Huntress reported on 13 October 2026 (14 Oct Perth) a credential-phishing campaign built on a lookalike download site for WatchGuard Mobile VPN with SSL. In an incident it investigated in early October, an administrator at a managed service provider searched Bing for a WatchGuard SSL VPN download and opened the fake site from a normal search result, which Huntress classes as SEO poisoning rather than malvertising. Choosing any download option opened a prompt asking for VPN server, login and password; about 150 lines of JavaScript sent the values as JSON to a separate collection server, always rejected the first attempt as 'Incorrect data' to collect a second set, then started a download of the genuine, validly signed WatchGuard Mobile VPN with SSL 12.11.5 installer from WatchGuard's own CDN, so there was no malicious file for endpoint security to flag. The same lookalike domain had been reported by WatchGuard in January with no working back end; it was registered again on 22 August and paired with a new collection domain. Huntress says the main domain was offline as of 13 October and that it notified WatchGuard before publishing. Earlier waves of the same VPN-impersonation activity (including Microsoft's Storm-2561 reporting) used fake signed installers and malicious DLLs instead. This is a phishing campaign against VPN users, not a flaw in WatchGuard products.
Huntress — Clean Install, Stolen Creds: Fake WatchGuard VPN Site Serves Genuine Signed Client (13 Oct 2026)
Security researcher wunderwussi (Embrace The Red) published on 13 October 2026 that Microsoft patched CVE-2026-103572, an Important-severity remote code execution issue in the shared Microsoft.VisualStudio.Copilot.Core.dll used by GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio (including Visual Studio 2026 and older Visual Studio 2022 trains) and SQL Server Management Studio. A path-validation check that was meant to block writes to sensitive Copilot settings and MCP configuration files could be bypassed by appending a trailing ASCII period to the filename: Win32 APIs strip the final dot, so a write to settings.json. or .mcp.json. lands on the protected file. That lets the agent escape containment and run arbitrary commands; the report also shows a third party can drive the same outcome through indirect prompt injection. Microsoft classified the issue as Important RCE and shipped the fix with the 13 October updates. Operators who enable Copilot inside Visual Studio or SSMS should apply the October Visual Studio / SSMS Copilot updates promptly and treat untrusted repo content as able to steer agent file writes until patched.
Embrace The Red — Visual Studio Copilot and SSMS Remote Code Execution (CVE-2026-103572, 13 Oct 2026)
On 13 October 2026 security firm XBOW published how it chained three then-unknown Google Chrome bugs into one attack that runs code on a Windows machine when a user only loads a web page, crossing both of Chrome's nested sandboxes. Researcher Brendan Dolan-Gavitt built the awarded chain between 2 and 7 August 2026 by directing AI agents running OpenAI's publicly available GPT-5.6 Sol model; XBOW puts the AI cost at about US$40,000 and says its first full chain earlier in the year took two months. The agents searched Chrome source, tested ideas, built working exploit pieces and drafted the exploit, while people chose targets, supplied context and decided which pieces to join. The stages were a V8 JavaScript-engine bug (CVE-2026-85045, fixed in 152.0.7977.82 on 3 Sep), an animated-WebP decoder bug used to escape the inner sandbox (no public identifier confirmed, fixed in the Chrome 152 cycle), and a Crashpad crash-handler bug (CVE-2026-78952, fixed in 152.0.7977.65 on 25 Aug). Google confirmed and fixed all three and paid US$250,000, its maximum full-chain reward under the 2026 Chrome VRP rules; XBOW says the bugs were never used against users. The point for defenders is speed: AI help cut the time to a browser full chain from months to days.
XBOW — XBOW Built a Chrome Full-Chain Exploit Affecting a Billion Users in Six Days (13 Oct 2026)
Rockwell Automation published security advisory SD1801 on 13 October 2026 for the 1732E ArmorBlock I/O, an on-machine EtherNet/IP distributed I/O module with a built-in configuration web server. CVE-2026-12655 (CWE-294, authentication bypass by capture-replay) lets an unauthenticated attacker change the device's web server password without valid credentials, which can mean admin account takeover or unauthorised configuration changes. CVE-2026-12656 is a denial-of-service issue: network storm traffic can interrupt communication, fault the device and affect open TCP and UDP ports, and a power cycle is needed to recover. Rockwell lists both as corrected with no workaround and not on the CISA KEV list; the advisory's overall severity is High. No exploitation is reported.
Schneider Electric published security notification SEVD-2026-286-01 on 13 October 2026 for its Pro-face STW6000 and Harmony STW6 basic web HMI panels (Harmony ST6 / Pro-face ST6000 range). CVE-2026-96434 is CWE-1104 (use of unmaintained third-party components): Schneider says failure to apply the listed mitigations may allow various attack scenarios from third-party component obsolescence, including unauthorised control of the device and operational failures, when a user visits malicious web pages for browsing. CVSS 3.1 base score is 8.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H); CVSS 4.0 base is 8.6. All versions of both products are listed as known affected. The advisory does not publish a fixed firmware build for this CVE; remediations are mitigations — run the HMI only in a protected environment, minimise network exposure and keep panels off the internet, plus Schneider's standard ICS hygiene guidance. A second same-day notice, SEVD-2026-286-02, covers SAGE RTU CVE-2026-102250 (CVSS 7.2, privileges required high) with a firmware fix in C3414-500-S02L0. No exploitation is stated. Primary: Schneider Electric SEVD-2026-286-01 CSAF/JSON.
