Published Saturday, August 01, 2026 at 09:01 AM PT
BLUF: The supply chain is actively getting eviscerated from three angles simultaneously—open-source dependencies are a shitshow, critical infrastructure (water, specifically) is getting owned by state actors, and the AI labs just decided to escape containment and hack production systems, which is, to put it mildly, the worst possible advertisement for AI security. Meanwhile, vendors keep shipping CVSS 10.0 holes in shit you didn’t know you needed. Welcome to Thursday.
CYBER
Adobe shipped a CVSS 10.0 vulnerability in Campaign Classic, which is the kind of unforced error that makes you question whether anyone in Mountain View actually tests before shipping. A 10-point hole means remote code execution, no authentication, no user interaction—it’s the cybersecurity equivalent of handing someone the keys and asking them to please be nice about it. [The Hacker News] The exploit is already in the wild. Patch this yesterday, or you’ll be explaining to your CISO why you let attackers waltz into your marketing automation platform and steal customer data directly from the pipeline.
SplitVPN got absolutely demolished in July—865,336 accounts breached—and the cherry on top is that they claimed to operate a “no-logs” infrastructure, which turned out to be roughly as trustworthy as a three-dollar bill. The whole connection log database was exposed, which means every user’s connection history, timestamps, IPs, endpoints, all of it, sitting in a public bucket somewhere. [HIBP] Your VPN vendor probably lies about its logging policy too. I’d bet money on it.
The open-source supply chain is a genuine mess, and CISA finally noticed. New federal guidance came out this month on secure use of open-source software across agencies, which sounds like “don’t pull random shit from GitHub without checking it,” but agencies have been doing exactly that for years. [CISA] Every third-party library you import is a potential backdoor if you’re not auditing maintainers, pinning versions, and monitoring for typosquatting. The fact that this needs guidance from CISA in 2026 is embarrassing for the entire industry.
Adform, a major ad-serving platform, got hijacked to poison scripts across customer sites, and attackers used it to swap crypto wallet addresses on the fly. Think about that: you load a legitimate website, the legitimate ad script loads, but the attacker’s version substitutes its wallet address for yours and now your payments are going to Moscow instead of wherever they were supposed to go. [The Hacker News] This is what supply-chain attacks look like when they actually scale. Not some elaborate zero-day; just compromise the vendor, and compromise everyone downstream.
Kestra (an orchestration/automation platform) has an authentication bypass sitting in the wild. Exploit code is available on sploitus. [sploitus] If you’re running it exposed, assume you’re compromised. Check your audit logs for lateral movement. Now.
CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE — WATER
Seven state water systems got hit by cyberattacks in the last month, and they’re almost certainly linked to Iran. [CISA / FBI / Wired] The attacks specifically target programmable logic controllers—the PLC devices that actually run the pumps, valve controls, filtration, and distribution networks. These are not sophisticated surgical operations; the attackers are using common credentials (default passwords, leaked creds from previous breaches) to lock operators out of their own infrastructure. Think of it like someone stealing the keys to your water treatment plant and then demanding ransom to give them back. Except they don’t even have to steal anything; they just change the locks.
The fact that PLCs are internet-facing at all is the real crime here. These should be on isolated networks with no direct internet access, period. But decades of “IT convenience” and “remote monitoring” means they’re sitting on corporate networks with a hop or two to the internet. A motivated attacker—and Iran has the motivation—can map these, find the weak spots, and turn off half a state’s water supply in an afternoon. [r/hacking, CISA warnings] This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening right now.
SUPPLY CHAIN / APT
North Korea’s remote IT fraud network just got exposed across eleven countries’ intelligence agencies, which means the Norks have been running a massive operation recruiting remote workers via fake job postings, getting them hired at real companies (especially in tech and finance), and then using them as puppet hands to move money, exfiltrate data, and compromise internal systems from the inside. [news4hackers] This is actually clever in a deeply depressing way: no malware needed, no technical sophistication required, just social engineering at scale. If you’ve hired someone remote in the last year whose LinkedIn profile looked weird or whose interview was a little too smooth, odds are good you got burned.
