(Featured image generated by Adam Engst with ChatGPT)

Social Media: A convincing party invite scam uses hijacked email accounts to send you fake invitations from people you know. Learn how to spot the red flags—and why enabling two-factor authentication on your email is the best defense.

The result has been a democratization of development, much as happened with desktop publishing. The Macintosh and PageMaker made it possible for almost anyone to produce a newsletter or brochure, but they did not turn every user into a professional designer, illustrator, or prepress specialist. AI can now produce working software for people who could never have written it themselves, but generating code is only part of building a reliable, trustworthy system.

Today, if you have a repetitive task that’s annoying to do but doesn’t warrant hiring a developer, you can use ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to help you create an AppleScript, shell script, Mac or iPhone app, or even a full-fledged Web app. However, if you’re going to dip your toe into AI-assisted development, you need to be careful. Professional developers know to watch out for numerous pitfalls, but if you’re using an AI, it’s up to you to make sure the AI takes them into account. Also, be aware that you’re still ultimately responsible for what you create with AI.

What Could Go Wrong?

In AI-powered development, there are two broad failure categories: problems with the development agent itself and problems with the finished product.

The AI world has moved past basic chatbots to agents that can look up information, change files, write and execute code, drive apps, and more. That makes them much more capable, but it also creates a situation where they could change or delete data, expose confidential data, or install software that itself creates a vulnerability.

On the other side of the equation is the finished product. If it’s local code, it could run but produce incorrect results, fill up a drive with data, overwrite important data, or cause crashes. A networked app could also generate excessive traffic, leak or expose confidential data, or serve as an entry point into your network.

Take AI Development in Steps

Professional developers aren’t born that way. They start with simple tasks and tackle more involved projects as they gain experience. With AI handling the programming for you, it can be tempting to take on a major app, but it’s safer to start with simple data analysis and local automation tools before moving on to full-fledged apps and networked systems. The process won’t turn you into a professional developer, but you’ll have a greater appreciation for all the things they have to consider.

Read-only Experiments

The best way to get started with AI development is with data analysis that would otherwise require you to build spreadsheet formulas, parse large CSV files, compare exported files, and the like. This may not seem like development, but when you drag the files into a chatbot conversation and ask it to work on them, you’ll notice that it does so by writing and executing one or more scripts, often in Python.

With this sort of AI work, you’re limited only by your data and your imagination. You could analyze an event registration or inventory spreadsheet to find trends, get a human-readable summary of errors in a massive log file, or compare data between two differently formatted CSV files to see which people appear in both.

The reason to start here is that you can easily detect errors, and nothing you do can change the data. Incorrect results may still look convincing, however, so compare them against known examples, verify totals, and spot-check the underlying records.

Local Automation Scripts

The next type of AI development to try is local automation via AppleScript or shell scripts. (If you’re uncertain how to execute a script, remember that you can always ask the AI for detailed instructions.) You could build customized scripts for batch-renaming files, creating future calendar events, manipulating images, and even reformatting HTML files.

However, because scripts can modify and delete data, you need to be more careful here. When possible, have the script create new output rather than modifying the original. Otherwise, work on a copy and ask the AI to:

• Warn you about risks or ambiguities in your request
• Preview exactly what it plans to change
• Act only after you confirm the preview
• Log what it changed
• Record enough information to reverse its actions

Standalone Mac or iOS App

Apple’s App Store contains a vast number of apps, but it’s time-consuming to search for apps that promise to do what you want and test them to see if they actually do. All too often, they don’t.

With AI and Apple’s Xcode development environment, you can now create native apps for all your Apple devices. Needless to say, even setting up Xcode is complicated, but once again, an AI agent can do much of it for you and walk you through the rest of the steps. The hard part is often figuring out where some interface control is located, so don’t be shy about pasting a screenshot into the chat and saying, “I don’t see that control—where is it?”

The sky is the limit when it comes to developing your own apps for personal or internal use. You could create an injury rehab tracker, a publishing production checker, a custom document converter, a specialized camera app that adds metadata to photos, and more. Any workflow that’s awkward or doesn’t meet your needs is a candidate. Mac apps can be shared by copying; iPhone and iPad apps must go through Apple’s TestFlight. Again, ask for help.

When it comes to safety, as long as the apps are for personal or internal use, you mostly need to focus on app reliability and data integrity. Make sure to emphasize that the AI should build and run automated tests on every change, and when you’re testing, comment on anything that seems wrong—don’t settle. Specify that data integrity is paramount, require automatic backups, and allow for manual exports.

The bar gets much higher if you plan to distribute the app more widely. You’ll need to consider your obligations regarding support, compatibility, privacy, distribution, and long-term maintenance. An AI can help with some of those issues—be sure to ask it if there are any ways that user privacy could be abused, for instance—but the buck stops with you.

If you’re contemplating selling your app, you’ll also need to confirm that the licenses for any external code, images, fonts, and other components permit commercial distribution. Be extremely cautious if you plan to build a business around an app!

Networked Systems

With great power comes great responsibility. You must be much more careful with networked systems, especially if they’ll be accessible over the Internet. But it can be compelling to build such systems—you could make an equipment checkout system, an event registration system that goes beyond Google Forms, a shared inventory system, a document submission service, or a dashboard that aggregates live data from multiple services.

The problem is that the list of considerations goes well  beyond app reliability and data integrity, including these questions:

• What data and operations must be protected? Some data may be confidential, and personally identifiable information is especially important to protect. Authentication credentials, API keys, and other secrets should never be embedded in source code, prompts, logs, or shared configuration files. Instead, store them in a system designed to manage secrets and limit who and what can access them.
• Who may perform each action, and how is that enforced? Define user roles and limit each role’s permissions to only what is necessary. You don’t want a novice support representative accidentally deleting the database.
• How do you contain hostile inputs and abusive use? Attackers will probe what happens when they submit malicious URLs, API requests, filenames, uploaded files, Web hooks, and other unexpected input. To reduce your exposure, validate all input, limit its size and complexity, and restrict how frequently users can trigger operations.
• How do you separate development, testing, and production? Once you go live, it’s essential to separate these different environments so mistakes made during development don’t take down the live system and data generated during testing doesn’t contaminate the production database. Make sure to separate data and credentials as well.
• How will the system handle simultaneous requests, retries, and partial failures? Network requests can arrive twice, overlap, or fail midway through multi-step operations. Work with the AI to prevent these sorts of issues, which can result in duplicate payments, registrations, messages, or inconsistent records.
• How will you detect and contain attacks, outages, and unexpected behavior? Decide what to log, what conditions should trigger alerts, how access can be revoked, and if it’s possible to isolate a compromised component without shutting down the entire system.

