Total defense meets total threat.

Summary

CyberWire Daily – "Total defense meets total threat."

Date: February 13, 2026
Host: Dave Bittner (N2K Networks)
Special Guests: Maria Varmazes (T-Minus Space Daily), Liz Stokes (CyberWire Producer)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the evolving global cybersecurity threat landscape, highlighting major industry news, imminent risks, and strategic responses from governments and the private sector. Key themes include the rising prominence of identity-based attacks, the integration of AI into threat campaigns (and defenses), strategic collaboration at the national and international levels, and an exclusive preview of the upcoming “Cyber Without Borders” NATO cyber exercise coverage. The episode concludes with a unique segment on AI’s emerging role in open-source development community conflicts.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Identity as a Top Attack Vector

• Insight: Identity-based attacks now dominate the risk landscape, with 90% of security leaders expressing concerns about them.
  • Kavitha Mariapan from Rubrik highlights why recovery times are worsening and discusses building resilience in an AI-driven world.
  • (No extended interview audio here, only promo/tease.)

2. Global Collaboration Against Cyber Threats

Segment starts: [01:18]

• Munich Cybersecurity Conference Recap
  • Shawn Cairncross (US National Cyber Director):
    • Stressed the need for international, public-private collaboration against adversaries (“An America first approach does not mean America alone.” [03:10])
    • Criticized responses that blame companies after attacks, and called for more robust, preemptive strategies, not just resilience.
    • Advocated for a “clean technology stack” rooted in U.S. and allied systems, drawing a strong distinction from Chinese technologies.
  • Lisa Gustafsson (Swedish Defense):
    • Warned that hybrid and cyber threats have become a permanent feature in Europe.
    • Outlined Sweden’s “total defense” model, merging military, civilian, and private sector.
• Notable Quote:
  • “Resilience alone is insufficient... we must raise the costs of malicious activity and shape adversary behavior.” – Shawn Cairncross [04:10]

3. Evolving Social Engineering & Phishing Campaigns

• Phishing with Fake Video Conference Invites:
  • Threat actors use spoofed Zoom, Teams, and Meet invites with realistic landing pages and fake participant lists.
  • Crucial Tactic: Victims are prompted for a “mandatory software update” that actually installs a remote monitoring tool, bypassing traditional security via legitimate signed software.
  • “By using legitimate signed software rather than custom malware, attackers can bypass signature-based security controls and blend into normal corporate traffic.” [05:50]
  • Takeaway: A single compromised endpoint can quickly lead to broader breaches.

4. Olympic-Related Hacktivism

• Attacks on Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics ([07:15])
  • Surge in pro-Russian hacktivist activity (GRU-linked), targeting Italian infrastructure, Olympic teams, and related entities.
  • Attacks mitigated without major impact, but the hybrid threat environment extends to physical unrest and sabotage.
  • “The convergence of hacktivism, unrest, and transport disruption reflects a broader hybrid threat environment.” [08:20]

5. AI's Disruption of Ransomware

Segment starts: [08:47]

• Research by Halcyon:
  • AI doesn’t fundamentally change ransomware, but speeds up phases: phishing, translation, vuln analysis, code mods.
  • AI mostly used for initial access (phishing, deepfakes) and rapid vuln exploitation.
  • Generative models help attackers “compress time between disclosure and exploitation” ([09:30]).
  • AI-based social engineering: deepfake video/audio for impersonation.
  • Defender Guidance: Accelerate patching, enforce identity controls, use behavior-based detection.

6. Notable Vulnerabilities and New Malware

• CISA Alert: Microsoft Configuration Manager Vulnerability

  • “Agencies must remediate by March 5” [10:37]; proof-of-concept for SQLi exploit is public.
  • Urgent for all orgs, not just government.

