Author: HackWatchit

SecurityWeek tracked 37 cybersecurity merger and acquisition (M&A) deals announced in October 2026. For a look at last year’s activity, see SecurityWeek’s 2025 Cybersecurity M&A Report, which covers more than 420 deals. Here are some of the most important cybersecurity M&A deals announced in October 2026:     Absolute Security acquires FirmGuard Endpoint security and cyber resilience firm Absolute Security has acquired FirmGuard, the UEFI BIOS firmware security and management business of Phoenix Technologies. Absolute will integrate FirmGuard with its firmware-embedded Absolute Persistence technology, adding below-the-OS management, continuous firmware integrity monitoring and patching, and compliance enforcement. Aikido Security acquires OutKept…

The hacker behind a high-profile string of leaks involving the upcoming release of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) 6 videogame has threatened to release a complete, playable build.The website of “CyberLeek” published the threat shortly after releasing around 25 minutes of fresh footage of the blockbuster game due to be released in November by Rockstar Games.Eurogamer, which has seen the footage, says it appears to be legitimate, and confirmed that it carries the emblem of CyberLeek.According to CyberLeek, the full playable build of GTA 6 will be released when its own cryptocurrency coin reaches a market cap of US $30…

In brief Users on X say some Claude Opus 5.5 requests are being routed to an unreleased model they call Fable 5.5, but Anthropic has not announced it and its Mythos page still lists version 5.1. A “Mythos 5.5” label appeared in the hidden code of Anthropic’s Mythos page on November 1, and a “claude-fable-5-5” entry was added to the LiteLLM catalog on October 13 with specs copied from Fable 5.1. OpenAI’s “gpt-6.2-astra” appeared in Codex usage data for some accounts on November 1, while Anthropic’s IPO roadshow cannot start before November 10. Users on X say Anthropic is quietly…

CrowdStrike OverWatch identified a VAPOR PANDA campaign using ARTEX alongside the Chinese-developed DeepSeek large language model (LLM) and a second commercial LLM to conduct intrusions against multiple high-value targets in parallel.  Beginning on October 17, 2026, the adversary used ARTEX against more than 200 distinct organizations worldwide, including foreign ministries in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East;  semiconductor, defense, and think tank organizations in the U.S.; and telecommunications providers in multiple regions.  The VAPOR PANDA campaign detailed in this blog post is separate from the ARTEX activity recently reported by industry sources under the Storm-0940 designation.1 CrowdStrike has…

San Francisco, CA, November 3rd, 2026, CyberNewswire Cogent Security, an applied AI cybersecurity company, reported that the PHP2Shell vulnerability exposed significant gaps in enterprise vulnerability response. Disclosed on October 21, PHP2Shell involved two critical flaws that had remained in PHP for more than a decade. AI-assisted research helped identify the vulnerabilities and develop working exploits in approximately one week, with attacks beginning before a patch was available. Cloudflare recorded millions of exploitation attempts that day. According to Cogent Security’s research, by 5 p.m. Pacific, the average Fortune 500 company had patched fewer than 1% of its 2,266 affected assets. That…

Hackers Send Fake Nuclear Threat Alerts to Ukrainian and Russian Citizens Pierluigi Paganini November 02, 2026 Hackers reportedly hit Ukraine ‘s and Russia ‘s emergency alert apps, sending fake nuclear and attack warnings and raising concerns over public safety. Ukraine and Russia both said on Sunday night that hackers had compromised their emergency alert apps and used them to send fake warnings about air raids and other attacks, including nuclear threats. The BBC reported the incident, but neither side’s claims have been independently confirmed. Shortly before 11 p.m. local time (9 p.m. GMT), Ukraine’s widely used Air Alarm app sent…

Executive Summary “Can you find about like what scam or thing they done in past like spoofing calls or somthing [sic],” the threat actor typed. The conversation was with one of several AI assistants that the actor was using to get advice on planning and executing a variety of cybercrime activities. Our visibility into this specific actor’s operational environment gives us unique insights into exactly how threat actors are building, testing and executing agentic attacks across multiple campaign types. Unit 42’s investigation into the actor’s operational environment and activities makes two things clear: The attacker used basic tooling and relied…

Are organisations becoming so reliant on third party space assets that they would face severe disruption if the assets were impacted by a cyber attack? When most people think of space technology, they imagine routine weather forecasts or blue-dot navigation on a smartphone map. But behind those quiet satellite signals lies an invisible digital thread holding modern society together. From crop harvesting schedules to international flight routes and supermarket supply chains, daily life on Earth is deeply dependent on data from space. Yet space security remains the cyber risk that very few in executive boardrooms are addressing. As the space…

Google said today it worked with industry partners to dismantle a botnet made up of more than 1.3 million Android TV set-top boxes that ship with malicious software which secretly rents the user’s Internet connection out to strangers and conducts advertising fraud. Experts involved in the takedown say the action is likely to sever the botnet’s access to more than 10 million additional compromised systems, including other Internet of Things (IoT) products such as Android-based healthcare devices and karaoke machines. A report from the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said Google has severed ties with Videostrong Technology Co., a TV…