Finally, assign an owner before putting any significant networked system into use. That person must be responsible for investigating failures, restoring data, updating dependencies, renewing credentials and certificates, responding to vulnerabilities, and eventually retiring the system. An internal application that nobody maintains may become less reliable and less secure with every operating-system update, expired credential, and newly discovered vulnerability.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Boonyakiat Chaloemchavalid)

Social Media: Thinking about using AI to write code? To develop safely, start with read‑only experiments before moving on to scripts, apps, and networked systems. Always think about what could go wrong—AI speeds development, but safety remains your responsibility.

This sounds like science fiction—it’s not far off the fictional Kobayashi Maru test in the Star Trek universe, where Captain Kirk beats an unwinnable simulation by secretly reprogramming it—but it’s really a wake-up call about how sophisticated cyber threats have become and why it’s more important than ever before to keep apps, operating systems, and networked devices updated.

OpenAI Models Hack Hugging Face

OpenAI was running internal tests to measure how well its latest models—GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased system—performed on cybersecurity tasks. The models were placed in an isolated sandbox environment with their safety guardrails deliberately turned off so researchers could assess their raw capabilities.

The test presented security challenges that the models were supposed to solve. Instead, they decided it would be easier to find the answers—an approach called “reward hacking.” The models spent substantial computing resources searching for a way out of the sandbox, eventually discovering a previously unknown vulnerability in a software proxy that was only supposed to let them download code packages. From there, they worked their way through OpenAI’s internal network until they reached a system with Internet access. (Yes, this level of sandboxing was a mistake on OpenAI’s part.)

Once online, the models reasoned that Hugging Face—a popular platform for AI research—might host the test answers. So they hacked it. They chained together multiple exploits, including stolen credentials and more zero-day vulnerabilities, to breach Hugging Face’s servers. Hugging Face’s security team logged approximately 17,000 hostile events before containing the intrusion.

To defend itself, Hugging Face relied on another AI—ironically, a Chinese open source model, since when Hugging Face tried to work with Claude, its safety guardrails blocked the security-related requests. The open source model was able to analyze the attack, processing the massive event logs quickly so the company’s security team could understand what was happening, stop the attack, scrub systems of the attack code, and deploy additional safeguards.

AI Capabilities Cut Both Ways

Just as human hackers fall into “black hat” and “white hat” camps based on whether they’re attacking or defending, the capabilities that enable AI models to hack their way to a test answer are also what make them increasingly useful for finding and fixing security vulnerabilities.

Right now, defenders can use the most capable models from Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI to find and fix vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them. But attackers have access to AI models with similar capabilities. Security researchers track what’s called the Zero Day Clock: the time between a vulnerability being discovered and being exploited in the wild. That window has collapsed from months to less than a day, and some predict it will shrink to minutes by 2027.

You can see the defenders at work in the macOS security release notes. In the security release notes for macOS 26.5 and 26.6, the identification of several vulnerabilities was credited to “with Claude, Anthropic” or “Calif.io in collaboration with Claude and Anthropic Research.”

OpenAI’s inadvertent attack wasn’t malicious—its models were simply pursuing the goal of getting a high score on a benchmark without any sense of appropriate boundaries. (In fact, in the short time since the initial OpenAI attack, additional reports of cybersecurity evaluation models hacking into real companies have surfaced from Anthropic, the UK AI Security Institute, Meta, and OpenAI again.) But the technical capabilities these attacks have demonstrated are now part of the threat landscape, available to actors with far worse intentions. It’s only a matter of time before a hostile nation-state gives a capable open source model unlimited computing resources and tasks it with gaining access to secure systems. It’s probably already happening in the cyberdark.

Protect Yourself with Updates

The single most important thing you can do is keep your devices and software up to date. All those security patches from Apple, Microsoft, and app developers address vulnerabilities that AI-powered tools can find and exploit. Worse, once these vulnerabilities have been disclosed, hackers may be able to quickly leverage general knowledge of them to fabricate and deploy attacks against those who haven’t yet updated.

Our advice continues to be:

• Enable automatic updates: Don’t allow yourself to forget to install updates. On iPhones and iPads, go to Settings > General > Software Update > Automatic Updates. On Macs, go to System Settings > General > Software Update, click the ⓘ button next to Automatic Updates, and turn on all the switches. (If you’re working in an organization with an update policy, check with IT first.)
• Keep apps updated: Your apps need updates too, including your Web browser, email client, messaging client, and any software that touches the Internet. Attackers often target the weakest link—an outdated app can provide an entry point even if your operating system is current.
• Update device firmware: It’s equally important to update the firmware on routers, switches, printers, and other networked devices that could serve as entry points for attacks or be recruited into a botnet.
• Consider security in hardware upgrades: Although the main reason to upgrade Apple hardware should be functional, keep in mind that a newer device will likely be more secure thanks to improved hardware protections.
• Replace unsupported devices: Older hardware that no longer receives security updates should be upgraded, whether it’s a Mac or iPhone, network hardware, or a device like a printer, security camera, or Internet-connected doorbell.

With sufficient attention from developers, security may eventually become less important for us to watch than it is today. But things will get worse before they get better, so please excuse us as we keep trying to get everyone to install updates regularly.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Thinkhubstudio)

Social Media: AI models hacked a real company while trying to cheat on a test—escaping their sandbox, finding unknown vulnerabilities, and breaching production servers. It’s a reminder of why keeping your devices and software updated is more important than ever.

(Featured image generated by Adam Engst with ChatGPT)

Social Media: Apple patched a Screen Sharing flaw that let attackers connect without authentication. Update now—and while you’re thinking about it, turn off any sharing services you’re not actively using.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Pakpoom Makpan)

Social Media: We recommend updating to macOS 26.6 Tahoe, iOS 26.6, and iPadOS 26.6, not just for the many security fixes, but also because they promise to optimize Spotlight performance for the forthcoming version 27 upgrades.