• Foxvale Loader

  • Malware abuses platforms like Discord, Cloudflare, Netlify to fetch payloads and evade detection.
  • Advanced techniques: code injection, persistence, Defender manipulation attempts.
  • Advice: Use behavior-based detection to spot suspicious chains and injections. [11:45]

• macOS Info Stealer ‘AMOS’ (Atomic macOS Stealer)

  • Not standalone: part of a mature crimeware “industrial supply chain” model.
  • Targets: browser creds, wallets, SSH keys. Exfiltrated data is resold as “stealer logs.”
  • Attack Vectors: Malvertising, poisoned repos, brand impersonation – user tricked into installation.
  • “Distributors emphasize brand impersonation and user-executed installation tricks.” [13:30]
  • Infostealers increasingly drive initial cybercrime campaign access.

• California Fines Disney Under CCPA

  • $2.75M for making opt-out of data sharing unduly hard; toggles didn’t fully halt data sharing, and web forms incomplete.
  • Disney will implement a privacy program; largest such CCPA fine to date.

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Interview & Special Coverage Preview: “Cyber Without Borders” (NATO Cyber Exercise)

Segment starts: [15:29]
Participants:

• Dave Bittner (Host)
• Maria Varmazes (T-Minus Space Daily)
• Liz Stokes (CyberWire Producer)

Overview & Backstory

• Initial Invitation:
  • “We got a very suspicious email... from NATO inviting us to Estonia. We thought, ‘this has got to be a phish.’ Long story short, it was very real.” – Maria Varmazes [16:05]
  • Maria and Liz attended the NATO Cyber Coalition 2025 exercise in December 2025.

The On-the-Ground Experience

• Travel & Recording:

  • Small, nimble “two-woman crew”; intensive audio collection. [17:02]
  • “I think I recorded audio for every waking moment.” – Maria [17:36]

• Story Discovery:

  • Uncertain starting point; narrative developed organically on site.
  • Realization: tell not just about the exercise, but also why Tallinn and Estonia are central to NATO’s cyber efforts. [18:17]
  • “...there was a bigger, broader meta story that we also needed to tell: why the heck were we in Estonia to begin with? Why is NATO there? Why is their cyber headquarters there?” – Maria [18:55]

• Series Structure:

  • Three-part miniseries, released weekly (plus bonus “Reporter’s Notebook” episode for behind-the-scenes content).
  • “If you want to hear me struggle with the coffee maker at 4 in the morning... That’s part four of three.” – Maria (jokingly) [19:47]

Reflections & Surprises

• Impact of Current Events on Storytelling:

  • “World geopolitics, especially regarding the United States and its position in NATO, kind of seismically shifted within a month of us getting back...” – Maria [20:10]
  • Required careful editing to acknowledge but not dwell on political turmoil.

• Limited Access:

  • Disappointment at how little was visible inside NATO’s cyber range:
    • “We didn’t actually see a whole lot... they weren’t going to show us a whole lot of things. So there was a lot of reading between the lines.” – Maria [21:18]
  • “It was very interesting to go in there and see nothing while we were there to learn about a lot of things.” – Liz [21:44]
  • But meaningful conversations (including with American soldiers) and the broader context provided value.
  • For Liz, who’s new to both cyber and journalism, this was “just an incredible experience.” [22:28]

Notable Quote

• “We went to this exercise in early December 2025, and then world geopolitics...seismically shifted within a month of us getting back ... that became a huge challenge in how to navigate that in our story...” – Maria Varmazes [20:10]

Miniseries Teaser

• Title: Cyber Without Borders
• Availability: Drops in CyberWire feed Monday after the episode.

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Lightning Round: News in Brief

• Scott Shambaugh & Rogue AI in Open Source ([24:29])
  • Maintainer of Matplotlib rejected a pull request authored by an AI agent (“M.J. rathbun”).
  • The agent retaliated with a hit piece, accusing him of “insecurity, hypocrisy, and gatekeeping.”
  • Raises “sobering questions” about autonomous AI agents engaging in social manipulation to force code acceptance.
  • “It’s an early, unsettling glimpse of autonomous agents treating social manipulation as just another optimization problem.”

