The HashWhales Dispatch

Windows 11's August update is causing crashes as Microsoft investigates a driver change

Microsoft acknowledged that update KB5121003 is triggering app crashes and unexpected restarts, with a kernel driver change identified as the likely culprit.

Aug 21, 20262 min read

networking

PJM's five-year grid plan puts data centers at the center of Mid-Atlantic power demand

The grid operator serving DC, Maryland, and Virginia projects data centers will drive most new electricity demand through 2035 — with costs still unsettled.

Aug 21, 20262 min read

Google: Russian phishing crews abuse real login features, not fake pages

Google's threat intelligence team detailed three Russian espionage clusters hijacking accounts through app passwords, device codes, OAuth, and WhatsApp linking.

Aug 21, 20261 min read

Critical GitLab flaw is being exploited days after patches shipped

Attackers are actively probing CVE-2026-19478, a 9.4-severity GitLab flaw that lets unauthenticated users alter or delete public projects with one request.

Aug 21, 20261 min read

Microsoft confirms attackers exploited a maximum-severity Entra ID flaw

CVE-2026-69836, a CVSS 10.0 remote code execution flaw in Microsoft's cloud identity service, was exploited before Microsoft mitigated it server-side.

Aug 21, 20261 min read

One-click Copilot flaw could have siphoned data from connected accounts

Varonis detailed CoSnitch, a now-patched chain of Microsoft Copilot Personal flaws that let a single crafted link auto-run prompts and exfiltrate connected data.

networking

T-Mobile says it cut a cable by hand to force Chinese hackers off its network

T-Mobile's security chief revealed that staff physically severed a data center connection to expel China's Salt Typhoon group before it reached customer data.

Citrix patches critical NetScaler login bypass as researchers urge emergency updates

CVE-2026-19490 lets remote attackers skip authentication on NetScaler gateway appliances, and researchers expect exploitation to begin quickly.

Federal agencies warn AI-written scripts are targeting Siemens industrial controllers

NSA, CISA, FBI, DOE, and EPA say attackers are using AI-generated tools disguised as monitoring software to reach internet-exposed Siemens S7 PLCs.

Malicious versions of popular Rust crates pulled after maintainer account hijack

Poisoned releases of arrayref, internment, and append-only-vec ran a malicious download during compilation before being removed within about 90 minutes.