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Article URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.00275

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649369

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.anthropic.com/research/intelligence-targeting-conventional-weapons-capabilities

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649359

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

i have more agents than i have real humans who report to me now. as a serial founder/builder/domain hoarder, i have 5+ projects ongoing at all times and in the AI era, i can spin up a team of agents to work on them simultaneously.

so at this point, across my businesses, i have some flavor of a gas city/company-wide ai harness for each along with instinct personally and it seems every SaaS app has an agent too. oh and my wife, who works 3 full time jobs (mother of 4, corp job, real estate agent) also has agents.

BUT NONE OF THEM COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER, at least not well. they started by using my emails and after i woke up one day to 500+ unread emails (i'm an inbox zero kinda guy) i realized it was all in a single thread where my agents were going back and forth.

so i asked my agents to collaborate together on some better way to communicate with each other that isn't adapting something intended for humans but instead is built for and by agents. my one contribution was the domain, natively.io =)

some forward looking stuff though i did give to the initiative: - the future will likely be agents communicating with agents on behalf of humans, businesses, and heck agents themselves - direct messages, group messages, and announcement/follower style - build for agents, not humans - fully open source MIT license

give this URL to your agents and they can start communicating in the agentic world: http://natively.io/BOOTSTRAP.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649358

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://github.com/Nithish-Yenaganti/shine

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649351

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Article URL: https://staltz.com/farewell-programming

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649325

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/09/09/serial-microsoft-0-day-hunter-drops-yet-another-defender-exploit/5295335

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649324

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://github.com/GilpinLab/loopscape

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649314

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Article URL: https://jasondoyle.ie/whitepapers/when-ai-evaluations-act-on-the-real-world/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649305

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://superdark.antikythera.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649285

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://milkmanzero.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649267

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.lolbench.lol/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649243

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Article URL: https://topicqueue.substack.com/p/nvidia-is-buying-hugging-face-its

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649238

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://zasper.io/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649237

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://merybenavente.me/blog/proof-of-capture

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649222

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Bans Like California’s Don’t Fix What’s Wrong With Social Media Companies

SAN FRANCISCO - Technology and the laws that regulate it should support and empower young people. California’s AB 1709 - signed into law today by Gov. Gavin Newsom - falls far short of this goal, say the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and its allies.   

Using technology is how we learn and build community in today’s world. Laws such as AB 1709, a functional ban on social media use for people under the age of 16, instead cut young people off from essential information and experiences. That particularly harms those already facing increased challenges, who often find safety in supportive online communities that they can’t always access in the physical world.  

"California should be passing laws to ensure that technology really works for people of all ages, not enacting social media bans that cut young people off from digital lifelines, communities, and speech," said EFF Associate Director of State Affairs Rindala Alajaji. "Denying minors access to digital forums - or stripping out basic tools needed to navigate them - is not going to help make young people safer or healthier in the AI age."  

Research shows social media bans are ineffectual, while also denying young people opportunities to develop their own voices and perspectives—to share their art, practice religion or engage in politics.   

Age-gating requirements also force everyone to give up more personal information. To verify who can pass through their online gates, companies will collect even more data, and this further concentrates power in the hands of companies, rather than protecting people.  

AB 1709 is also inconsistent with rights to free expression and California will be spending resources to defend a law tied up in court. Instead, we should redouble our efforts to get technology laws right—and support the passage of new robust privacy laws that target surveillance business models. That’s how we protect everyone in the AI age.   

Young people should be able to use technology in safe and healthy ways. The Golden State should model the gold standard laws that ensure technology works for everyone, rather than shut down access to digital forums in ways that do more harm than good. 

"Social media bans like AB1709 make kids less safe, while undermining privacy and freedom of expression for everyone,” said Evan Greer, Director of Fight for the Future. “Young people have been on the forefront of every social movement throughout history that has led to positive social change. We need policies that empower young people rather than silencing them. These kid-focused bans are a gift to Big Tech giants, allowing them to continue operating their harmful business model while incentivizing them to collect even more data. California lawmakers should be ashamed. They didn't do anything to protect the kids, they just used kids as pawns to make good headlines."  

“In a world of increasing stigma and marginalization for LGBTQ+ families, AB 1709 continues that trend by stripping people with LGBTQ+ parents of the ability to meet and build community with one another on the internet” said Jordan Wilson, Executive Director of COLAGE. “Beyond obstructing the right of youth with LGBTQ+ parents to access information, this bill places an undue burden on all Californians by forcing age verification at a time when digital privacy rights are being eroded globally. We cannot ‘protect children’ by stripping them of their primary avenue for connection.” 