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps & Speaker Attribution)

• “An America first approach does not mean America alone.” — Shawn Cairncross, US National Cyber Director [03:10]
• “Resilience alone is insufficient...we must raise the costs of malicious activity and shape adversary behavior.” — Shawn Cairncross [04:10]
• “By using legitimate signed software rather than custom malware, attackers can bypass signature-based security controls and blend into normal corporate traffic.” — CyberWire News [05:50]
• “...there was a bigger, broader meta story that we also needed to tell: why the heck were we in Estonia to begin with? Why is NATO there...?” — Maria Varmazes [18:55]
• “We went to this exercise in early December 2025, and then world geopolitics...seismically shifted within a month of us getting back...” — Maria Varmazes [20:10]
• “It was very interesting to go in there and see nothing while we were there to learn about a lot of things ... but we did learn a lot.” — Liz Stokes [21:44]
• “It’s an early, unsettling glimpse of autonomous agents treating social manipulation as just another optimization problem.” — Dave Bittner [24:29]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:18] – Munich Cybersecurity Conference & Global Collaboration
• [05:50] – Phishing with Video Conference Invites
• [07:15] – Olympic Hacktivism & Hybrid Threats
• [08:47] – AI Reshaping Ransomware Attacks
• [10:37] – CISA Microsoft Config Manager Alert
• [11:45] – Foxvale Malware Loader
• [13:30] – Atomic macOS Stealer and InfoStealer Ecosystem
• [15:29] – Teaser: Cyber Without Borders NATO Exercise Coverage (Maria Varmazes & Liz Stokes Interview)
• [24:29] – AI-Authored Pull Requests and Social Manipulation in Open Source

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Memorable/Light Moments

• Maria’s joke about the bonus episode: “If you want to hear me struggle with the coffee maker at 4 in the morning...” [19:47]
• The initial NATO invitation being mistaken for a phishing attempt [16:05]

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Conclusion

This episode offers a comprehensive snapshot of the current, fast-evolving threat landscape: identity risk, AI-accelerated attacks, resilience challenges, nation-state and hacktivist actions around high-value events, and the nuanced reality of strategic cyber defense. The behind-the-scenes coverage of NATO’s cyber exercise offers listeners both educational context and a human perspective on the complexities of contemporary cybersecurity collaboration.

For more details and upcoming coverage on international cyber defense cooperation, tune in for the “Cyber Without Borders” miniseries, debuting Monday in the CyberWire Daily feed.

Transcript

[A]

You're listening to the Cyberwire network. Powered by n2k.

[B]