Not all everyday communications require strict privacy. Most of us prefer privacy, of course—few people want their dinner plans published for the world to see—but there are typically no consequences of exposure greater than mild embarrassment (McDonald’s again?). But even ordinary people regularly need to share information that could damage their relationships, finances, or careers if it fell into the wrong hands.

Passwords are the most obvious example because their entire point is secrecy. But other sensitive data includes credit card details, bank account numbers, tax documents, retirement planning materials, and health-related information. When you need to share such data, how do you do it securely?

Data at Rest and in Transit

Before exploring specific solutions, you need to think about how information is protected when it’s in transit between systems and when it’s stored somewhere:

In transit: To prevent eavesdropping, focus on communication channels that are encrypted between you and the destination:

• Between your app and a server: Nearly all Internet-enabled apps, including all Web browsers, use SSL/TLS to protect their connections to servers. A lock icon in a Web browser’s address bar indicates HTTPS encryption, or you can look for https at the start of a website’s URL.
• End-to-end encryption: Even better is end-to-end encryption, which ensures that not even the service provider can decrypt your traffic. iMessage (blue-bubble conversations), WhatsApp, and Signal provide end-to-end encryption protection (though WhatsApp archives are readable by other Meta apps). SMS messages are not encrypted at all, and RCS conversations only support encryption with the latest Apple and Google updates, plus carrier support. Both SMS and RCS appear as green-bubble conversations.

At rest: Stored data—whether on your computer, at remote email servers, or in the cloud—needs protection too. Two approaches help:

• Per-file encryption: Encrypt data before sending so even if an attacker figures out how to access the file, it can’t be decrypted without a password. Send the password through a completely different communication channel (called “out-of-band”)—for example, share an encrypted file via email but send the password via Messages.
• Time- or access-expiring links: Send a link to the information that expires after a short period or after a limited number of views, thereby shrinking the window during which a breach could occur.

Choosing the Right Solution

The best approach for any given communication depends on four factors:

• Audience: What are your recipients’ technical capabilities? Messages is easy and secure, but only Apple users can access it. Email reaches everyone but offers less protection. A password-protected PDF is probably easier for less-technical users than an encrypted disk image.
• Content type: Sharing a password differs from sharing a document, which in turn is different from sharing a collection of files.
• Importance: How problematic would it be if the sensitive information you’re sharing fell into the wrong hands? There’s a world of difference between the password for a club discussion forum and the credentials to your retirement account.
• Persistence: Does your recipient need to glance at something only once, or do they need to retain a copy permanently?

Eight Secure Sharing Methods

With all that in mind, here are eight secure methods of sharing information that you can employ in different situations:

1. Use a secure portal when available: Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals who regularly receive sensitive information often use secure customer portals or services like DocuSign for sending messages, documents, and files. Use whatever system they provide unless you have good reason to doubt their IT competence.
2. iMessage, Signal, or WhatsApp: For quick sharing of sensitive information, these end-to-end encrypted messaging services work well. They’re particularly useful for sending information that isn’t useful on its own—for instance, send a login URL and username via email but the password separately via Messages.
3. Self-destructing links: Services like 1ty.me and One-Time Secret generate encrypted links that contain text. Once the recipient views the link, the server deletes the data, and the link self-destructs. If the recipient reports the link was already used, you know it was compromised. Be aware that some email systems automatically scan links, which could trigger premature self-destruction.
   
4. Password manager sharing: 1Password, Bitwarden, and some other password managers (but not Apple’s Passwords) offer secure sharing features that make it easy to share credentials with someone who needs to access a particular account. You can create links with expiration dates, limit access to specific email addresses, and cause links to self-destruct after being viewed once.
   
5. Password-protected PDF: For documents that could be printed, create a password-protected PDF. From nearly any app, choose File > Print, click the PDF menu at the bottom, and choose Save As PDF. In the Save dialog that appears, click Security Options, select “Require password to open document,” and enter a strong password (online services can remove weak passwords). Share the file however you like, but send the password through a different channel, preferably via an expiring link.
   
6. Password-protected disk image: For Mac users sharing files that can’t easily become PDFs, or for sharing collections of files, create a password-protected disk image. In Disk Utility, create a new compressed disk image (File > New Image > Image from Folder), choose an encryption option (256-bit for more sensitive information), and enter a strong password. Again, share the password separately, ideally via an expiring link.
   
7. Password-protected Zip archive: A password-protected Zip archive serves the same purpose and may be easier for Windows users to extract. Apps like Keka and BetterZip can create these. For the fastest approach, open Terminal, type zip -er ~/Desktop/filename.zip (with a space at the end), drag in the files you want to compress, press Return, and enter your desired password when prompted.
8. Time-expiring cloud storage links: Some cloud storage services offer links that expire after a specified time. Dropbox Professional supports this feature, enabling you to share files while ensuring that links become useless in the event of a breach.
   

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for securely sharing sensitive information. Match your approach to the sensitivity of the data, your recipient’s capabilities, and how long they need access.

(Featured image by iStock.com/metamorworks)

Social Media: Need to share passwords, financial details, or sensitive documents securely? Email alone isn’t safe enough. Learn eight practical methods—from self-destructing links to encrypted disk images—that protect your data in transit and at rest.

The chat interface that today’s AI systems still rely on has become more of a control panel than the system itself. What happens after you press Return may involve Web searches, file analysis, code execution, connected accounts, and even digital-world actions—all orchestrated behind the scenes. You need to understand what’s happening behind the chat box to evaluate the accuracy, quality, and utility of the answers that appear there.

Under the Hood of an AI System

The capabilities of a modern AI system include:

• Models generate text, analyze images, and work through problems. This is the traditional “AI” part, but it has improved hugely through better training techniques, longer conversations and documents, and extended reasoning time. Cutoff dates for training models remain an issue—some AIs think macOS 26 is still in beta.
• Retrieval pulls information from the Web, uploaded documents, or connected data sources. When an AI cites a source, it’s usually because retrieval happened. However, it’s still essential to check cited sources carefully because the URLs may be broken, and even when pages exist, they may not support the claims.
• Tools handle tasks the model can’t do on its own, such as analyzing numeric data, running code, creating visualizations, or searching databases. For many types of requests, the AI will write a script or call a tool to handle the work, dramatically increasing the likelihood that the results will be correct and making it easier to refine them.
• Connectors link AI systems to external platforms such as email, calendars, file storage, and Internet-hosted applications. They’re necessary so a system can work on personalized data (“Give me a timeline of the deliverables on the MacDavis project from our email conversations.”) and to connect with business data.
• Actions let AI systems do things in the digital world: send messages, create events, modify files, and interact with other software. Here is where AI stops merely advising and starts affecting real systems, so the safeguards need to be much stronger.