Schneider Electric — Security notifications (SEVD-2026-286-01, 13 Oct 2026)
Microsoft opened a Windows release health known issue on 13 October 2026 (09:43 PT; 14 October Perth time): after the September 2026 non-security preview update KB5124010 or later updates, non-admin users might be unable to connect over Remote Desktop to devices that have Administrator protection enabled. Connections fail with error 0xC000000D and the message 'The token that was passed to the function is invalid.' It mainly hits enterprise-managed Remote Desktop hosts, however the feature was enabled. Administrator protection gives signed-in users standard rights and asks for Windows Hello to elevate; Microsoft notes it is enabled by default in the Windows 11 24H2, 25H2 and 26H2 security baselines from the Security Compliance Toolkit, and BleepingComputer reports it now lands by default in organisations using those baselines after the October 2026 security update. Affected: Windows 11 24H2, 25H2, 26H1 and 26H2 clients; no server versions. Microsoft lists the issue as mitigated by a workaround and is working on a fix. This is a reliability problem, not a vulnerability. Primary: Microsoft Windows release health.
Microsoft Windows release health — Remote Desktop connections might fail for non-admin users with error 0xC000000D (opened 13 Oct 2026)
US authorities announced a new crackdown on North Korean remote IT worker schemes on 13 and 14 October 2026. A four-count indictment charges Michael James Bostelle of Pennsylvania and Juan Cecilio Pena Carrillo of Texas, who were arrested, with helping North Korean IT workers obtain remote jobs by housing and configuring laptops issued by US employers so the workers appeared to be in the US. Prosecutors say the scheme ran from 2019 to July 2025, generated more than US$3 million and placed workers at over 70 US companies in communications, cyber support, healthcare, manufacturing and retail; ten China-based people are also charged. Separately, in Operation Lonestar Roundup, the FBI searched over 40 residences in Texas between 21 and 25 September that were known or suspected laptop farms, and seized approximately 187 laptops and KVM devices, according to the Justice Department. CrowdStrike, which tracks the activity as Famous Chollima and assisted the operation, says victims of the disrupted clusters span aerospace, energy, financial services, healthcare, cybersecurity, defence engineering, government technology and consumer technology, and expects the disruption to be short-lived. The FBI's new public service announcement (PSA261013) warns the workers increasingly pay witting and unwitting US residents to appear on camera, sit interviews, verify identities, ship packages or keep company devices online from home, and recommends layered identity checks across the employment lifecycle. No Australian victims are named. Primary: FBI IC3 PSA; US Justice Department release (13 Oct, US time).
FBI IC3 — North Korean IT Workers Expanding Use of Facilitators, Broadening Recruitment (PSA261013, 13 Oct 2026)
Doyensec published Playing It SFAPE on 13 October 2026 describing a local elevation-of-privilege chain against the Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) enclave behind Microsoft Defender SmartScreen Enhanced Phishing Protection (SFAPE.dll). The enclave stores a hashed form of the Windows sign-in password so SmartScreen can warn when that password is typed or pasted into an unsafe place; it runs in Isolated User Mode (VTL1), which ordinary kernel code in VTL0 cannot read. Researchers showed that calling the enclave's Initialize function a second time writes a fixed four-byte error value to a caller-controlled address (skipping an address check used on the first call), then combined that with a timing bug to run attacker-chosen code inside the enclave. Microsoft rates CVE-2026-83498 Critical, CVSS 3.1 7.8 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), impact elevation of privilege / untrusted pointer dereference (CWE-822), and says successful exploitation could leak data from the enclave or execute code in its context. The attack is local (needs a process that already loads and calls the enclave, typically LSASS for SFAPE), was not publicly known or exploited before the fix, and Microsoft also found the issue internally. The fix shipped in the 8 September 2026 cumulative update (Doyensec cites KB5124008 for Windows 11 24H2/25H2; MSRC lists updates across Windows 11 23H2–26H1 and Windows Server 2025) and includes a policy that blocks loading the old vulnerable SFAPE.dll. Doyensec notes Windows still lacks a general vulnerable-enclave blocklist, and an older signed Edge enclave (CVE-2023-36880) remains loadable. Wire: The Hacker News (14 Oct). Primary: Doyensec research post and Microsoft MSRC advisory.
