New tools, products, platforms, funding rounds, and company developments in AI security.
JPMorgan Chase plans to deploy AI agents (software systems that can work independently toward goals) in 2026 that can run for hours instead of just minutes, marking a shift toward longer-running autonomous workers. These advances are enabled by improvements in how AI models reason and perform tasks like writing code and controlling software, though security concerns have prevented wider corporate adoption. The bank has already seen a 20% increase in gross sales from AI tools in private banking and believes the technology could eventually expand individual banker productivity by 50%.
In May 2026, overall cyber-attack numbers dropped slightly month-over-month, but ransomware (malware that locks files and demands payment to unlock them) surged 48% compared to the previous year, and AI-powered risks to data security continued growing. Security researchers warn that the temporary decrease in total attacks doesn't mean organizations are actually safer, since threats are shifting toward more damaging methods.
Apple announced several AI features at its WWDC conference that largely replicate capabilities already available in competitors' products, such as chatbots for questions, text creation and summarization tools, and image generation. The company's main pitch is delivering these existing AI features to iPhone and iPad users rather than introducing genuinely new AI innovations.
Apple announced updates to its voice assistant, including a redesigned Siri AI with new voices and conversational abilities, while also confirming partnerships with Nvidia and Google to run some AI features on their chips. OpenAI filed confidentially with the SEC for a potential initial public offering (IPO, the process of a private company becoming publicly traded), joining other tech companies preparing to go public. The Agriculture Department confirmed additional cases of screwworm in Texas, a pest the U.S. had previously worked to eliminate.
Nextdoor engineers use Codex (an AI coding assistant) to shift from writing code step-by-step to focusing on desired outcomes, allowing individual engineers to build features end-to-end across multiple platforms rather than specializing in one system. This productivity boost has made engineering faster, so the main bottleneck is now deciding what to build strategically rather than how to build it. Codex also helps with debugging complex issues in systems like Rust databases and Kubernetes by persistently investigating problems and finding root causes.
Check Point released emergency hotfixes for two vulnerabilities in VPN products that still use IKEv1 (Internet Key Exchange version 1, an outdated encryption protocol). The more critical flaw, CVE-2026-50571, allows attackers to log into VPNs without a valid password, giving them access to corporate networks. Attackers have already exploited this vulnerability since early May, including in ransomware attacks.
Perplexity AI's CEO announced the company plans to hold an initial public offering (IPO, where a private company sells shares to become publicly traded) in 2028 regardless of whether competitors Anthropic and OpenAI succeed with their own IPOs. The CEO acknowledged that major IPOs from SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI will test investor demand for expensive tech company offerings, but expressed confidence these companies deserve high valuations because they lead in AI model capabilities.
The Hades Campaign is a sophisticated malware attack targeting Python developer environments that uses multiple advanced techniques: it harvests credentials, replicates itself across systems, extracts sensitive data from computer memory, and uses adversarial prompt injection (tricking AI security scanners by hiding malicious instructions in plain text) to evade detection by AI-powered security tools. The malware enters through compromised Python packages and uses the Bun toolkit (a JavaScript runtime) to execute payloads while bypassing traditional security controls.
OpenAI has filed confidential paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to pursue an initial public offering (IPO, a process where a private company sells shares to the public on the stock market) at some point in the future, though the company has not decided on timing yet. This move intensifies competition with rival AI company Anthropic, which announced similar IPO plans one week earlier, as both companies compete for users, customers, and investors with valuations approaching $1 trillion. Going public would provide these AI companies with billions of dollars in capital, which they need because running AI systems requires enormous compute costs (the infrastructure and processing power needed to build, train, and operate AI models).
This article discusses Donald Trump's push for AI growth in the US and highlights a contradiction where Anthropic, an AI safety company, is advocating for a pause on AI advancement while simultaneously filing to go public on the stock market. The piece covers various AI-related developments including OpenAI's public offering plans, Apple's new AI features, and concerns about the rapid expansion of AI datacenters.
AI-powered coding tools prioritize speed and ease of development over security, often resulting in apps with unprotected identities and known vulnerabilities. Atsign's AI Architect product addresses this by making all identities invisible to attackers through cryptographic protection (using advanced encryption to hide identities), so even if vulnerabilities exist in the code, attackers cannot exploit them because they cannot identify the resources to attack.
Fix: Use Atsign's AI Architect product, which requires configuring the coding agent to use AI Architect's custom MCP (model context protocol) server called AAIA. This server implements authentication, authorization, and encryption for all interactions between resources, assigns each resource a unique cryptographic identity with controlled privileges, uses non-custodial cryptographic keys that remain solely with the developer, and ensures that even if servers are compromised, only encrypted data (ciphertext) is exposed rather than credentials or cleartext.
SecurityWeekApple announced new AI features at its developer conference, claiming they are more private than competitors' AI systems. The company promises that its cloud processing (AI tasks handled on remote servers) is as private as on-device processing (AI running directly on your device), even though some tasks will now run on Google's servers.