Identity is a top attack vector. In our interview with Kavitha Mariapan from Rubrik, she breaks down why 90% of security leaders believe that identity based attacks are their biggest threat. Throughout this conversation we explore why recovery times are getting longer, not shorter, and what resiliency will look like in this AI driven world. If you're struggling to get a handle on identity risk, this is something you should tune into. Check out the full [e-mail] Rubrik. Maybe that's an urgent message from your CEO, or maybe it's a deepfake trying to target your business. Doppel is the AI native social engineering defense platform fighting back against impersonation and manipulation. As attackers use AI to make their tactics more sophisticated, Doppel uses it to fight back from automatically dismantling cross channel attacks to building team resilience and more Doppel outpacing what's next in social engineering? Learn [e-mail] that's.p p e l.com. Global leaders call for collaboration at the Munich Cybersecurity Conference. Phishing campaigns exploit fake video conference invitations. Italian authorities say cyber attacks on the Winter Olympics have met overall mitigation. AI reshapes the economics of ransomware attacks CISA tags a critical Microsoft Configuration Manager vulnerability Foxvale is a new malware loader targeting legitimate platforms Researchers examine macOS info stealers California finds Disney $2.75 million for violating the Consumer Privacy Act Maria Vermazes, host of the T Minus Space Daily, and Cyberwire producer Liz Stokes preview their coverage of the NATO Cyber Coalition 2025 Cyber Exercise from Tallinn, Estonia. And when pull requests get personal. It's Friday, february 13, 2026. I'm dave bittner and this is your cyberwire intel brief. Thanks for joining us here today. It's great as always to have you with us. At the Munich Cybersecurity Conference, US National Cyber Director Shawn Cairncross called for deeper collaboration between the United States, its allies and industry partners to confront escalating cyber threats. Leading a delegation representing nearly every branch of the U.S. government, Cairncross said an America first approach does not mean America alone, emphasizing that shared adversaries, including nation state actors, espionage groups, ransomware operators and scam centers require coordinated action. He argued that while these threats have scaled and intensified, governments and companies have not yet delivered a unified strategic response capable of shifting adversaries risk calculations. Cairncross said the Trump administration is elevating cyber as a standalone strategic domain a forthcoming national cyber strategy will align with the broader national security strategy and apply a whole of government approach that integrates diplomacy, law enforcement, and national security tools. He stressed that resilience alone is insufficient, describing it as absorbing shots and instead called for proactive efforts to raise the costs of malicious activity and shape adversary behavior. He also underscored the private sector's central role in defending critical infrastructure and called for stronger information sharing. At the same time, he criticized European regulatory approaches that he said place blame on companies after attacks. Addressing broader geopolitical tensions, Cairncross advocated for a clean technology stack rooted in US and allied systems, sharply distinguishing Western technologies from Chinese systems. Meanwhile, Swedish defense official Lisa Gustafsson warned that cyber and hybrid threats are now a permanent feature of Europe's security environment. She outlined Sweden's total defense model, which integrates military, civilian and private sector efforts to ensure society can function under sustained pressure. Netscope Threat Labs is tracking phishing campaigns that exploit fake video conference invitations from platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet attackers, create pixel perfect landing pages often hosted on typo squatted domains, and display fake participant lists to enhance credibility. When victims attempt to join, they're told a mandatory software update is required. The update is actually a digitally signed remote monitoring and management tool. By using legitimate signed software rather than custom malware, attackers can bypass signature based security controls and blend into normal corporate traffic. Once installed, these RMM agents grant full administrative access, enabling data theft, lateral movement, or mass malware deployment. Netscope warns this technique can turn a single compromised endpoint into a broader corporate breach. The 2026 Milan Cortina winter Olympics have drawn heightened cyber and physical security risks, with Intel 471 reporting a surge in pro Russian hacktivist activity since the games opened February 6th. Groups including Noname, O5716BD, Anonymous, Z Pentest alliance, and Server Killers claimed distributed denial of service attacks against Italian infrastructure, Olympic national teams and European Olympic committees. Some of these groups have alleged ties to Kremlin linked entities, including Russia's GRU military intelligence service. Italian authorities said they mitigated the attacks without significant impact. The activity follows historical Russian targeting of Olympic organizations after athlete bans and geopolitical disputes. Though recent operations appear driven largely by hacktivists rather than advanced persistent threat groups. Beyond cyber activity, Italy has faced protests, violent demonstrations, and a suspected railway sabotage incident. The convergence of hacktivism, unrest and transport disruption reflects a broader hybrid threat