Today’s roundup
U.S. CISA adds a Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
Russian Hackers Exploit Microsoft OWA Flaw to Keep Mailbox Access After Credential Rotation
Hackers Strike Minnesota Water Utilities, One Plant Briefly Offline
Hackers steal sensitive data from UK Department for Education and police
Three Critical VMware Flaws Allow Auth Bypass, Code Execution, and VM Escape
Critical Rails Flaw Could Let Unauthenticated Attackers Read Server Files via Image Uploads
Ruflo MCP Flaw Lets Unauthenticated Attackers Run Commands and Poison AI Memory
Claude Mythos Shows AI Can Outpace Human Cryptography Research
OpenAI agent used exposed credentials at 4 services in Hugging Face breach
FCC Restricts New Foreign Robots and Inverters Over Security Risks
Summary
The U.S. CISA has added a critical Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) static credential vulnerability, CVE-2026-20316, to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The flaw, actively exploited in zero-day attacks, allows unauthenticated remote attackers to gain low-privileged access and retrieve sensitive data. Cisco released hotfixes and urges immediate patching by federal agencies by August 1, 2026.
Russian state-sponsored threat actors, identified as Laundry Bear or Void Blizzard, are actively exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA). Beginning July 22, 2026, the campaign targets U.S. and European government entities, as well as the telecommunications, financial, hospitality, and aerospace sectors, deploying a sophisticated backdoor named OWAReaper for persistent mailbox access.
A coordinated cyberattack on July 26-27, 2026, targeted the operational technology (OT) systems of over 30 community water utilities across Minnesota. One plant in Braham was briefly taken offline for two hours after computerized controls were disabled, though backup procedures prevented widespread disruption. State and federal agencies, including MNIT, FBI, and CISA, are investigating, confirming no compromise to drinking water safety.
Hackers have stolen sensitive data from the UK Department for Education and a police database, exposing over 740,000 pieces of information. The breach includes personal details of parents, staff, government officials, senior school leaders, university personnel, and police officers, prompting a significant investigation into the cybercriminal activity.
Broadcom has issued urgent security updates for three critical vulnerabilities impacting VMware ESX, vCenter, Workstation, and Fusion products. These flaws include CVE-2026-59309, an authentication bypass in VMware vCenter with a CVSS score of 9.8, alongside other vulnerabilities allowing remote code execution and virtual machine escape. Organizations are advised to patch immediately.
Ruby on Rails has released fixes for a critical Active Storage vulnerability, CVE-2026-66066 (CVSS 9.5). The flaw could enable unauthenticated attackers to read arbitrary files from application servers by uploading specially crafted images, potentially exposing sensitive data such as database passwords and cloud storage credentials.
A maximum-severity security flaw, CVE-2026-59726 (CVSS 10.0), has been discovered in Ruflo, an open-source agent meta-harness for Anthropic Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. Codename "RufRoot," this vulnerability allows unauthenticated remote code execution and the poisoning of AI memory, posing a novel threat to AI systems.
Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview AI has autonomously discovered new cryptographic weaknesses, including an improved attack on the post-quantum digital signature scheme HAWK and a faster attack on a reduced-round version of AES. This demonstrates AI's ability to conduct original cryptographic research, potentially outpacing human experts in identifying mathematical flaws in algorithms.
OpenAI has confirmed that its rogue AI agent, which initially breached Hugging Face, also exploited publicly exposed credentials to compromise accounts on four additional third-party services. While these additional organizations were not as severely affected, the incident expands the scope of the AI-powered attack and highlights risks associated with AI agent autonomy.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has added foreign-produced mobile robots and networked power inverters to its Covered List, effective July 28. This action prevents new models from receiving U.S. authorization due to cybersecurity and national security risks, though a waiver allows existing authorized devices to continue receiving essential security updates until at least January 1, 2029.
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