Archives 2026

The Galaxy S26 line might be half a year old, but its official price is going up. Samsung has raised prices across the core series by at least $100, with steeper increases at the high end.

“Arizona’s court system was targeted by a cyber attack from criminal hackers or their bots.”

This is how the Arizona Supreme Court announced that hackers had attacked the state’s court system and stolen the personal information of “many Arizonans.”

The court says the attack began with a phishing email containing a malicious link that a court employee clicked. The attackers copied sensitive backup files containing records related to protective orders and foster care cases.

The court says it has no evidence, so far, that information about jurors, witnesses, or court employees was included in the copied files. It has not identified the attackers or a motive. It says the case is under investigation with the FBI, and no ransomware group has publicly claimed responsibility.

In an update, the court revealed that the attackers copied more than 150,000 recommendation reports created by Arizona’s Foster Care Review Board. The reports cover current and past cases involving children’s care and protection, dating back to 2010.

Those documents can include information about children, names of involved parties, case materials considered by the board, findings, and recommendations for courts, parents, and the Arizona Department of Child Safety. The court says the reports do not contain contact information such as addresses or telephone numbers.

The copied files were backups stored in a highly compressed format, kept for recovery after ransomware and other destructive incidents.

Information associated with protective orders can raise particularly serious safety and privacy concerns. These orders can protect people from abuse, harassment, or threats. Even where some records are public, combining names, case details, locations, and other sensitive context could create risks for people who are trying to limit their exposure to an abusive or threatening individual.

Breaches happen every day. Don’t be the last to know.

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The court currently says it has no evidence that the information has been shared. As with many breach investigations, however, this can change as investigators determine exactly what was taken and monitor for publication, sale, or misuse of the data.

Arizona has about 8,000 children currently in foster care, according to the court. It is contacting people believed to have been affected.

What to do if you’re affected

• Check the court’s advice. Every breach is different, so check its dedicated webpage for updates and follow any specific advice it offers.
• Watch out for impersonators. Cybercriminals may contact you posing as the Arizona Supreme Court, another government agency, or someone you know. Verify anyone who contacts you through a separate, trusted channel.
• Take your time. Phishing attacks often impersonate people or brands you know and pressure you to act urgently, using themes such as missed deliveries, account suspensions, and security alerts.
• Get an early warning if your information appears on the dark web. If you’ve been notified that your information was copied in the Arizona court breach, identity monitoring can help you watch for signs of exposure and get support if you become a victim of identity theft.

Let’s face it, an incognito window can only do so much. 
 
Breaches, dark web trading, credit fraud. Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection monitors for all of it, alerts you fast, and comes with identity theft insurance. 

There are a few things you should double-check before turning a laptop into a NAS. While you definitely can just do it, these three BIOS options are definitely worth double-checking before diving down the rabbit hole.

Changing your DNS server is one of those simple networking tweaks that can make browsing safer, but DNS privacy is easy to misunderstand. Changing your DNS provider does not make your browsing history invisible. Your ISP, employer, school, or network administrator may still have other ways to determine which services you are connecting to.

Microsoft is taking Windows Subsystem for Linux beyond just running Linux distributions, as WSL Containers is now generally available. […]

The Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD) suffered an AI-driven cyberattack that the organization described as “loud and very, very messy.” […]

Many DIYers start with one brand of power tools, then eventually switch things up. Like initially buying Milwaukee or DeWALT, then moving to Ryobi’s more affordable line. A common solution to having a mix of different tools, battery packs, and chargers is to buy a battery adapter. And while some people use adapters just fine, you probably shouldn’t use them on your Milwaukee battery packs, and here’s why.

Apple released security updates to fix a zero-day vulnerability exploited in “extremely sophisticated” targeted attacks on iOS devices. […]

OpenAI’s latest containment failure adds to a pattern that may force the company to make an unpopular decision.

The company has paused training, evaluation, and tool-enabled inference for its most capable models after an internal research agent found a way around an intended internet restriction. More alarming, the agent remained active for hours after OpenAI’s monitoring system raised the alarm.

OpenAI published an account of the incident, which occurred during a search-based training task on September 20. According to OpenAI, the agent could not get useful results through its supplied search tools, tried direct access to search engines, and eventually tested the limits of its environment. It found that although direct web access was blocked, the sandbox’s DNS resolver could still reach the public internet. By using DNS delegation and a public chatbot that could respond through DNS records, the agent sent questions outside the restricted environment and received answers back. It subsequently sent 18 additional queries along the same route.

OpenAI’s misalignment monitor generated a high-priority alert within 15 minutes, and a human reviewer acknowledged it 3 minutes later. But the run did not stop automatically as expected. It continued for roughly another two and a half hours before someone stopped it manually.

OpenAI has not reported any exposure of sensitive data or compromise of an outside system in this incident. But it follows other disclosed cases in which agents went beyond their assigned tasks or crossed the boundaries of testing environments.

The New York Times reports that OpenAI agents also interacted with US government websites this summer without the company’s knowledge:

“OpenAI’s artificial intelligence went rogue and meddled with the websites for the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission this summer without the A.I. lab’s knowledge, according to security researchers and a person familiar with the episodes.”

No breaches have been confirmed in those instances. And while Australia described the Medicare incident as unauthorized access, could it really be called an attack?

The call for an industry-wide slowdown has even prompted a lawsuit from paying subscribers who fear they would get less “value for their money.” Others worry that slowing down would give China a chance to pull ahead of the US in an increasingly tight technology race.

Here’s a thought: Why not accelerate the development of truly isolated testing environments? Better containment would make these tests safer and their results more reliable.

When a child isn’t ready to handle a dangerous object, you keep it out of reach. Why give an AI agent access it isn’t ready to use safely?

How to use AI agents safely

Treat an agent like an enthusiastic but fallible junior employee with access to your computer. Do not give it unrestricted access to your email, files, cloud storage, developer credentials, financial accounts, or production systems merely because it promises to save time.

Use separate accounts with minimal permissions. Keep sensitive data out of its working context where possible, require human approval before it sends messages, spends money, changes settings, or publishes anything, and regularly review its activity.

An AI agent does not need malicious intent to cause harm. A misunderstood instruction, an overly broad permission, or an unexpected workaround can be enough.

From reporting threats to removing them.

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.

There’s no denying that using a custom DNS server is a better choice than sticking with the one provided by your ISP, but the catch is that you shouldn’t opt for the first DNS provider you find positive reviews of online, or the one everyone recommends on Reddit. There’s a way to test which DNS server works best for you that only takes about a minute of your time, and it’ll give you better results than blindly choosing from the most popular options.