Contact:  RindalaAlajajiAssociate Director of State Affairsrin@eff.org

In this article

1. Attack chain overview
   1. Email Delivery
   2. Domain registration
   3. Generative AI usage
2. Mitigation and protection guidance
   1. Microsoft Defender detections
   2. Microsoft Security Copilot
   3. Threat intelligence reports
   4. MITRE ATT&CK Techniques observed
   5. Indicators of compromise (IOC)
3. Learn More

Threat actors are increasingly improving their tactics to make suspicious emails look like legitimate email notifications to potential victims, deploying techniques that impersonate internally sent emails from executive team members. While this technique is not new, the adoption of AI has enabled threat actors to improve their campaign templates and construct emails tailored to their recipients. Additionally, threat actors are incorporating multiple techniques within the same email to improve the overall narrative further.

In this blog, we will discuss a recent campaign observed using third-party email delivery infrastructure to send out over a million financial fraud scam emails that displayed multiple indicators consistent with the use of generative AI during email template creation. The threat actor impersonated CEOs of multiple target companies, attempting to convince accounts payable departments of the same companies to process an Automated Clearing House (ACH) payment of nearly $50,000. To add legitimacy, the actor included a forwarded email thread (and a fabricated invoice) between the impersonated CEO and ServiceNow (which was also being impersonated).

Attack chain overview

The campaign follows steps before and during the execution of the campaign: threat actors register impersonation domains, send executive-themed payment requests through trusted infrastructure, embed fabricated invoices and supporting conversations, and attempt to convince finance personnel to initiate ACH transfers.

Figure 1: Attack chain showing domain registration, executive impersonation, invoice fraud delivery, ACH payment execution, and financial theft. Email Delivery

Between August 3 and 5, Microsoft detected a campaign consisting of more than a million emails targeting enterprise users. The attacker used multiple third-party email service accounts to send out the emails. A huge majority of these emails were sent to users in the United States (87.7% of the total campaign).

Figure 2. Campaign timeline. Figure 3. Industry distribution of targeted enterprises of this campaign with ‘IT services & business advisory’ along with ‘Consumer goods’ and others.

Unlike traditional invoice scams that rely on a single social engineering lure, this campaign layered executive impersonation, vendor branding, fabricated invoices, and supporting email conversations into a unified narrative intended to reduce recipient skepticism.

The threat actor impersonated executive team members (such as a CEO, CFO, President) of multiple targeted companies, attempting to convince accounts payable departments of the same companies to process an ACH payment of nearly $50,000. More specifically, the CEOs were impersonated in multiple places in the email such as in the sender display name, reply-to display name, and in the email signature. Email bodies contained a simple and direct “approval” of the “invoice below” as well as urged users to request a PDF version if they need it. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, the email signature contained certain details about the spoofed CEO such as name and email address.

Figure 4. Spoofed message from executive team member.

Important note: Throughout this campaign, threat actors impersonated legitimate organizations using attacker-controlled infrastructure, fabricated communications, and lookalike domains. Microsoft found no evidence that the legitimate organizations referenced in the lures, including ServiceNow, were compromised or involved in the activity. Rather, the campaign relied on fraudulent domains and content designed to mimic trusted brands and individuals.

The threat actor did not stop there. To add further legitimacy, directly below the CEO signature, the actor included “forwarded” content , specifically a professional looking but fabricated “ServiceNow Platform — Annual Subscription” invoice. The extremely detailed invoice contains various ServiceNow branding and logos. It has basic invoice details such as invoice number, issue and due dates, currency, amount due, payment method, and itemized line items. The payment method instructed is a bank transfer to accounts controlled by the threat actor. Microsoft observed the use of multiple financial institutions across samples, indicating that payment destinations may vary between targets. Certain parts of the invoice are personalized to the recipient. Specifically, the “BILLED TO” section has the recipient company name and executive name.

The invoice shown below is a threat actor-created impersonation and was not issued by ServiceNow.

Figure 5. Spoofed ServiceNow invoice.

Finally, directly below the fake invoice, two more “forwarded” emails are included which are essentially a short conversation between the two spoofed executives (the targeted company executive, and ServiceNow President). The two executives are seen discussing the ServiceNow purchase, implementation and handling of the invoice.