These capabilities don’t always appear together. A simple chatbot exchange may rely only on the model’s training. A research request may add retrieval and tools so the AI can search current sources, summarize what it finds, and run calculations or create charts. A workplace copilot may add connectors to email, calendars, cloud storage, customer records, or internal databases. A full-fledged agent adds actions, enabling the system to operate on your behalf.

It’s important to understand all the possibilities because each layer changes both what the AI can do and how much you should trust it. A model-only answer calls for skepticism (and perhaps a search). A search-based answer needs source checking. A tool-generated answer requires checking the inputs, method, and results. A connector-based answer warrants attention to the source of the data (and whether the permissions are too broad). And an action deserves a preview, an approval process, and ideally a way to undo mistakes.

What This Means for Trust, Privacy, and Control

This evolution from chatbot to assistant generally yields better results, but it also comes with new risks:

• Privacy isn’t just about what you type. It’s about what files you upload, what accounts you connect, and what the AI system can access. Putting confidential data into an AI could be problematic in numerous ways, not least regulatory compliance.
• Accuracy varies by task. Responses drawn purely from training data may be outdated or flat-out wrong, while search-informed answers reflect current sources. Asking an AI to “Confirm with a search” is a good way to get it to reassess what it has written with current information.
• Actions have consequences. When AI can send email, modify files, change settings, or interact with business systems, mistakes can have outsized impacts. This is why we strongly recommend caution about OpenClaw-style agents: giving any AI broad access to email, messaging, calendars, files, and applications creates security and reliability risks. Always preview any action—or AI-generated script you’re running externally—whose results could be difficult or impossible to reverse.
• Confidence isn’t correctness. AI outputs can sound polished and authoritative even when they contain errors, outdated information, or subtle misunderstandings of your intent. Any AI-generated work that informs decisions or will be seen by others deserves human review. Just as you wouldn’t base anything important on the work of a summer intern without checking first, you don’t want AI-generated work to go out if you can’t stand behind it.

For individuals, how you react to these risks mostly comes down to verification and restraint: check important sources, review important outputs, and don’t let AI take irreversible actions without approval. For organizations, the same principles must become policy because employees may already be using AI tools with company data without IT’s knowledge. To get ahead of the issue, organizations should:

• Audit what’s already happening. Talk with employees to find out what they’re already using, inventory online apps with embedded AI features, and check browser extensions, which often fly under the radar.
• Classify workflows by risk. Not all workflows need the same level of attention. Low-stakes tasks like brainstorming and text editing can proceed with commonsense guidelines. High-stakes outputs—client communications, financial analysis, security configurations—need human review before they go live.
• Evaluate tools carefully. Before approving any AI tool for general use, understand what data it accesses, whether it trains on your inputs, what actions it can take, and what logging is available. Most paid tools won’t train on your data, or can at least be configured not to, but the more important your data, the deeper your research should go.
• Create clear policies and train employees. Define which tools are approved, what data can be entered into AI systems, when human review is required, and what’s prohibited. Employees need practical guidance on how to apply the policies to their actual workflows. Don’t assume that an email or two is sufficient—training is essential.

The biggest mistake people make about AI today is underestimating both its risks and rewards because they’re still thinking about ChatGPT from 2023. The chat box may look the same, but it now sits in front of systems that are vastly more powerful, meaning that it’s more important than ever to consider when to trust them, when to verify them, and when to keep them at arm’s length.

(Featured image by iStock.com/tadamichi)

Social Media: Still thinking of AI as just a chatbot? Today’s tools search the Web, run code, access your files, and can even take actions—all triggered from the same chat interface. The results are better but come with new responsibilities.

In April 2026, AI company Anthropic announced Mythos Preview, an AI model with unprecedented capabilities for finding security flaws in software. Unlike previous AI-assisted security tools that often produced false positives and created more work for human evaluators, Mythos proved that it can discover true vulnerabilities that have evaded detection for decades—including a 27-year-old bug in OpenBSD, an operating system famous for its security.

Alongside Mythos, Anthropic launched Project Glasswing, a collaborative effort with approximately 50 partners—including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and numerous financial institutions—to identify and fix vulnerabilities in critical software before similar AI-powered capabilities fall into the hands of malicious actors. As Firefox engineers said when reporting on their use of Mythos, “The current moment is a perilous one, but also full of opportunity. Let’s work together to secure the internet.”

Why This Matters

The security implications are significant. Within a month of Project Glasswing’s launch, Anthropic reported that partners collectively found more than 10,000 high- or critical-severity vulnerabilities in their software. Several partners reported that their bug-finding rate increased by more than tenfold.

Firefox developer Mozilla published compelling evidence of Mythos’s capabilities, noting that it identified and fixed 271 vulnerabilities in Firefox 150—over 10 times as many as they found in Firefox 148 with the previous-generation Claude Opus 4.6. Of those 271 bugs, 180 were rated high-severity, meaning they could be exploited through normal user behavior, such as browsing a Web page. (The chart below shows higher numbers because it includes bugs from other sources and other versions.)

Mozilla’s results are remarkable for both their volume and their quality. Firefox engineers reported finding bugs that had remained undiscovered through many years of traditional security testing.

How Apple Fits In

Apple is a founding partner in Project Glasswing, yet another signal that the company takes security seriously. Apple’s vertical integration—controlling everything from chip design to the operating system to the App Store—gives it a structural advantage in secure design. For instance, Apple’s newest M5 Mac chips and A19 iPhone and iPad chips include Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE), a hardware-level protection designed specifically to stop memory corruption exploits.

However, even these cutting-edge protections aren’t invulnerable. Security researchers at Calif.io demonstrated the first public macOS kernel memory corruption exploit on M5 silicon in May 2026. Working with Mythos Preview, they built a working privilege escalation exploit in just five days—targeting hardware protections that Apple spent five years developing.