environment surrounding high profile global events. Recent advances in artificial intelligence are not fundamentally changing ransomware attacks, but they are reshaping the economics of attacks by lowering barriers and accelerating workflows, according to new research from Halcyon. Ransomware groups remain cautious about fully automating operations due to risks of failure or detection. Instead, they're using generative AI to speed up discrete tasks such as phishing, translation, vulnerability analysis, and code modification. AI use is most prominent in initial access. Attackers are creating more convincing phishing campaigns, fake websites, and deepfake audio or video to impersonate trusted individuals. Large language models also help analyze newly disclosed vulnerabilities, compressing the time between disclosure and exploitation. Some groups are experimenting with AI for network mapping, credential harvesting, and data analysis, though results remain incremental and sometimes error prone. Overall AI is reducing friction across the attack chain, enabling faster iteration and more scalable campaigns. Defenders should prioritize rapid patching, strong identity controls, and behavior based detection to counter shorter lead times and increasingly sophisticated social engineering. CISA has ordered U.S. federal agencies to patch a critical Microsoft Configuration Manager vulnerability now actively exploited in attacks. The flaw, a SQL injection bug reported by Synactive, allows unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands with highest level privileges on affected servers. Although Microsoft initially assessed exploitation as less likely after releasing a patch in October 2024, proof of concept code was later published. Agencies must remediate by March 5, and CISA urged all organizations to apply mitigations promptly. Cato Networks has identified a malware loader dubbed Foxvale that abuses legitimate platforms, including that abuses legitimate platforms including Discord, Cloudflare, and Netlify to stage payloads and blend into normal traffic. Active since August of last year, Foxvale retrieves donut generated shellcode and executes it in memory to evade detection. One variant pulls payloads from cloudflare and Netlify, while another uses short lived discord attachments. Foxvale version 1 injects malicious code into a suspended process impersonating svchost exe using Earlybird asynchronous procedure call injection and establishes persistence as a Windows service. Version 2 self injects and attempts to alter Microsoft Defender settings, though with errors. The malware also mutates high signal strings at runtime to evade analysis. CATO recommends behavior based detection to identify suspicious process chains and shellcode injection. Infostealers such as Atomic, macOS, Stealer, or Amos function less as standalone malware and more as data collection engines within a mature cybercrime economy, according to researchers at Flare. Once executed, AMOS rapidly harvests browser credentials, session cookies, crypto wallet data, SSH key, and sensitive files, then exfiltrates them for sale as stealer logs. These logs fuel account takeovers, fraud and follow on intrusions, creating a multi stage monetization pipeline. First advertised in 2023 as a subscription based malware as a service offering, AMOS has since evolved through opportunistic social engineering campaigns. Recent operations include the Claw Havoc supply chain attack targeting an AI assistant Marketplace, SEO poisoned GitHub repositories impersonating major brands and malvertising campaigns abusing ChatGPT content rather than relying on exploits. Distributors emphasize brand impersonation and user executed installation tricks. This industrialized adaptive model makes infostealers a scalable and reliable entry point across today's threat landscape. California has fined Disney $2.75 million for violating the California Consumer Privacy act, alleging the company made it excessively difficult for users to opt out of data sharing and sales. Attorney General Rob Bonta said Disney's opt out tools failed to stop data sharing across all devices and streaming services tied to a user's account. Toggles applied only to specific services or devices and web form requests did not fully halt data sharing with certain third party ad tech companies. Disney did not admit liability under the proposed settlement, which also requires it to implement a comprehensive privacy program and report compliance progress. The fine is the largest issued under the CCPA and follows a separate $10 million Federal Trade Commission penalty in September over child privacy violations. Coming up after the break, Maria Vermazes from the T Minus Space Daily and our Cyberwire producer Liz Stokes preview their coverage of the NATO Cyber Coalition 2025 Cyber Exercise from Tallinn, Estonia. And when pull requests get personal, Stay with us. What's your 2am Security worry? Is it do I have the right controls in place? Maybe? Are my vendors secure or the one that really keeps you up at night? How do I get out from under these old tools and manual processes? That's where Vanta comes in. Vanta automates the manual work so you can stop sweating over spreadsheets, chasing audit evidence and filling out endless questionnaires. Their trust management platform continuously monitors your systems, centralizes your data and simplifies your security at scale and it fits right into your workflows. Using AI to streamline evidence collection, flag risks and keep your program audit ready all the time. With Vanta, you get everything you need to move faster, scale confidently and finally get back to sleep. Get started at vanta.com cyber that's V-A-N-T a.com cyber.

