouse unlocked, the men closed it and let it lock. They then slipped a makeshift tool through a crack in the door and tripped the locking mechanism. After gaining entry, the pentesters tripped an alarm alerting authorities. Within minutes, deputies arrived and confronted the two intruders. DeMercurio and Wynn produced an authorization letter -- known as a "get out of jail free card" in pen-testing circles. After a deputy called one or more of the state court officials listed in the letter and got confirmation it was legit, the deputies said they were satisfied the men were authorized to be in the building. DeMercurio and Wynn spent the next 10 or 20 minutes telling what their attorney in a court document called "war stories" to deputies who had asked about the type of work they do. When Sheriff Leonard arrived, the tone suddenly changed. He said the Dallas County Courthouse was under his jurisdiction and he hadn't authorized any such intrusion. Leonard had the men arrested, and in the days and weeks to come, he made numerous remarks alleging the men violated the law. A couple months after the incident, he told me that surveillance video from that night showed "they were crouched down like turkeys peeking over the balcony" when deputies were responding. I published a much more detailed account of the event here. Eventually, all charges were dismissed.

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Nike says it is investigating a potential data breach, after a group known for cyber attacks reportedly claimed to have leaked a trove of data related to its business operations. From a report: "We always take consumer privacy and data security very seriously," Nike said in a statement. "We are investigating a potential cyber security incident and are actively assessing the situation." The ransomware group World Leaks said on its website that it had published 1.4 terabytes of data from Nike.

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