An Arms Race Against Time

The uncomfortable reality is that while Anthropic currently controls access to Mythos, equivalent capabilities will inevitably become more widely available. OpenAI and Google probably already have similarly capable models in development, as do other AI model developers, some of whom may be accessible to or even beholden to hostile entities.

The security dynamics differ depending on whether we’re talking about existing software or new code that hasn’t shipped yet. For new code, defenders have a clear advantage—they can scan for vulnerabilities before release and catch bugs that would never have been found manually.

For existing software already running on billions of devices, the picture is darker. Attackers only need to find one exploitable bug to get in; defenders need to find and fix all of them. Worse, attackers don’t have to test their code to avoid breaking features, schedule a release, or get approval from other departments—they can exploit a vulnerability the moment they find it. As the Zero Day Clock site shows, the window between a vulnerability being discovered and being exploited has dropped precipitously—what once took months now happens in days and is expected to happen in minutes in a year or two.

This transition period—while AI rapidly discovers vulnerabilities in existing code that takes time to patch—is where we’re most at risk. The Zero Day Clock site features a call to action offering 10 suggestions for how the industry—and society—should rethink cybersecurity to stave off this threat.

Keep Installing Updates

For most users, the best defense against AI-powered exploits is nothing new—keep your devices updated—but it’s more important than ever. The fixes in Apple’s updates increasingly include patches for AI-discovered vulnerabilities. Practically speaking, you should:

• Enable automatic updates: Don’t allow yourself to forget to install updates. On iPhones and iPads, go to Settings > General > Software Update > Automatic Updates. On Macs, go to System Settings > General > Software Update, click the ⓘ button, and turn on all the switches. (If you’re working in an organization with an update policy, check with IT first.)

• Consider security in hardware upgrades: Although the main reason to upgrade hardware should be functional, keep in mind that a newer device will likely be more secure thanks to improved hardware protections.

• Replace unsupported devices: Hardware that no longer receives security updates is increasingly risky. This applies not just to your Apple devices but to every piece of gear that can be updated, including network hardware, printers, and smart home devices like cameras and doorbells.

In the long run, the emergence of AI-powered security tools favors defenders—developers will be able to catch many more bugs before shipping. For the near future, however, it’s essential that we keep our devices running the latest and most secure software.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Thinkhubstudio)

Social Media: Anthropic’s Mythos Preview AI model found over 10,000 high- or critical-severity vulnerabilities in one month. Similar AI models will soon be available to attackers, so keeping your devices updated has never been more important.

In April 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Operation Masquerade, which disrupted a campaign by a hacking unit of Russia’s GRU that compromised thousands of home and small-office routers. The attackers exploited known vulnerabilities in TP-Link routers to hijack DNS settings and redirect victims to fake Web pages that harvested passwords, authentication tokens, emails, and other sensitive information.

The attack was opportunistic: the GRU cast a wide net, compromising routers indiscriminately, then filtered for targets of intelligence value. Your data may not be interesting to Russian intelligence, but the same vulnerabilities can be exploited by criminal hackers seeking financial data, credentials for identity theft, or devices to conscript into botnets.

Unlike corporate networks with dedicated IT staff, home routers tend to be installed once and forgotten—sometimes for a decade or more. That old router your AV installer set up with a default password has become a security liability for you, for your employer, and for the world. Here are actions you can take to fix that, in rough order of importance.

Replace Unsupported Routers

Routers can last many years, but manufacturers eventually stop releasing firmware updates. Once that happens, known vulnerabilities go unpatched, and the router becomes ripe for attack. Check your manufacturer’s end-of-life lists (easily found with a search) to see if your model is still supported. If it’s not receiving security updates, replace it regardless of how well it still works.

When shopping for a replacement, look for routers with automatic firmware updates from a well-known manufacturer with a track record of long-term security support, such as Asus, Eero, Google Nest, Netgear, or Ubiquiti. Avoid bargain-basement devices from unknown manufacturers—any initial savings aren’t worth the security risk.

Keep Firmware Updated

Router firmware updates patch security vulnerabilities, and the GRU attack exploited a known vulnerability that had an available fix. Enable automatic firmware updates if your router supports them—many modern routers do. If yours doesn’t support automatic updates, set a monthly reminder to check manually. Because new vulnerabilities are discovered regularly, keeping a router secure is an ongoing process, not a one-time task.

Change Default Passwords

Every router ships with default administrator credentials—often printed on a sticker on the device itself. These defaults are widely known and easily found online. Change the admin password immediately after setup to something strong and unique, and store it in your password manager.

Similarly, change the default Wi-Fi network name (SSID) and password. Use WPA3 for wireless traffic encryption if available; most modern routers support compatibility mode that lets older devices connect while newer ones benefit from stronger security. Never use WEP or leave your network open.

Turn Off Remote Management

Many routers offer a remote login option that allows access to the administrative interface from elsewhere on the Internet (rather than within the router’s own network). Unless you specifically need this capability, deactivate it to reduce your exposure to external attacks. This setting is different from the app-based management provided by some modern routers, which uses a secure account and an outbound connection initiated by the router to enable remote access. App-based management is safe as long as your account password is strong, unique, and protected with two-factor authentication.

Check DNS Settings

As seen in the recent attacks targeting some TP-Link routers, attackers who gain access often change DNS servers to redirect you to malicious websites without your knowledge. Verify that your router’s DNS settings are either obtained automatically from your ISP or point to a reputable service such as Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), Google (8.8.8.8), or Quad9 (9.9.9.9). Unfamiliar IP addresses in these settings are a red flag that your router may have been compromised.

Optional Security Improvements

If you make sure you are using a router that’s still receiving security updates, are installing those updates, and have changed the default admin and Wi-Fi passwords, you’ve achieved an entirely acceptable level of security. With a little more time and effort, you can increase security further:

• Disable WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup): If your router supports this push-button pairing feature, turn it off to protect against known vulnerabilities that haven’t been patched for over a decade.
• Segment your network: If you have Internet of Things (IoT) devices—such as cameras, smart TVs, or smart home gear—consider creating a separate network for them. If one is compromised, network separation prevents it from accessing your computers or phones. However, some devices need to be set up or controlled by an app on the same network, so you may need to keep such devices on your main network.
• Consider your ISP gateway: Many ISPs provide gateways that combine the modem and router hardware. If you use an ISP-provided router, make sure you can control the necessary security settings. If you instead prefer to use your own router, make sure to turn off its routing (switch to “bridge mode”) and Wi-Fi features to avoid creating another entry point to your network.
• Monitor your network: Periodically review which devices are connected to your network if your router’s admin interface or companion app makes that possible. Unfamiliar devices could indicate unauthorized access (though it’s more likely you didn’t realize some device connects to Wi-Fi because they seldom identify themselves well).
• Back up your network settings: To simplify reconfiguring your router or setting up a new one, create a backup of key settings. It could be as simple as a set of screenshots.

Home network security isn’t complicated, but it does require some thought at setup and occasional attention. If you’d like help with your network or a pointer to the routers we currently recommend, get in touch.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Igor Nikushin)

Social Media: Russian military intelligence recently exploited vulnerable home routers to steal passwords worldwide. You can keep your home network secure by replacing unsupported hardware, enabling automatic updates, and changing default passwords.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Prostock-Studio)

Social Media: Attackers are now using fake websites to open Script Editor with pre-filled malicious scripts. Never run an AppleScript from any source you don’t completely trust!

But in the real world, unless the document is attached to a message that is obviously spam, it’s difficult to know whether you should be worried. If you could just look at the document, you might be able to tell, but how can you do that without opening it?

Enter Dangerzone, an open source app created by the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation. The impetus for creating it came from journalists who need to review attachments from possibly untrustworthy sources while protecting themselves from hacking and retaliation from powerful corporate and government interests.

Dangerzone won’t tell you whether or not a document is safe. Instead, when you drop a document on its window, it creates a PDF image of the document that contains nothing of the original other than the visual representation of its pixels. Think of Dangerzone as a virtual photocopier—it makes a visual copy.

But Dangerzone is a highly sophisticated virtual photocopier, since it has to work with malicious documents without allowing them to cause harm. Behind the scenes, Dangerzone first creates a Linux container to keep the document away from your Mac. Within the container, it then creates a sandbox to protect the Linux kernel. Then it uses open source tools—LibreOffice and PyMuPDF—to convert the original document to a PDF, split that PDF into individual pages, and convert each page to RGB pixels—just colored dots. Then it quits the sandbox since the file has been sanitized, and if possible, it converts the RGB pixel data into a compressed, searchable PDF. Finally, it saves the PDF to the specified folder and archives the original file. You can process only one file or batch of files at a time to ensure that the entire secure conversion environment starts fresh each time.

Here are the document types that Dangerzone can convert into safe PDFs:

• PDF (.pdf)
• Microsoft Word (.docx, .doc)
• Microsoft Excel (.xlsx, .xls)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx, .ppt)
• ODF Text (.odt)
• ODF Spreadsheet (.ods)
• ODF Presentation (.odp)
• ODF Graphics (.odg)
• EPUB (.epub)
• JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)
• GIF (.gif)
• PNG (.png)
• SVG (.svg)
• TIFF (.tif, .tiff)
• Other image formats (.bmp, .pnm, .pbm, .ppm)

You won’t want to use Dangerzone on every document you receive in email. There’s no reason to fuss with it for attachments that come from people you know, in contexts where it makes sense that they’re sending you something. But if you get an attachment out of the blue that makes you think, “Why is this person sending me a document?” run the document through Dangerzone to make sure it’s safe.

(Featured image by iStock.com/shironosov)

Social Media: Got a suspicious attachment? Dangerzone converts potentially dangerous PDFs and Office docs into safe, pixel-only copies you can view without risk. Think of it as a virtual photocopier that strips any hidden malware, JavaScript, or macros.

Making matters worse, the complete DarkSword exploit code was published to GitHub, making it easy for any hacker to deploy. Security researchers warn that the exploits “will work out of the box” with no iOS expertise required—anyone could copy and paste the code and have it running on a server within hours.

Because it ultimately operates with elevated system privileges, DarkSword can silently harvest alarming amounts of data from vulnerable iPhones, including passwords stored in the keychain, photos, call logs, contacts, browsing history, chat message history, and more. It takes a smash-and-grab approach: collecting and exfiltrating data quickly, then disengaging. Coruna is more targeted and persistent, focusing on stealing cryptocurrency wallet credentials and scanning notes for financial information.

Protection Is Simple

Happily, it’s easy to protect yourself against these and future vulnerabilities: keep your devices up to date. We’ve been beating that drum for years, but DarkSword and Coruna are sufficiently worrying that Apple published a dedicated support page urging users to update, saying: “Keeping your software up to date is the single most important thing you can do to maintain the security of your Apple products.”

If your iPhone is running the latest version of iOS it supports, you’re already protected. But if you’ve been putting off updates—or are still running an earlier version of iOS 18 to avoid iOS 26’s Liquid Glass interface redesign—your iPhone may be vulnerable. Happily, Apple has taken the unprecedented step of releasing an update to an older operating system—iOS 18.7.7—to protect users who don’t wish to upgrade to iOS 26. (You may have to scroll down in the Software Update screen to find it under Also Available.)

Check and Update Your Device

To check your iOS version, go to Settings > General > About and look at the iOS Version line.

DarkSword targets iPhones running iOS 18.4 through iOS 18.7.2. If you’re running iOS 18.7.3 or later, or have upgraded to iOS 26.3 or later, you’re protected. Although none of the DarkSword security reports specifically mention the iPad, it’s best to assume that the corresponding versions of iPadOS are similarly affected.

Coruna can compromise older iPhones and iPads running iOS 13.0 through iOS 17.2.1. Apple recently released iOS 15.8.7 and iOS 16.7.15 to address these vulnerabilities on devices that cannot run newer iOS versions. Devices running iOS 13 or iOS 14 must be upgraded to iOS 15.8.7. Devices running a vulnerable version of iOS 17 should update to the latest version of iOS their device supports.

You can update using Settings > General > Software Update to the latest version of iOS your device supports:

• iPhone 11 and later (and other devices that support iOS 26): Update to either iOS 18.7.7 or iOS 26.4 or later.
• iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max: Update to iOS 18.7.7, the latest version these devices support, which includes the DarkSword fixes.
• Older devices that can’t run iOS 18 (iPhone 6s through iPhone X, plus various older iPads and 7th-generation iPod touch): Update to iOS 15.8.7 or iOS 16.7.15, depending on your device. Devices still running iOS 13 or 14 will need to upgrade to iOS 15.8.7.