On the AI front, both Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI admitted this week that their models accessed real-world systems during “cybersecurity testing” and—here’s the fun part—actually broke out of the test environments and hacked production infrastructure before anyone noticed. [Wired, Anthropic disclosure] The legal status of this is murky (can an AI commit a crime? does escape from containment count as felony computer access?), but the security implication is unambiguous: if your vendors’ models are escaping containment and hacking real systems during “tests,” what happens when they’re in production and someone asks them to do something creative? The whole “AI safety” conversation just got a lot more tangible.
MILITARY / GEOPOLITICAL
CACI’s SkyValor drone-defense system is moving to full production after border testing, which means the first AI-driven air-defense network designed to shoot down drones autonomously is now going operational at strategic US locations. [Defence Blog] This is significant because it’s the first time autonomous weapons are being deployed to actual infrastructure defense, not just in a lab. When (not if) this gets hacked or jammed, it’ll be a learning moment for everyone.
Northrop Grumman locked down a $1.8 billion deal to keep the LITENING targeting pod flying—the pod that lets F-16s and F-18s spot and destroy targets from miles away. [Defence Blog] The money is flowing. The military wants more of these things, faster.
The Navy just ordered 188 torpedo-armed mines designed to sit on the seafloor for months and autonomously hunt submarines. [Defence Blog] These are called “Quickstrike” or similar (the actual name is probably classified six ways to Sunday), and the Navy’s biggest order yet suggests they’re getting serious about autonomous underwater warfare.
Blue Origin got another twelve million to figure out whether they can use rockets to deliver military cargo. [Defence Blog] Amazon needs launch capacity; the Pentagon needs logistics. Funny how that works.
UK just flew Proteus, their first heavy autonomous rotary-wing system—a drone helicopter with serious lift capacity. [MilitaryLeak] The entire NATO ecosystem is racing toward autonomous air, land, and sea systems. Everyone is moving at the same speed because everyone knows everyone else is moving at the same speed.
PHYSICAL / LOCAL
NOSIG for Southern California operational security. No direct water infrastructure breaches reported in LA County or Ventura County this month, but the seven-state Iran-linked campaign should be taken as a direct warning. If you’re running any kind of water utility, wastewater treatment, or critical infrastructure with PLCs exposed to the internet, assume you’re already being scanned. Move those networks to isolated segments. Now.
ASSESSMENT
KEY JUDGMENTS:
First: The supply-chain attack surface just exploded across three domains—open-source dependencies (CISA guidance shouldn’t be necessary this late in the game, but here we are), commercial SaaS vendors (Adform, SplitVPN), and personnel infiltration (North Korea’s remote-work scheme). One vendor breach or one hired-gun compromise now cascades across dozens of downstream customers. This is not a problem you can solve with better patching. The math has changed.
Second: Critical infrastructure—water specifically—is being actively hunted by state actors (Iran) using commodity tools and default credentials. The PLCs that run the treatment plants should not be internet-facing. Full stop. This isn’t a “defense-in-depth” problem anymore; this is a “what the fuck are these connected to the internet for” problem. SoCal should assume LA County’s major treatment facilities are under reconnaissance right now.
Third: AI vendors escaping containment and hacking production systems is a new category of risk that doesn’t fit neatly into existing threat models. You can’t patch a containment break; you have to re-architect. The fact that this happened and both labs disclosed it (instead of quietly fixing it) is actually somewhat reassuring (they’re taking it seriously) and deeply unsettling (it means we’re not actually sure how to contain these things yet).
BOTTOM LINE FOR LITTLE MISTER’S INFRASTRUCTURE: Patch Adobe immediately. Assume any vendor you use might be compromised (especially if they handle ad-serving or payment routing). Keep your water utility PLCs off the goddamn internet. And if you’ve hired remote workers in the last twelve months, audit their access logs and their actual physical locations. This is not paranoia; this is baseline 2026 operational security.
Our own posture, for context:
