Governance, Regulation, Legislation, Geostrategies

Dutch regulator explains new EU AI disclosure duties

(DigWatch) The Dutch Data Protection Authority has outlined how the new EU transparency requirements will affect people who use chatbots and encounter content created or altered with AI. From 2 August 2026, organisations must generally make it clear when customers are communicating with an AI assistant rather than a person. The requirement could apply to automated services provided by retailers, healthcare organisations, municipalities and other institutions. Providers must also make AI-generated photographs, videos, audio and text detectable in a machine-readable format. Possible methods include digital watermarks, metadata and other technical markings. – https://dig.watch/updates/dutch-regulator-new-eu-ai-disclosure-duties

Ibero-American ministers call for safeguards on AI at work

(DigWatch) Labour ministers and senior officials from Ibero-American countries have adopted a regional declaration calling for stronger safeguards around the use of AI and algorithmic systems in the  workplace. The Avilés Declaration was adopted on 2 July during the Sixth Ibero-American Ministerial Conference on Labour in Spain. It establishes political commitments to be implemented in accordance with national laws and does not create legal obligations for participating countries. – https://dig.watch/updates/ibero-american-ministers-safeguards-on-ai-at-work

China seeks AI avatars for national health insurance services

(DigWatch) China’s National Healthcare Security Administration has launched a public contest to design two digital avatars to represent the national medical insurance system in public communications and service materials. The authority is seeking one male and one female character with a professional, healthy and approachable appearance. Designs should incorporate elements associated with Chinese culture and the country’s medical insurance system. – https://dig.watch/updates/china-healthcare-ai-avatars-design-contest

Intelligence, Security, Surveillance

INTERPOL says AI involved in 55% of reported cybercrime cases in Africa

(DigWatch) AI was involved in some capacity in 55% of cybercrime cases reported by surveyed African countries in 2025, according to INTERPOL’s latest regional cyber threat assessment. The report draws on responses from 36 of 49 African member countries, alongside operational intelligence, national incident reports and data provided by private cybersecurity companies. Respondents said AI was used occasionally in 47% of cases and frequently in 8% of cases. INTERPOL said criminals are using AI to automate phishing, social engineering and extortion while creating convincing deepfakes and synthetic identities. The technology has also increased the sophistication of business email compromise, digital sextortion and identity fraud. – https://dig.watch/updates/interpol-ai-cybercrime-cases-in-africa

WhatsApp Scam Hijacks Accounts via Linked Devices Feature

(Alessandro Mascellino – Infosecurity Magazine) A WhatsApp scam has been spreading through hijacked accounts by asking recipients to vote for a friend in an online contest, then tricking them into authorizing an attacker’s device on their own account. In new research published by Malwarebytes on August 3, the company showed how the messages arrived from contacts whose accounts were already compromised and referenced a ballet performance, a dog competition or a school event. The company spotted the campaign in anonymized submissions to its scam-checking tool. The link did not lead to a voting page. It redirected to a page resembling WhatsApp, often using the legitimate wa.me domain, which guided the victim through what looked like setting up WhatsApp Web. Other versions simply instructed the target to open their linked device settings and enter a code the scammer supplied. – https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/whatsapp-voting-scam-linked/

Cybercriminals Bypass AI Safety Controls by Splitting Malicious Tasks Across Multiple Sessions

(Alessandro Mascellino – Infosecurity Magazine) Criminals have been defeating the safety controls on commercial AI tools by splitting malicious work across multiple sessions and files, breaking projects into fragments small enough that no individual request appears harmful. According to research Cisco Talos published on August 4, the finding rests on a corpus of prompt logs recovered from threat actor endpoints running AI coding assistants including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and Gemini. Talos said guardrails “did not provide much protection,” and that it encountered no sophisticated encoding or evasion techniques. Where guardrails did engage, they achieved little, and the pattern held across models and platforms rather than affecting any single vendor. – https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/talos-attackers-split-tasks-evade/

Cloud and SaaS Environments Now Top Targets for Attackers

(James Coker – Infosecurity Magazine) Cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environments have become top targets for cyber-threat actors this year, according to a new report by Darktrace. The cybersecurity firm noted that H1 2026 saw a continuation of an evolution observed in 2025 where attackers shifted away from malware and vulnerability exploitation towards compromising identities. However, whereas in 2025 threat actors primarily targeted account credentials, the first half of 2026 has seen attacks extend to email authentication, cloud entitlements, software supply chains, AI gateways, remote administration tooling and non-human identities. Darktrace said this trend makes “trust” the new attack surface. Compromised cloud and SaaS environments in particular provide enormous opportunities for attackers. – https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cloud-saas-targets-attackers/

Hackers’ AI chat logs reveal evolving tactics

(Sam Sabin – Axios) Recovered AI chat logs and coding sessions are giving researchers one of their clearest looks yet at how cybercriminals are using generative AI and easily bypass model guardrails. Hackers of all skill levels are developing attacks and finding exploitable software vulnerabilities with the help of mostly closed AI models. Cisco’s Talos intelligence group studied AI artifacts that hackers accidentally exposed online, including prompt histories from endpoints running Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and Gemini, according to a report shared exclusively with Axios. The hackers used these models to code software, write malware, and hunt for vulnerabilities. One actor used AI to build a chatbot designed to scam cryptocurrency users out of their money, Cisco found. Some actors also appeared to be using compromised enterprise AI accounts and API tokens instead of paying for their own compute, Cisco said. Cisco researchers found the artifacts after threat actors accidentally exposed them online through operational security mistakes, Nick Biasini, senior technical leader at Cisco Talos, told Axios. – https://www.axios.com/2026/08/04/exclusive-hackers-ai-chat-logs-reveal-evolving-tactics

INC Ransomware is Calling Victims – Pressure Tactics Post SonicWall Zero-Day Exploit

(Pierluigi Paganini – Security Affairs) Resecurity disclosed that INC Ransomware has emerged as the dominant threat actor exploiting the recently disclosed SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 1000 vulnerabilities. According to the company’s research, the group has accelerated its operations since early August, targeting organizations across the United States, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Colombia, Switzerland, and other countries. Resecurity estimates that the exploitation of CVE-2026-15409 and CVE-2026-15410 could significantly aid Initial Access Brokers (IABs) in gaining unauthorized access to targets of interest. Both vulnerabilities have been added to the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog. Beyond exploiting the SonicWall flaws, Resecurity observed the ransomware operators using phone calls and emails as pressure tactics during extortion negotiations, highlighting the evolution of ransomware campaigns into coordinated multi-channel operations. – https://securityaffairs.com/196607/malware/inc-ransomware-is-calling-victims-pressure-tactics-post-sonicwall-zero-day-exploit.html

31,000 Records Compromised in Breach of Liechtenstein Companies and Foundations Register

(Pierluigi Paganini – Security Affairs) A cyberattack compromised data belonging to about 31,000 people in Liechtenstein’s register of beneficial owners linked to companies, foundations, and trusts. Liechtenstein’s Register of People Behind Companies and Foundations is a government-maintained register of beneficial ownership. Its purpose is to identify the natural persons who ultimately own or control legal entities established in Liechtenstein, even when those entities are held through layers of companies, trusts, or nominees. The register was created to comply with international anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) standards, particularly those promoted by the Financial Action Task Force and European transparency rules. – https://securityaffairs.com/196558/cyber-crime/31000-records-compromised-in-breach-of-liechtenstein-companies-and-foundations-register.html

White House calls AI giants in to discuss hacking tests

(DigWatch) The White House has finalised a voluntary framework for assessing the advanced hacking capabilities of frontier AI models and invited major developers to discuss how it will operate. Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google were reported to have been invited to staff-level talks with government officials. The White House has not confirmed which companies will attend or whether any have agreed to submit models for testing. The framework implements a June executive order directing federal agencies to develop a classified benchmarking process for advanced cyber capabilities. Models exceeding a government-defined threshold may be designated as ‘covered frontier models’ for the purposes of the order. – https://dig.watch/updates/white-house-ai-hacking-tests-frontier-models

Telegram disinformation network raises questions over EU platform rules

(DigWatch) Researchers have identified a network of 19 Telegram channels that present themselves as local news sources while distributing coordinated content aligned with Kremlin narratives across 19 languages. Democracy Reporting International identified the channels while monitoring social media during Hungary’s 2026 elections. Seven had previously been documented, while the researchers connected another 12 to what they call the ‘Common Sense network’. – https://dig.watch/updates/telegram-disinformation-network-raises-questions-over-eu-platform-rules

Defence, Warfare

The autonomous arms race in the Russia–Ukraine war

(David Kirichenko – ASPI The Strategist) The war in Ukraine has become increasingly technological. Take unmanned systems: Kyiv has successfully implemented a drone strategy that combines a drone wall along the immediate front, long-range drones that strike deep inside Russia, AI-enabled mid-range drones that target logistics behind the front, and naval drones that help enforce a blockade at sea. Cheap technology, paired with intelligence operations, is also expanding Ukraine’s global reach. For Ukraine, success depends on using asymmetric means wherever possible to defend itself, preserve the lives of its soldiers and maximise the costs imposed on Russia. Now, robot versus robot battles are common. However, Russia has adapted as well. It learned from drone warfare and was the first to deploy fibre-optic drones at scale across the front. Along the front, it is a constant race to develop countermeasures. One side deploys a new tactic, and the other races to counter it. After Russia lost access to Starlink earlier this year, it doubled down on mesh network technology, making its drones harder to jam because nearby drones would relay the signal to one another. To counter Russian jet drones, Ukraine has developed faster interceptors, equipped with AI-based terminal guidance systems. With unmanned ground vehicles, Ukraine is integrating AI-powered target detection systems, along with various sensors, enabling robots to identify enemy soldiers and equipment farther away and more accurately. –  https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-autonomous-arms-race-in-the-russia-ukraine-war/