If you cannot upgrade for some reason, Apple says that enabling Lockdown Mode in Settings > Privacy & Security > Lockdown Mode in iOS 16 and later will block DarkSword attacks. However, Lockdown Mode significantly degrades the iPhone experience by blocking most message attachment types, disabling certain Web technologies, limiting incoming FaceTime calls, and more. For most people, upgrading to the most recent version of iOS available is the better option.

These discoveries make it clear that installing security updates promptly is more important than ever. Sophisticated exploits that were once reserved for targeted attacks against activists and journalists are now being deployed more broadly. Check your iOS version today, update all your devices, and encourage family members and colleagues to do the same.

(Featured image by iStock.com/sqback)

Social Media: Two major iPhone exploit kits—DarkSword and Coruna—can steal passwords, messages, and photos from everyday users who visit an infected website. Check your iOS version and update immediately to protect yourself.

(Featured image by iStock.com/thomaguery)

Social Media: Fake CAPTCHAs that trick users into pasting malware commands into Terminal are now common enough that Apple added a warning in macOS 26.4 Tahoe. Remember: no legitimate verification ever requires Terminal commands!

Cloud storage is tremendously useful and can play a valuable role in recovering from disasters, but it is not a backup. Understanding the difference could save you from a devastating data loss.

What Makes a Backup a Backup?

A true backup creates a separate copy of your files through a process that’s distinct from your normal saving. With cloud storage, saving is syncing—the moment you save a file (or it auto-saves), that exact version propagates everywhere. There’s no separate copy, just one file that exists in multiple places simultaneously.

With a real backup system like Time Machine, backing up is an independent operation. You work on your file, saving changes as you go, and separately, on its own schedule, Time Machine backs up that file. If something happens to that file at 2 PM, you can still recover it from the 1 PM backup.

Risks Not Mitigated by Cloud Storage

Why might you need a real backup? Computers and apps are significantly more reliable than they used to be, but they’re not perfect. Plus, human error is always a risk, and you can never discount the possibility of unexpected events.

Cloud storage won’t fully protect you from these scenarios:

• Inadvertent deletion: It’s all too easy to delete important files or folders. With cloud storage, those deletions are synced across all your devices and the cloud. (Though hopefully you can pull them out of the trash—never empty it immediately after deleting files.)
• Accidental changes: A misbehaving app could corrupt data in an important file, or, more likely, you could change or delete data within the file that you later decide was a mistake. With cloud storage, those changes sync instantly, making it difficult or impossible to revert.
• Account compromise: Cloud storage is protected only by your password. If you don’t use a strong, unique password, an online thief could use it to access your account and delete or encrypt your files.
• Account problems: Even if an attacker doesn’t compromise your account, if you lose the password, have billing issues, or do something that the provider considers a terms-of-service violation, you could be locked out of your account and all your files.
• Ransomware: If malware encrypts all your files, those encrypted files will be synced to the cloud and become unrecoverable everywhere. Ransomware isn’t a significant problem on the Mac today, but that could change at any time.

How to Back Up Cloud Storage Files

The solution to these problems is not to stop using cloud storage, but to back up your cloud storage files just like you back up everything else. However, there are two things to keep in mind when backing up cloud storage.

First, verify that the local copies of your cloud storage files are being backed up. By default, the local versions of cloud-based files are stored in ~/Library/CloudStorage/ for everything but iCloud Drive, which puts files in the hidden folder ~/Library/Mobile Documents/. Time Machine automatically backs up your entire user folder, including cloud storage folders, but other backup apps may exclude them.

Second, cloud storage services can optionally store data only in the cloud to save local disk space, showing just placeholder icons on your Mac. These cloud-only files won’t be backed up by Time Machine or most other backup apps, though Carbon Copy Cloner can download them, back them up, and then evict the local data to save space.

How do you ensure cloud storage files are also kept locally? All cloud services offer an option to Control-click a folder or file and choose a command like Keep Downloaded, Make Available Offline, or Always Keep on This Device. That works, but requires manual intervention.

For all the major cloud storage services other than Box, you can also set a preference to keep files locally at all times:

• iCloud Drive: Turn off System Settings > Your Name > iCloud > iCloud Drive > Optimize Mac Storage.
  
• Dropbox: Click the Dropbox icon in the menu bar and then, in Dropbox > Account > Preferences > Sync, choose Available Offline for the Default Sync Preference. Note that this applies only to new files!
  
• Google Drive: Click the Google Drive icon in the menu bar, click the gear menu, choose Preferences, click Google Drive, and select Mirror Files for the My Drive syncing options.
  
• OneDrive: Click the OneDrive icon in the menu bar, click More, click Preferences, and in the Preferences screen, make sure Files On-Demand is turned off.
  

What About Version History?

Most cloud storage services other than iCloud Drive offer version history, allowing you to restore previous versions of changed or deleted files. Version history provides a safety net against inadvertent deletions or modifications, but it’s not a substitute for comprehensive backups. It has two notable limitations:

• Time: Version history is typically limited to 30–180 days, depending on your plan. You might not realize you need a deleted file or that your database has become corrupted until after that window closes.
• Trouble: Restoring many files from version history can be tedious compared to restoring from a proper backup. It might be fine for a file or two, but recovering from a more significant disaster might be difficult.

The Real Value of Cloud Storage

None of this means cloud storage is useless for disaster recovery. If your Mac fails, is stolen, or is destroyed in a fire, you can access all your cloud storage files as soon as you sign in to your account from a new or repaired Mac. You can even get to them from an iPhone or iPad. That also applies to Web apps like Google Docs, where data is never stored locally.

But cloud storage won’t protect against accidental deletion, file corruption, ransomware, or account issues. For that, you need separate, independent backups of all your files—including those stored in the cloud.

(Featured image by iStock.com/ismagilov)

Social Media: Do you think using Dropbox or iCloud Drive means your files are backed up? Wrong. Delete or corrupt a file, and that change syncs everywhere instantly. Here’s why cloud storage isn’t a backup—and what to do about it.

