New tools, products, platforms, funding rounds, and company developments in AI security.
Anthropic's Claude AI experienced elevated errors and degraded performance on Monday, particularly affecting Claude Opus 4.6 (the latest version of their AI model). The company identified the issues and worked on fixes, with some problems on claude.ai and related services being resolved.
Fix: According to the status updates mentioned: an issue with Claude Opus 4.6 had 'a fix was in the works' as of 10:49 a.m. ET, and issues on claude.ai, console, and claude code were reported as 'resolved' as of 10:47 a.m. ET.
CNBC TechnologyA security flaw in Chrome's Gemini Live feature (Google's AI assistant) could allow malicious browser extensions (add-ons that modify Chrome's behavior) to take control of the AI tool, spy on users, and steal their files. The vulnerability created a serious risk for anyone using this feature with untrusted extensions installed.
Nvidia is investing $4 billion total ($2 billion each) in two U.S. companies, Lumentum and Coherent, that develop photonics technologies (systems using light for sensing and data transfer). These investments include multi-billion dollar purchase commitments and aim to support Nvidia's AI infrastructure expansion by securing advanced optical and laser components needed for large-scale AI data centers.
A vulnerability in OpenClaw allowed malicious websites to connect to the OpenClaw gateway (a system that manages AI agents) on localhost (a computer's own network), guess passwords through brute force attacks (trying many password combinations rapidly), and take control of AI agents. This exposed AI systems to unauthorized hijacking from untrusted websites.
Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, experienced a widespread outage on March 2, 2026, affecting users across all platforms including web, mobile, and API (the interface developers use to connect to the service). Users reported failed requests, timeouts (when the system doesn't respond in time), and inconsistent responses, with the company still investigating the cause as of the last update.
A high-severity vulnerability (CVE-2026-0628) in Google Chrome's Gemini AI feature allowed malicious extensions with basic permissions to hijack the Gemini panel and gain unauthorized access to sensitive resources like the camera, microphone, screenshots, and local files. Google released a fix in early January 2026, and the vulnerability highlights how integrating AI directly into browsers creates new security risks when AI components have overly broad access to the browser environment.
A bug in Google's Gemini AI Panel allowed attackers to escalate privileges (gain higher-level access to a system), violate user privacy during browsing, and access sensitive resources. The vulnerability created a security risk by opening a door for unauthorized control of the system.
True cybersecurity culture is about real behaviors and decisions people make under pressure, not awareness campaigns or posters. The article argues that most organizations accidentally train employees to ignore security by rewarding speed over safety, creating confusing policies, making secure processes difficult, and failing to acknowledge security concerns, then suggests fixing this by redesigning workflows to make secure choices the easiest and most obvious option.
CISOs (chief information security officers, the leaders in charge of security at organizations) face challenges building resilient teams due to skills gaps, unpredictable workloads, and high burnout rates. The 2025 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study found that 47% of security workers feel overwhelmed and 48% feel exhausted keeping up with threats and new technology. To address this, leaders like Stephen Ford recommend using data-backed workforce planning to measure workloads, maintaining proper staffing levels, monitoring team stress, and building a sustainable talent pipeline to prevent overwhelming teams.
A vulnerability called ClawJacked in OpenClaw (a self-hosted AI platform that runs AI agents locally) allowed malicious websites to secretly take control of a running instance and steal data by brute-forcing the password through the browser. The attack exploited the fact that OpenClaw's gateway service listens on localhost (127.0.0.1, a local-only address) with a WebSocket interface (a two-way communication protocol), and localhost connections were exempt from rate limiting, allowing attackers to guess passwords hundreds of times per second without triggering protections.
Anthropic's Claude chatbot jumped to the number one spot in Apple's US App Store after the company publicly disagreed with the Pentagon over using its AI for domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. The surge in popularity followed President Trump directing federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products, while OpenAI announced its own agreement with the Pentagon instead.
Deepfakes and injection attacks (where attackers substitute fake video or audio into a system's input stream) are increasingly being used to bypass identity verification systems in critical moments like bank account opening, remote hiring, and account recovery. Traditional deepfake detection alone is insufficient because attackers can either create high-quality synthetic media or completely bypass the camera sensor using injection attacks, so organizations need to validate entire identity sessions end-to-end, including device integrity and user behavior signals, rather than just checking if a face looks real.