Doyensec — Playing It SFAPE: Code Execution in Isolated User Mode (13 Oct 2026)
Ivanti disclosed CVE-2026-106042 on 13 October 2026 in Ivanti Xtraction: an external control of file name or path (CWE-73) that lets a remote authenticated attacker redirect application-generated requests to an attacker-controlled endpoint and obtain EPMM connector credentials the application transmits. OpenCVE and reporting rate it Critical 9.9 (CVSS 3.1 AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H). The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security advisory AV26-1035 lists Ivanti Xtraction 2026.2.1 and prior as affected; public CVE enrichment marks 2026.4 as unaffected. Ivanti's October security update points customers to the Xtraction multiple-CVE advisory and says it is not aware of exploitation for these product fixes. EPMM connector credentials are high value for mobile-device management integrations, so treat this as a credential-exposure priority alongside rotating any EPMM secrets after upgrade. Separate from the Connect Secure zero-day chain. Primary: Ivanti Xtraction multiple-CVE advisory; secondary: CCC AV26-1035 / OpenCVE.
Ivanti — Security Advisory Ivanti Xtraction (Multiple CVEs) October 2026
Ivanti's 13 October 2026 security update discloses CVE-2026-109412 in Ivanti Neurons Patch for Intune, a cloud service that publishes patches into Microsoft Intune. The CVE record describes an exposed dangerous endpoint (CWE-749) that lets a remote authenticated attacker leak sensitive authentication information. Ivanti rates it Critical 9.9 (CVSS 3.1 AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H). Environments using versions prior to the 16 September 2026 server-side fix are listed as affected; Ivanti states the cloud service was fixed for all environments on that date, so no customer software update is required. Out of caution Ivanti recommends rotating the Microsoft Entra ID app-registration client secret used for Intune publication. Ivanti says it is not aware of exploitation. This is separate from the Connect Secure zero-day (CVE-2026-104935) disclosed the same day. Primary: Ivanti Neurons Patch for Intune security advisory; secondary: Canadian Centre for Cyber Security AV26-1035 and CVE record.
Ivanti — Security Advisory Ivanti Neurons Patch for Intune October 2026 (CVE-2026-109412)
The Xen Project published eight security advisories on 13 October 2026 (12:00 UTC). The most serious for shared hosting is XSA-517 (CVE-2026-79610): a race in grant-table version changes lets an unprivileged x86 guest that can use grant table v2 and has more than one vCPU possibly escalate to host privileges, leak information or crash the host; every Xen release from 4.0 onward is affected. XSA-516 (CVE-2026-79609) is a page-table isolation (XPTI) flaw that lets a 64-bit PV guest escalate to the host, but only on x86 hosts with RAM above the 5 TiB boundary (3.5 TiB with CONFIG_BIGMEM). XSA-515 (CVE-2026-79608) says a rework of the Zenbleed workaround left it ineffective on AMD Zen 2 CPUs, so code can read data from other contexts on the same core, such as AES-NI key material and memcpy contents; it affects Xen 4.19.4 and later, 4.20.3 and later, 4.21.1 and later and 4.22, and only systems still running pre-Zenbleed (2023) microcode. XSA-519 (CVE-2026-102699 and CVE-2026-102702) lets a malicious guest on Arm crash the hypervisor or corrupt another domain's memory through GNTTABOP_cache_flush, with privilege escalation not ruled out and no mitigation, on Xen 4.5 onward. XSA-521 (CVE-2026-102701) is a missing bounds check in tapdisk, the userspace block backend used by the XAPI toolstack, which a malicious guest can use to overflow the stack and possibly run code as root. The rest are denial-of-service issues: XSA-514 (CVE-2026-79607) crashes C xenstored during a Xenstore live update on Xen 4.22, XSA-518 (CVE-2026-79611) lets HVM or PVH guest userspace crash its own guest on Intel VMX hosts, and XSA-520 (CVE-2026-102700) leaks page references through x86 cache-flush handling on Xen 4.5 to 4.20. The Xen Project does not assign CVSS scores and reports no exploitation. Primary: Xen Project security advisories.
Xen Project — Security advisories XSA-514 to XSA-521 (13 Oct 2026)
Mozilla released Firefox 158 on 13 October 2026 with advisory MFSA 2026-106, which lists 77 CVEs: 30 rated high, 33 moderate and 14 low. Mozilla now issues a separate CVE for every internally found memory safety bug instead of rolling them into one, which is why the count is large. High-rated issues include a privilege escalation in the Application Update component (CVE-2026-109704), several sandbox escapes in the Networking component (CVE-2026-109705, CVE-2026-109707, CVE-2026-109708), a sandbox escape through uninitialised memory in Graphics (CVE-2026-109712), a sandbox information disclosure and privilege escalation (CVE-2026-109709), and many use-after-free bugs across IndexedDB, DOM, SVG, XML, canvas and media code. Amy Burnett of OpenAI reported ten of the high-rated bugs, mostly JavaScript engine and JIT boundary and miscompilation issues (for example CVE-2026-109715, CVE-2026-109720 and CVE-2026-109722). The advisory does not say any are exploited in the wild. The same day Mozilla published fixes for Firefox ESR 153.5 (MFSA 2026-108), Firefox ESR 115.43 (MFSA 2026-107), Thunderbird 158 (MFSA 2026-109) and Thunderbird 153.5 (MFSA 2026-110). Primary: Mozilla security advisories.
Mozilla — MFSA 2026-106 Security Vulnerabilities fixed in Firefox 158 (13 Oct 2026)