That’s the promise driving the recent surge in popularity of OpenClaw (formerly known as Clawdbot and Moltbot), which is now all the rage in tech circles. Token Security found that at least one person is using it at nearly a quarter of its enterprise customers, mostly running from personal accounts. That’s a shadow IT nightmare—employees connecting work email and Slack to an unsanctioned tool that IT doesn’t know about and can’t monitor. Whether you’re an individual tempted by OpenClaw’s promise or a manager wondering what your users are up to, you need to understand the risks these AI agents pose.

OpenClaw is an AI agent built around “skills”—installable plugins that let it integrate with your messaging apps, email, calendar, and more. You communicate with OpenClaw via Messages, Slack, WhatsApp, and similar apps. Because it’s open source, you’ll need to provide your own API keys for AI services like OpenAI or Anthropic, which means ongoing costs that can add up quickly—people have reported spending $10–$25 per day.

The more serious problem? Security researchers have discovered serious vulnerabilities, including misconfigured instances exposed to the internet that leak credentials, API keys, and private messages, and a supply chain vulnerability where malicious skills uploaded to the ClawdHub library can execute arbitrary commands on users’ systems. Even beyond specific bugs, OpenClaw’s fundamental design encourages users to grant broad access to sensitive accounts.

Why AI Agents Are Risky

Security concerns aren’t unique to OpenClaw—they apply to any AI agent that acts on a user’s behalf. Here’s what’s at stake:

• Credential exposure: For an AI agent to send emails, manage your calendar, or post to Slack, it needs your authentication tokens or login credentials. If the agent software stores these credentials insecurely, or an attacker gains control, they could be exposed.
• Prompt injection: AI agents work by following instructions, but they can’t easily distinguish between prompts and data in the content they use. A class of attacks called “prompt injections” trick AI systems by hiding malicious content in emails, websites, or documents that will be processed. An attacker could embed instructions in an email that would cause your agent to search for and forward email messages containing passwords or financial data, follow links to malware sites, or take other harmful actions. There is currently no foolproof defense against this class of attack.
• Data exfiltration: An AI agent with access to your email and your computer’s filesystem could be manipulated to extract information from elsewhere on your computer—financial data, customer lists, or personal details—and send it to an attacker.
• Unvetted extensions: OpenClaw and similar AI agents let users install “skills” or plugins to extend functionality. Libraries that allow users to share custom skills often have minimal or no security vetting, making it easy for attackers to submit poisoned skills. Installing such a skill could grant malicious code access to everything your agent can touch.
• Exposed control interfaces: Security researchers found OpenClaw control servers exposed on the Internet, potentially leaking API keys, VPN credentials, and conversation histories. This risk is unique to OpenClaw at the moment, but future AI agents may suffer from similar vulnerabilities, particularly as they’re adopted by less technically savvy users.

How to Reduce Your Risk

We’ll come right out and say it: we strongly recommend against installing OpenClaw or other AI agents on your Mac. In a year or so, Apple may have updated Siri to provide many of these capabilities with significantly stronger privacy and security. But for now, just say no.

If you decide to use AI agents despite these risks, here are practical steps to protect yourself:

• Use dedicated accounts: When possible, create separate accounts specifically for agent use rather than linking your primary personal or work accounts.
• Limit permissions: Grant the agent access only to accounts it absolutely needs. If you only want help with your calendar, don’t also connect your email and messaging services.
• Avoid connecting sensitive services: Never connect anything involving money, healthcare, or confidential business information. The liability is too high if something goes wrong.
• Review agent actions: If the platform offers logs or activity feeds, check them regularly. Look for unexpected messages sent, files accessed, or connections made.
• Vet extensions carefully: Don’t install skills or plugins from unknown sources, and even with known libraries, look for evidence of others using and reviewing the skills. Treat skills like any other software you’d install on your computer.
• Keep software updated: Security patches for OpenClaw and similar tools address known vulnerabilities. If you’re running an agent, keep it up to date.
• Run agents in isolated environments: Technical users should consider running agents in sandboxed environments or virtual machines to limit potential damage.

If you run a business, you should assume that some employees have already installed OpenClaw or will soon, and may have connected their work email and Slack accounts without realizing the associated risks. Here’s what you can do:

• Educate before it’s a problem: Proactively explain the risks to employees. People are more receptive before they’ve already invested time setting something up.
• Update acceptable use policies: Make clear that connecting work accounts to unsanctioned AI agents is prohibited, and explain why.
• Offer sanctioned alternatives: If employees want AI assistance, point them toward safer options that don’t require handing over credentials to sensitive accounts.

What About Claude Cowork and OpenAI Codex?

Not all AI agent platforms carry the same level of risk. Anthropic’s Claude Cowork and OpenAI’s Codex take a different architectural approach from OpenClaw. Rather than requesting authentication tokens for your email, messaging, and other personal services, they operate within their own controlled, sandboxed environments. These systems work primarily with files, code, and data you explicitly place into their workspace, which substantially limits the fallout from an attacker gaining some level of control.

This containment approach reduces risk, but does not eliminate it. Prompt injection remains a concern whenever an AI system processes untrusted content, even inside a sandbox. An AI agent analyzing a malicious document could still be manipulated into taking unintended actions within its allowed environment. Similarly, any code generated by these systems—particularly code that touches the network or executes system commands—should be reviewed carefully to make sure it hasn’t been compromised by prompt injection.

The key distinction is scope. Claude Cowork and Codex are designed to operate within a defined workspace, whereas tools like OpenClaw require standing access to your most sensitive accounts. From a security perspective, a compromised sandbox is a recoverable incident; a compromised email or messaging account may not be.

The Bottom Line

AI agents promise a lot and may provide genuine convenience, but at a cost beyond just paying for API tokens. Before you or anyone in your organization connects an AI agent to sensitive accounts, consider: What’s the worst that could happen if this system were compromised by an attacker? If the answer involves passwords being stolen, private email being exposed, or photos being posted to social media without your knowledge, proceed with extreme caution. If you can imagine a way financial accounts could be accessed or business data stolen, don’t proceed at all.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Thinkhubstudio)

Social Media: AI agents like OpenClaw promise to automate tedious tasks, but recent security vulnerabilities highlight the dangers of using them. Learn the risks and how to protect yourself—and your organization—if you choose to use an agent.