Fix: According to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, the U.S. would look to the strategy it used in the 1950s to combat screwworm, which included releasing sterile insects (the source text cuts off before completing this description).
CNBC TechnologyFix: Check Point issued three explicit mitigations: (1) search SmartConsole logs (Check Point's management console) for suspicious VPN certificate authentication attempts using the provided queries; (2) disable support for legacy Remote Access client connections and configure VPN authentication to use only IKEv2 instead of IKEv1; and (3) make machine certificate authentication mandatory. Most importantly, Check Point released downloadable hotfixes for each affected software version (R80.20.X, R80.40, R81, R81.10, R81.10.X, R81.20, R82, R82.00.X, R82.10) which customers should apply immediately.
CSO OnlineResearchers at the University of Toronto created a proof-of-concept AI worm that uses a locally hosted open-weight LLM (large language model, an AI trained on broad text data and released publicly) to autonomously explore networks, generate custom attacks for each target, and replicate itself without human help or relying on commercial AI services. Unlike traditional worms with fixed exploits that stop spreading when patched, this worm generates new attack strategies at runtime by reasoning about what it finds on each host, successfully compromising about 62% of a test network in seven days. The worm's ability to read newly published vulnerability advisories means that patching known bugs alone cannot stop it, since the AI can discover and exploit new attack paths that weren't in its training data.
Cybercriminals are increasingly using AI-themed social engineering (manipulating people into revealing sensitive information or taking harmful actions) to distribute malware, steal credentials, and commit fraud by impersonating popular AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude. Both Microsoft and Google have documented how attackers are adapting traditional phishing (deceptive emails/messages designed to steal information) and impersonation tactics to exploit employees' growing use of AI tools and cloud services, rather than developing entirely new attack techniques. Security researchers warn that the threat has shifted from technical vulnerabilities to the human layer, where employees' trust and behavior become the target.
The Bank of England warned the public about AI-generated scams after deepfake videos (fake videos created using AI to show people doing things they never did) of its governor fighting a politician spread on social media. These scams use AI to impersonate banks and public figures to trick people, especially vulnerable ones, into giving up money or personal information. Bank officials urged people to report these scams so authorities can remove them and catch the criminals behind them.
Fix: Andrew Bailey urged the public to report the videos so they could be taken down. The Bank of England raised concerns about the posts with Reform UK and with social media platforms. The UK's Online Safety Act contains provisions requiring tech platforms to tackle fraudulent advertising, though those duties do not come into force until next year.
The Guardian TechnologyAI systems like Claude are becoming very good at finding bugs automatically, which is changing the bug bounty industry (where companies pay people to discover security flaws). While this sounds helpful, it's creating problems: AI tools find many duplicate bugs and low-quality reports, overwhelming the review process and making it harder for human bounty hunters to get paid fairly.
As AI agents (autonomous software that can independently handle complex tasks across organizational systems) are expected to grow significantly in adoption, companies are redesigning how work is distributed between humans and AI to shift employees toward higher-value tasks. Leadership teams recognize that this shift will transform workplace roles and responsibilities, with estimates suggesting three-quarters of current roles will need redesign or reskilling by 2030, but experts emphasize that humans must remain involved in oversight, particularly when AI agents access sensitive organizational data.
Fix: According to the source, governance should include robust data privacy rules and the establishment of governance layers such as an AI council. The source also emphasizes that "when you expose an AI agent to organizational data, when you integrate it into multiple enterprise systems, then pathways around the AI agent become extremely important," indicating that leadership needs to establish "stringent guardrails and constraints" for AI agents working with sensitive and personal data in enterprise settings.
MIT Technology ReviewResearchers at the University of Toronto created an AI-powered computer worm prototype using only free, small language models (LLMs, which are AI systems trained on large amounts of text) that could self-replicate across a simulated network by finding and exploiting vulnerabilities (security weaknesses) and misconfigurations. The research shows that attackers don't need cutting-edge AI models to launch widespread network attacks, since using paid models would create detection points where safety filters could block malicious prompts.
OpenAI introduced Lockdown Mode to reduce data exfiltration (unauthorized theft of data), a security feature that disables external capabilities like web browsing and file downloads. However, security experts say the mode only partially limits data theft and doesn't fully block it, especially since attackers could find alternate paths (prompt injection, or tricking an AI by hiding instructions in its input) to steal data.
Fix: Lockdown Mode can be activated within OpenAI products' settings and limits web browsing to cached content, limits image support, disables Deep Research and Agent Mode, denies users the ability to approve Canvas-generated code to access the network, and prevents ChatGPT from downloading files for data analysis, though it can still operate on manually uploaded files. Alternatively, security professionals can implement isolation through their own enterprise controls such as network segmentation, least privilege access, Zero Trust concepts, application controls, and air-gapping (physically isolating networks).
CSO OnlineEngland and Wales plans to trial AI legal assistants in crown courts to reduce case backlogs, but lawyers warn the technology should not replace funding and staff. Concerns have been raised about AI hallucinations (false information generated by AI systems), including cases where AI created fake legal citations that were used in court decisions, highlighting risks to the justice system's integrity.