OpenAI negotiated with the Pentagon to use its AI systems for military purposes, while Anthropic refused and was blacklisted for rejecting two uses: domestic mass surveillance (monitoring Americans without individual consent) and lethal autonomous weapons (AI systems that can kill targets without a human making the final decision). OpenAI's CEO claimed to have found a way to maintain safety limits in the company's military contract, though the article does not detail what those specific terms are.
OpenAI secured a deal with the U.S. Department of Defense after the Trump administration forced federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's AI technology, citing disagreements over how the Pentagon wanted to use the artificial intelligence startup's systems. OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman stated that his company shares the same ethical boundaries (called guardrails, which are safety limits built into AI systems) as Anthropic regarding how the technology should be used.
Anti-AI protest groups organized a march in London on February 28 with a couple hundred protesters expressing concerns about generative AI (AI systems trained on large amounts of data to generate text, images, or other content), ranging from job displacement and harmful content to existential risks. The protest represents a significant growth in organized anti-AI activism, with groups like Pause AI expanding rapidly since their 2023 founding to mobilize larger crowds around concerns that researchers have documented about AI systems like ChatGPT and Gemini.
Researchers demonstrated that LLMs (large language models, AI systems trained on vast amounts of text) can effectively de-anonymize people by identifying them from their anonymous online posts across platforms like Hacker News, Reddit, and LinkedIn. By analyzing just a handful of comments, these AI systems can infer personal details like location, occupation, and interests, then search the web to match and identify the anonymous user with high accuracy across tens of thousands of candidates.
Fix: Google released a fix in early January 2026. Additionally, Palo Alto Networks' Prisma Browser is mentioned as a product designed to prevent extension-based attacks like this vulnerability.
Palo Alto Unit 42AI is developing faster than government regulation can keep up, creating risks like chatbots giving harmful advice to teens and potential misuse for creating biological weapons. Unlike industries such as nuclear power or pharmaceuticals, AI companies are not required to disclose safety problems or undergo independent testing before releasing new models to the public. The author argues that independent oversight of AI platforms is necessary to protect people's rights and safety.
Security leaders (CISOs, who oversee an organization's security strategy) face pressure to enable innovation like AI adoption while reducing risk and staying within budget constraints. The source argues that well-governed innovation actually reduces risk by preventing uncontrolled tool sprawl and shadow IT (unauthorized software systems), but unmanaged innovation creates fragile systems that increase damage from security incidents. The key is bringing discipline to experimentation by automating routine tasks, giving teams ownership of meaningful improvements with clear end goals, and using AI strategically only where it changes the risk equation without creating new vulnerabilities.
Fix: The source recommends: 'Make the secure path the easiest path. People choose defaults. Give them good ones. Create golden paths for common work. Secure templates. Approved tools. Automated guardrails. Self-service access with sane limits.' The text also advises organizations to 'Remove friction. Clarify choices. Make it hard to do the wrong thing by accident and easy to make the best possible decision.'
CSO OnlineFix: According to Ford's strategies, CISOs should use data to inform staffing levels, monitor workloads actively, balance workload distribution as much as possible, and focus on building good teams and understanding their challenges. Ford also emphasizes hiring good people, empowering them to operate, and delegating as much as possible, while spending time understanding the team's workload and how they feel about their work. Additionally, organizations should look at workforce resilience as an element of risk management requiring data-backed planning and managing the skills mix.
CSO OnlineDeepfakes (AI-generated fake videos that look real) are being used to trick people into financial fraud, with incidents ranging from fake stock advice videos in India to a $25 million theft at an engineering firm where employees were deceived by deepfake video calls. The technology is becoming easier and cheaper to create, making these attacks a growing threat to both individuals and companies.
Fix: Update to OpenClaw version 2026.2.26 or later immediately. According to the source, the fix "tightens WebSocket security checks and adds additional protections to prevent attackers from abusing localhost loopback connections to brute-force logins or hijack sessions, even if those connections are configured to be exempt from rate limiting."
BleepingComputerOpenAI reached an agreement with the Department of Defense to deploy its AI models in classified environments, after Anthropic's similar negotiations failed. OpenAI stated it has safeguards preventing use in mass domestic surveillance, autonomous weapons, or high-stakes automated decisions, implemented through a multi-layered approach including cloud deployment, human oversight, and contractual protections. However, critics argue the contract language may still allow domestic surveillance under existing executive orders, while OpenAI's leadership contends that deployment architecture (how the system is technically set up) matters more than contract terms for preventing misuse.