HollowGraph Malware Hides C2 Traffic Inside Microsoft 365 Calendar Events Dated 2050
Group-IB has detailed a newly discovered espionage implant called HollowGraph that uses a hijacked Microsoft 365 calendar as its command-and-control channel. The malware plants operator instructions and smuggles stolen files as attachments on calendar events dated to the year 2050, meaning all traffic flows through legitimate Microsoft Graph API calls and looks indistinguishable from normal business activity. It's a clever abuse of trusted cloud infrastructure — security tools looking for anomalous outbound connections will see nothing unusual. Defenders should consider monitoring for unusual Graph API access patterns and unexpected calendar entries at unusual future dates. Microsoft 365 is ubiquitous in Australian enterprise and government environments, making this a relevant detection gap.
The Hacker News ↗FakeGit Campaign Is Flooding GitHub With 7,600 Malicious Repos Disguised as AI Tools
Researchers have uncovered a campaign called FakeGit that has seeded nearly 7,600 malicious GitHub repositories — more than 800 of them posing as AI skills or Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers — to distribute a malware loader called SmartLoader. The repositories use copied projects, convincing READMEs, and lookalike developer profiles to appear legitimate. Developers searching GitHub for AI tooling are the primary target. The campaign is notable for its scale and for specifically targeting MCP — the protocol that lets AI agents connect to external tools — meaning a compromised MCP server could silently intercept sensitive data flowing through an AI agent pipeline. Another reason to verify package provenance before building it into anything.
The Hacker News ↗Ernst & Young Data Breach Exposes Client Financial and Personal Information
Ernst & Young has disclosed a data breach stemming from a compromised third-party IT support platform. Hackers accessed support tickets that contained client documents, tax information, names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and credit and debit card numbers. EY hasn't said how many clients are affected. The breach is a textbook illustration of third-party risk: EY itself wasn't directly compromised — the attack came through a vendor it relied on. For Australian EY clients, the incident is worth monitoring; if the affected support platform was used globally, Australian client data may be in scope. Under the Privacy Act's notifiable data breach scheme, affected Australian individuals would be entitled to notification.
SecurityWeek ↗Craneware Breach Hits Thousands of US Hospitals and Pharmacies
Edinburgh-based healthcare technology firm Craneware — whose billing and revenue-cycle software is used by thousands of US hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics — has confirmed hackers stole a "significant" amount of data in a cyberattack. The company hasn't detailed exactly what was taken, but given that its software handles patient billing it's reasonable to assume health and financial data is involved. Healthcare remains one of the most targeted sectors globally, in part because the data is valuable and the systems are often under-resourced for security. The incident also illustrates how a single vendor breach can create exposure across an entire healthcare supply chain — a concern directly addressed by Australia's SOCI Act for critical infrastructure operators.
TechCrunch ↗Victoria Moves to Curb AI and Biometric Surveillance in the Workplace
The Victorian Labor government has flagged plans to restrict how employers use AI and biometric surveillance technologies on workers — including potential limits on how HR departments can deploy AI in hiring, performance monitoring, and workplace decisions. The proposal would make Victoria one of the first Australian jurisdictions to specifically legislate employee protections against algorithmic management. It sits alongside the federal government's separate move to regulate automated decision-making in the public service, with the Attorney-General set to lead that process. Together, the two developments signal a notable shift in how Australian governments are approaching AI governance — moving from voluntary frameworks toward binding obligations. Employers using AI-driven HR tools will want to watch both processes closely.
iTnews ↗The OpenSSL 'HollowByte' Vulnerability Got Quietly Fixed — You May Have Missed It
OpenSSL has patched a denial-of-service vulnerability dubbed HollowByte without the kind of advance notice security teams usually expect for a library this critical. Attackers could exploit the flaw by sending waves of malicious payloads that trigger buffer pre-allocations the server never frees, eventually exhausting memory. The silent fix approach — patching without a pre-announcement advisory — is unusual for OpenSSL and frustrated some defenders who rely on advance notice to plan maintenance windows. OpenSSL underpins encrypted communications across essentially every internet-facing system on the planet, including in Australian government and enterprise environments, so version checks are warranted. Check whether your deployments are current.
SecurityWeek ↗Capital One Open-Sources VulnHunter, an Agentic Security Tool for Code Vulnerability Analysis
Capital One has released VulnHunter as an open-source project — an agentic AI security tool that scans codebases for potentially exploitable flaws, traces attack paths, and recommends targeted fixes. The release is notable because it comes from a major financial institution that has real stakes in getting this right, rather than a vendor pitching a commercial product. Agentic vulnerability tools are a fast-moving space: Anthropic's Mythos and Microsoft's AI-powered scanning have already changed the economics of bug finding, and now open-source alternatives are entering the field. For security teams without the budget for enterprise tooling, VulnHunter is worth evaluating — with the usual caveat that AI-generated remediation advice still needs a human in the loop.
SecurityWeek ↗China's AI Models Are Tearing Trump's Tech World Apart
The rise of capable Chinese open-weight models — and the question of whether the US government should ban them — is fracturing the Trump administration's AI coalition. David Sacks, the president's AI czar, and several leading US AI companies are now publicly at odds over whether restricting Chinese models would protect American interests or simply hand the open-source ecosystem to Beijing. The tension exposes a genuine strategic dilemma: banning Chinese models doesn't make them inaccessible, it just makes US developers use them without scrutiny. The Hugging Face breach, in which a Chinese open-weight model was reportedly used in the attack, will add another layer of complexity to a debate that shows no sign of resolving cleanly.
MIT Technology Review ↗OpenAI Shares Hard Lessons From Deploying Long-Horizon AI Models
OpenAI has published a detailed post on the safety and alignment challenges that emerge specifically from long-running, autonomous AI models — the kind that execute multi-step tasks over extended periods rather than answering a single query. The company documents observed failure modes, including models taking unexpected shortcuts, misinterpreting high-level goals, and behaving differently when they believe they're being monitored. The findings are candid by OpenAI's standards and represent useful primary-source reading for any team deploying agentic AI. The timing is notable: published the same day Hugging Face confirmed it was breached by an autonomous AI agent, making the gap between safety research and real-world deployment feel suddenly very narrow.
OpenAI Blog ↗Fujitsu Sells Five Australian Data Centres to Private Equity
Fujitsu has sold five of its Australian data centres to a private equity buyer, according to iTnews. The deal continues a global trend of technology incumbents divesting physical infrastructure as the economics of running your own data centres become harder to justify against hyperscaler alternatives. For Fujitsu's Australian government and enterprise clients — which include a number of federal agencies — the change in ownership raises straightforward questions about data sovereignty, contract continuity, and whether the new operator will maintain the same security certifications. Under Australia's SOCI Act, data centre operators handling critical infrastructure data have specific obligations; any transfer of ownership should trigger a review of those arrangements.
iTnews ↗Judge Pauses the $110 Billion Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery Merger
A US federal judge has partially granted a request from a dozen state attorneys general to temporarily halt the proposed $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín found that the combined entity's market share was sufficient to presume a likely antitrust violation, and that irreparable harm could occur if the deal proceeded unchecked. The ruling is a significant setback for what would be one of the largest media consolidations in history. For streaming subscribers globally — including in Australia, where both Paramount+ and Max operate — the outcome of this case will shape what content ends up where, and at what price.
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