Figure 6. “Forwarded” replies thread within the email lacking usual headers.

From a defender point of view there are several indicators within the email indicating that the email and the “forwarded” thread are not genuine.

• “From” headers from the spoofed thread lack any data headers like actual forwarded emails.

• Suspicious language used in the spoofed thread such as “no need to copy me”.
• Suspicious language in headers i.e display name not matching sender address, subjects using financial lure keywords like ‘due bill’, ‘ACH Parment’ etc.
• Despite the sophistication of the generated content, several inconsistencies remained visible to defenders
• In real email threads, the previous threads are normally tabbed or otherwise visually grouped, while the previous threads in this example were left aligned.
• An additional inconsistency was observed where the targeted company’s CEO requested the recipient to send the invoice directly to victims and not CC the sender. However, in the most recent thread, the CEO stated that the invoice is approved and the invoice is sent from his address.

Domain registration

Before initiating the campaign, the threat actor registered several domains. A ‘ServiceNow’ lookalike domain service-nowinc[.]com was registered on July 31, shortly before the campaign activity was observed. This domain was used for the spoofed email address of ServiceNow President. It was also used in several places in the fabricated invoice such as in the contact email in case of any questions. The actor also registered another domain on the same day. The domain domainlify[.]net was used in the Reply-To email.

Figure 7. Account information linked with email of impersonated domain. Generative AI usage

Microsoft observed several indicators consistent with AI-assisted template development. These included extensive HTML comments, structured section labeling, and highly uniform template construction. While these indicators suggest generative AI involvement, they do not independently establish the extent to which AI generated campaign content.

Examples:

Figure 8. Code snippet showing a verbose HTML comment describing a section (a characteristic commonly observed in AI-generated code). Figure 9. Another code snippet showing extensive comments on HTML style elements and sections.

Additionally, the use of ‘em dash’ (“—”) and banner ‘===========’ have also become other indicators associated with AI usage.

Figure 10. Another code example indicating AI usage. This example shows a verbose capitalized section header and yet more style elements excessively commented.

One possible indication of template-based generation is that invoice identifiers and narrative structure remained largely consistent across samples while organization-specific details changed between targets.

Mitigation and protection guidance

Microsoft provides layered protection against this type of executive-impersonation and invoice-fraud campaign. Properly configured email authentication, spoof protection, mail-flow connectors, and Microsoft Defender for Office 365 help identify and block suspicious messages before delivery; messages later determined to be malicious can be quarantined or removed through post-delivery remediation, including Zero-hour Auto Purge. Security teams can then use Microsoft Defender XDR and Security Copilot to investigate related alerts, affected users, and campaign indicators, coordinate response, and take remediation actions.

Together, these capabilities help reduce the likelihood that fraudulent payment requests reach finance personnel and support faster containment if a message is delivered.

To defend against social engineering campaigns involving executive impersonation, invoice fraud, and potentially AI-assisted content development, Microsoft recommends the following mitigations:

Configure automatic attack disruption in Microsoft Defender XDR. Automatic attack disruption is designed to contain attacks in progress, limit the impact on an organization’s assets, and provide more time for security teams to remediate the attack fully.

Enable Zero-hour auto purge (ZAP) in Office 365 to quarantine sent mail in response to newly acquired threat intelligence and retroactively neutralize malicious phishing, spam, or malware messages that have already been delivered to mailboxes.

Invest in advanced anti-phishing solutions that monitor and scan incoming emails and visited websites. For example, organizations can leverage web browsers like Microsoft Edge that automatically identify and block malicious websites, including those used in this phishing campaign, and solutions that detect and block malicious emails, links, and files.

These links provide information on how to properly configure mail flow with connectors:

• Manage mail flow using a third-party cloud service with Exchange Online
• Configure mail flow using connectors in Exchange Online
• Mail flow rules (transport rules) in Exchange Online
• Enhanced filtering for connectors in Exchange Online

These links provide information on configuring SPF, DKIM, and DMARC:

• Email authentication in cloud organizations
• Set up SPF to identify valid email sources for your custom cloud domains
• Set up DKIM to sign mail from your cloud domain

Microsoft Defender detections

Microsoft Defender customers can refer to the list of applicable detections below. Microsoft Defender coordinates detection, prevention, investigation, and response across endpoints, identities, email, and apps to provide integrated protection against attacks like the threat discussed in this blog.

