Week in review: GitHub breached via poisoned VS Code extension, critical NGINX flaw exploited
Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news, articles, interviews and videos:
TeamPCP breached GitHub’s internal codebase via poisoned VS Code extension
Following TeamPCP’s claim that they’ve breached GitHub’s own private code repositories, the Microsoft-owned company launched an investigation and confirmed the compromise.
Earbud sensors can authenticate users by their heartbeat, study finds
Researchers built a continuous authentication system called AccLock that identifies a wearer by the tiny vibrations a heartbeat makes inside the ear canal.
Attackers are exploiting critical NGINX vulnerability (CVE-2026-42945)
A critical NGINX vulnerability (CVE-2026-42945) disclosed last week is being exploited by attackers, VulnCheck security researcher Patrick Garrity revealed on Saturday.
Communicating cyber risk in dollars boards understand
In this Help Net Security interview, Nick Nieuwenhuis, Cybersecurity Architect at Nedscaper, explains why cybersecurity has not delivered the resilience that decades of investment have promised.
Microsoft provides mitigation for “YellowKey” BitLocker bypass flaw (CVE-2026-45585)
Microsoft is working on a fix for CVE-2026-45585 (aka “Yellowkey”), a vulnerability that can be used by attackers to bypass protections offered by BitLocker, the full-disk encryption feature built into Windows, and access users’ data.
Why AI changed the threat model for travel technology
In this Help Net Security interview, Devon Bryan, SVP, Global CSO at Booking Holdings, reflects on his path from Air Force network security engineer to global CSO across financial services, hospitality, and travel technology.
Deleted Google API keys keep working for up to 23 minutes, researchers warn
Google API keys are credentials that let applications access Google services, from Maps to the Gemini AI. If a key is leaked, an attacker can use it to make API calls, rack up charges, and, if Gemini is enabled, access uploaded files and cached conversations. The assumed fix is simple: delete the key. But Aikido Security has found that deletion doesn’t actually work right away.
Microsoft open-sources tools for designing and testing AI agents
Microsoft has open-sourced two tools aimed at bringing security discipline to AI agent development: Clarity, a structured design review tool, and RAMPART, a continuous testing framework.
AI red teaming agents change how LLMs get tested
Adversarial probing of LLMs has piled up a sprawling toolkit over the past three years. Attack techniques with names like Tree of Attacks with Pruning, Crescendo, and Skeleton Key sit alongside hundreds of prompt transforms and scoring methods across open-source frameworks including Microsoft’s PyRIT, NVIDIA’s Garak, and Promptfoo.
GitHub, Grafana Labs breaches traced back to TanStack supply chain compromise
GitHub CISO Alexis Wales has named the malicious VS Code extension behind the breach they suffered at the hands of the threat group TeamPCP: Nx Console, a popular developer tool with 2.2 million installs.
Microsoft Defender vulnerabilities exploited in the wild (CVE-2026-41091, CVE-2026-45498)
Attackers are exploiting two Microsoft Defender vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-41091 and CVE-2026-45498), Microsoft acknowledged and CISA confirmed by adding them to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.
Verizon DBIR: Vulnerability exploitation is the dominant initial access vector
Vulnerability exploitation has overtaken stolen credentials as the most common way attackers gain initial access to target networks, according to the 2026 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report.
PureLogs infostealer is stealing credentials worldwide
A phishing campaign is smuggling the powerful PureLogs information stealer onto targets’ Windows machines by hiding encrypted malicious payloads inside cat photos, Fortinet researchers discovered.
New macOS infostealer impersonates Apple, Microsoft, and Google in a single attack chain
A SHub macOS infostealer variant called Reaper impersonates Apple, Microsoft, and Google to trick users into executing malicious code, then targets browser data, password managers, and cryptocurrency wallets while establishing persistence for continued access, SentinelOne found.
AI is drowning software maintainers in junk security reports
AI-assisted vulnerability research has exploded, unleashing a firehose of low-quality reports on overworked software maintainers who are wasting hours sifting through noise instead of fixing real problems.
Attackers accessed, downloaded code from Grafana Labs’ GitHub
A threat actor has managed to access Grafana Labs’ GitHub environment and download the company’s codebase, the open-source observability and data visualization firm announced on Sunday.
The end of unencrypted Discord calls is here
Discord has protected voice and video calls in DMs, group DMs, voice channels, and Go Live streams with end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default.
The AI backdoor your security stack is not built to see
Enterprises deploying LLMs have spent the past two years building defenses around a reasonable assumption: malicious behavior leaves a trace in the input. Scan for suspicious tokens, filter unusual characters, watch for prompt injection patterns. New research from Microsoft and the Institute of Science Tokyo demonstrates that this defensive posture has a blind spot, and the cost of that blind spot could be measured in leaked proprietary data and regulatory exposure.
When ransomware hits, confidence doesn’t restore endpoints
Ransomware, supply chain vulnerabilities, insider threats, compliance failures, and software disruptions remain major concerns for security leaders, according to The Ransomware Reality: Zero Days to Recover report by Absolute Security.
AI shrinks vulnerability exploitation window to hours
Time has become organizations’ biggest vulnerability because the gap between vulnerability discovery and exploitation has narrowed to hours, according to Synack’s 2026 State of Vulnerabilities Report.
Most dark web activity revolves around a handful of topics
A six-year dataset covering more than 25,000 dark web sites tracked what people discussed in underground forums and marketplaces and how those discussions changed over time.
Public Instagram posts provide raw material for AI phishing campaigns
A handful of public Instagram posts can give attackers enough material to generate convincing phishing emails with GenAI. Research from the University of Texas at Arlington and Louisiana State University showed how public social media activity can be turned into phishing messages that appear personal and credible to human recipients.
CVE Lite CLI: Open-source dependency vulnerability scanner
Dependency vulnerability scanning in JavaScript and TypeScript projects has long sat at the end of the development pipeline. Pull requests get opened, continuous integration runs, and a security scanner returns a list of CVE identifiers that developers then have to triage hours or days after writing the code. CVE Lite CLI, now an officially recognized OWASP Incubator Project, moves that check to the developer’s terminal.
What happens when your identity provider becomes the kill chain
In this Help Net Security video, Colin Constable, CTO at Atsign, explains why your identity provider (IdP) has become the kill chain in cyberattacks. Attackers steal session cookies, tokens, or consent grants you’ve already issued and walk in behind you.
7 hard truths security pros should know: 2026 DevOps Threats Report
In 2025, trusted Git hosting platforms became a playground for cyber criminals. This is the main conclusion from the latest “DevOps Threat Unwrapped Report 2026” by GitProtect.
Product showcase: Bitdefender Mobile Security for iOS protects privacy where scams begin
Bitdefender Mobile Security for iOS is a security and privacy application for iPhone and iPad that helps protect against phishing attempts, online scams, unsafe websites, and account exposure.
Cybersecurity jobs available right now: May 19, 2026
We’ve scoured the market to bring you a selection of roles that span various skill levels within the cybersecurity field. Check out this weekly selection of cybersecurity jobs available right now.
New infosec products of the week: May 22, 2026
Here’s a look at the most interesting products from the past week, featuring releases from ASAPP, Babel Street, CTERA, Forward, Riverbed, and Trust3 AI.