Neural Newscast

[00:00] Aaron Cole: Welcome to Prime Cyber Insights.
[00:02] Aaron Cole: We're opening today with a pretty grim outlook on transparency.
[00:06] Aaron Cole: The Identity Theft Resource Center says corporate disclosure is on life support,
[00:11] Aaron Cole: even as data compromises surged 79% over the last five years.
[00:16] Aaron Cole: We are seeing this play out right now with two massive stories, the Conduant Breach, which might be the largest in U.S. history, and a major data leak at FinTech Giant Figure Technology.
[00:28] Chad Thompson: It's a heavy start, Aaron. To help us navigate these layers, joining us today is Chad Thompson, who brings a systems-level perspective on AI and security, blending technical depth with creative insight from engineering and music production. Chad, welcome.
[00:45] Chad Thompson: Before we dive into the technicals, the conduit numbers are just staggering.
[00:51] Chad Thompson: Oregon and Texas alone are reporting over 14.5 million people affected,
[00:57] Chad Thompson: with medical data and social security numbers exposed.
[01:00] Lauren Mitchell: Lauren, it's great to be here.
[01:03] Lauren Mitchell: The conduit situation is a textbook case of systemic risk.
[01:08] Lauren Mitchell: Hackers were in their network for 84 days.
[01:11] Lauren Mitchell: When you serve half the Fortune 100, that kind of dwell time translates to a catastrophic blast radius.
[01:18] Lauren Mitchell: We're not just looking at a breach, we're looking at a three-month window where
[01:21] Lauren Mitchell: sensitive government and medical data was essentially an open book.
[01:26] Aaron Cole: And figure technology isn't faring much better.
[01:29] Aaron Cole: Troy Hunt confirmed nearly a million unique emails were exposed
[01:34] Aaron Cole: after the Shiny Hunters Group posted 2.5 gigabytes of data.
[01:39] Aaron Cole: Lauren, the ITRC report says attackers are shifting away from mega breaches toward these
[01:46] Aaron Cole: targeted attacks on high-value repositories.
[01:50] Aaron Cole: It makes the lack of corporate transparency even more dangerous for the individuals whose
[01:55] Aaron Cole: data is being repackaged for scams.
[01:58] Chad Thompson: Exactly.
[01:59] Chad Thompson: And that repackaging is exactly what we're seeing with taxis and scams.
[02:04] Chad Thompson: Criminals are using records from as far back as 2021 to personalize IRS impersonations.
[02:11] Chad Thompson: But even as we secure the perimeter, the tools we use are failing us.
[02:16] Chad Thompson: Microsoft confirmed bug CW1226324.
[02:21] Chad Thompson: where Copilot was summarizing confidential emails despite data loss prevention policies being in place.
[02:29] Chad Thompson: Aaron, this hits right at the heart of Enterprise Trust and AI.
[02:33] Lauren Mitchell: That Copilot bug is significant because it bypassed intentional security labels.
[02:39] Lauren Mitchell: It's not just Microsoft either.
[02:41] Lauren Mitchell: Researchers at Endor Labs just found six vulnerabilities in the OpenClaw AI assistant, including SSRF and authentication bypass flaws.
[02:53] Lauren Mitchell: Traditional security tools are essentially blind to these LLM to tool flows.
[02:57] Lauren Mitchell: We're building these incredibly powerful assistants on top of conversation states that aren't being properly audited for security boundaries.
[03:06] Aaron Cole: It's a gap that threat actors are already exploiting.
[03:09] Aaron Cole: Turning to the browser, Google just issued an emergency patch for the first Chrome Zero Day of 2026, CVE-2026-2441.
[03:19] Aaron Cole: It's a high-severity CSS component flaw that was exploited in the wild before the fix was out.
[03:25] Aaron Cole: Lauren, we've also got Apple fixing a sophisticated zero-day in their dynamic link editor that impacts everything from iPhones to Mac OS Tahoe.
[03:35] Chad Thompson: The urgency to update is real, Aaron.
[03:38] Chad Thompson: Beyond our personal devices, CISA is sounding the alarm on Honeywell CCTV products.
[03:44] Chad Thompson: A critical vulnerability discovered by Suvik Kanda allows unauthenticated attackers to hijack accounts by simply changing the recovery email.
[03:54] Chad Thompson: In a critical infrastructure setting, having your security cameras compromised is a worst-case scenario.
[04:01] Chad Thompson: It's, you know, a missing authentication flaw that should not exist in 2026.
[04:07] Lauren Mitchell: It speaks to the fragmentation we're seeing.
[04:11] Lauren Mitchell: Look at the ransomware data from Searchlight Cyber, a record 7,458 victims last year, and 124 active groups.
[04:21] Lauren Mitchell: Even though payments are down because victims are refusing to pay, the barrier to entry is lower because of AI.
[04:27] Lauren Mitchell: Syndicates are fracturing into smaller, more agile cells, making them harder to track even as their individual success rate for social engineering increases.
[04:37] Aaron Cole: Harder to track and less transparent.
[04:40] Aaron Cole: That seems to be the theme of the year so far.
[04:43] Aaron Cole: We've covered a lot of ground today, from the conduit record breaker to the foundational
[04:48] Aaron Cole: flaws in our AI assistance.
[04:50] Aaron Cole: Chad, thank you for joining us to break down these systems-level challenges.
[04:55] Chad Thompson: Remember to check your browser versions and stay vigilant as tax season continues to ramp
[05:00] Chad Thompson: up.
[05:01] Chad Thompson: For more resources and the full technical breakdown, head over to pci.neuralnewscast.com.
[05:08] Chad Thompson: We'll be back next week with more analysis.
[05:11] Chad Thompson: Thanks for listening.
[05:12] Chad Thompson: Neural Newscast is AI-assisted, human-reviewed.
[05:16] Chad Thompson: View our AI transparency policy at neuralnewscast.com.