Tactic Observed activity Microsoft Defender coverage Financial TheftScam emailsMicrosoft Defender for Office 365
– Invoice scams delivered detected as Spam and malicious categories.
– Email messages marked malicious removed after delivery and spam moved to quarantine
– Email messages removed after delivery
– Messages retroactively removed through Zero-hour Auto Purge (ZAP). Microsoft Security Copilot

Security Copilot customers can use the standalone experience to create their own prompts or run the following prebuilt promptbooks to automate incident response or investigation tasks related to this threat:

• Incident investigation
• Microsoft User analysis
• Threat actor profile
• Threat Intelligence 360 report based on MDTI article
• Vulnerability impact assessment

Note that some promptbooks require access to plugins for Microsoft products such as Microsoft Defender XDR or Microsoft Sentinel.

Threat intelligence reports

Microsoft Defender XDR customers can use Threat Analytics reports in the Defender portal (requires license for at least one Defender XDR product) to get the most up-to-date information about the malicious activity and techniques discussed in this blog. These reports provide the intelligence, protection information, and recommended actions to prevent, mitigate, or respond to associated threats found in customer environments.

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques observed

This threat has exhibited use of the following attack techniques. For standard industry documentation about these techniques, refer to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

Reconnaissance

T1591 – Gather Victim Organization Information
Threat actors collect publicly available information about target organizations, executives, finance personnel, vendors, and business relationships to build convincing invoice-fraud narratives.

T1598 – Phishing for Information
Information gathered from victims and public sources is used to craft highly targeted business email compromise (BEC) lures.

Resource Development

T1583.001 – Acquire Infrastructure: Domains
Threat actors register domains that impersonate trusted organizations, vendors, or business partners.

T1585.002 – Establish Accounts: Email Accounts
Attacker-controlled email accounts are created to support impersonation and fraudulent communications.

T1583 – Acquire Infrastructure
Third-party email delivery infrastructure and supporting services are leveraged to distribute campaigns.

Initial Access

T1566 – Phishing
Targeted phishing emails are delivered to finance personnel using executive and vendor impersonation themes.

T1566.001 – Spearphishing Attachment
Fraudulent invoices or supporting documents are attached to phishing emails.

T1566.003 – Spearphishing via Service
Third-party email services are used to distribute phishing messages and improve legitimacy.

Defense evasion

T1036 – Masquerading
Attackers disguise emails, domains, invoices, and business correspondence as legitimate communications.

T1656 – Impersonation
Executives, vendors, and trusted business entities are impersonated to establish credibility and influence payment decisions.

Impact

T1657 – Financial Theft
Victims are deceived into transferring funds to attacker-controlled financial accounts through fraudulent invoice payment requests.

Indicators of compromise (IOC) IndicatorTypeDescriptionservice-nowinc[.]com Domain Domain impersonating ServiceNow gomez@service-nowinc[.]comEmail address Email address associated with bank account notifications@uinsure[.]co[.]uk info@tivityhealth[.]com no-reply@lumalisboa[.]com noreply@mctci[.]com info@nuf[.]co[.]jp info@lohnsteuerhilfe-aktuell-verein[.]de info@tovimbatista[.]pt contact@eemusicclass[.]co[.]uk info@lifeones[.]comEmail addressSender email address used to send out emailsdomainlify[.]netDomainNewly registered domain used in Reply-to address Learn More

For the latest security research from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community, check out the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Blog.

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To hear stories and insights from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community about the ever-evolving threat landscape, listen to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence podcast.

Review our documentation to learn more about our real-time protection capabilities and see how to enable them within your organization.  

• Learn more about securing Copilot Studio agents with Microsoft Defender 
• Evaluate your AI readiness with our latest Zero Trust for AI workshop.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot AI security documentation
• How Microsoft discovers and mitigates evolving attacks against AI guardrails

• How Microsoft discovers and mitigates evolving attacks against AI guardrails | Microsoft Security Blog
• Manipulating AI memory for profit: The rise of AI Recommendation Poisoning | Microsoft Security Blog – a related example of an AI-era technique observed in email traffic
• Defending the inbox against prompt injection attacks | Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Blog – feature announcement introducing prompt injection protection in Microsoft Defender for Office 365.
• Prompt injection protection in Microsoft Defender for Office 365 – official documentation of the prompt injection protection in Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

The post Protecting organizations from AI-assisted executive impersonation and invoice fraud appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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