unit 42

3 articles · newest first

Lines of code and terminal windows on a dark computer screen

A hacker let AI run his cyberattacks solo. It barely worked — and that's the scary part

A DeepSeek-powered agent tried to hack 460+ systems on its own, including a Windows VPN bug rated CVSS 9.8 — and got shut out everywhere authentication actually worked.

Priya Nair · 3d ago · 7 min

Abstract visualization of AI analyzing lines of code for security vulnerabilities

an AI just found 14,090 real security bugs in open source — in two months

Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 pointed an ensemble of frontier AI models at almost 4,000 open source projects. 99.4% of what it found had never been reported before.

Lena Fischer · Aug 9 · 6 min

Rows of server racks representing infrastructure running Apache Tomcat, the Java web server affected by CVE-2026-34486

Software

CISA gave you until tomorrow to patch this Tomcat bug — an AI is already hunting for it

A Chinese hacker wired DeepSeek into an autonomous attack framework and pointed it at unpatched Apache Tomcat servers, and CISA wants federal systems fixed by Friday — everyone else should move just as fast.

Priya Nair · Aug 6 · 7 min