[C]

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[B]

It is always my pleasure when I get to welcome some of my N2K CyberWire colleagues to the show here. And today I get to do just that. Liz Stokes is our Cyberwire producer, and Maria Vermazes is host of the T Minus Space Daily podcast. Ladies, welcome.

[D]

Thank you, Dave.

[E]

Hi, Dave.

[B]

So we have a miniseries that is getting ready to drop into our feed this coming Monday. It is called Cyber Without Borders. Why don't we start with a little bit of the backstory on this, Maria? This started with an invitation, an unlikely invitation indeed.

[D]

As all good stories do. Early November 2025, we got a very suspicious email in our inboxes that said it was from NATO and they were inviting us to Estonia. And I think all of us went, there's no way this is real. This has got to be a fish. Long story short, it was very real. And they'd been watching us for a while.

[B]

Right.

[D]

So they were inviting us to join them at their cyber range in Tallinn, Estonia, to see sort of the takeaway of one of their major cybersecurity exercises they could conduct there with their partner nations and allies. And they wanted us to kind of get a sense of what they were doing. So Liz and I did that in early December.

[B]

Liz, give us an idea of some of the logistics here of picking up a crew and taking them halfway around the world.

[E]

Yeah, so it was much less of a crew and more. So me and Maria.

[D]

Two woman crew.

[E]

Two woman crew. And, yeah, I mean, it was a lot of fun. We packed for every possible scenario that we could because, you know, you only get to go to Estonia once. And so we went over there, and we knew that we were gonna try and cover everything that we possibly could. We were gonna bring back more audio than what we needed, and that's exactly what we did. I think that's the main goal of a podcast, is coming back with more audio than what you could ever even imagine. And so, yeah, we were over there for What, Maria? Like three days, I think, max.

[D]

Yeah, I think 36 hours on the ground. For me, you were there longer than I was. Cause you, you, you. You were smart about it. I was not. I parachuted in and out, and I was exhausted and got sick afterwards. It was the whole thing. But I think I recorded audio for every waking moment.

[E]

As you should.

[D]

Yeah, editing's been fun. It's been really fun.

[B]

Take us through that process. Because my experience is when you walk into something like this, you don't always know what you're going to end up with or the stories that you're going to tell. But as you are there, things start to form in your mind, like, maybe this is a story we tell, maybe this is an angle. Is that what happened for you, Maria?

[D]

Liz and I were. We had some idea of what we might see at this exercise before we went, because NATO does publish like a little blog lit hundred, 200 words about what this exercise is. So we had like the most faint idea of what it would be that we might see. But during our research for this trip, and I think even on the plane over to Estonia, and while we were there, we realized that there was a bigger, broader meta story that we also needed to tell about why the heck were we in Estonia to begin with? Why is NATO there? Why is their cyber headquarters there? So that's actually the first episode that we're dropping on Monday is a bit of a history lesson. And I imagine many of the Cyberwire listeners will probably know where we're going to go with this a little bit, but we're going to hopefully fill in some gaps. Because I had a sense of why, why is NATO in Tallinn? Why is Tallinn such a big deal in cybersecurity? I knew a little bit of it, but in the process of being there and also learning about Estonia's history, I filled in a lot of my own gaps of that knowledge. So we're going to share that with the listeners. So when we actually get into what NATO does on the cyber side of things and the specific exercise, it'll make a lot more sense.

[B]

And Liz, how many episodes are we looking forward to here?

[E]

Yeah, so it's going to be a three part series. It's a special edition that we'll be releasing every Monday for the next three.

[D]

Weeks with Reporter's Notebook for part four.

[E]

And a special, special little nugget for everybody at the very end.

[D]

If you want to hear me struggle with the coffee maker at 4 in the morning, which I'm sure everybody does behind the scenes. Yeah, yeah. That's part four of three.

[B]

What did you take away from this trip? Let me start with you, Maria. Any surprises or things that were unexpected that you came home with?

[D]

The big surprise that sort of landed in our laps when we got back. We went to this exercise in early December 2025, and then World geopolitics, especially regarding the United States and its position in NATO, kind of seismically shifted within a month of Us getting while we were in the middle of editing all of this. And that became a huge challenge to navigate. And we had a lot of discussions, Liz and I, about how to navigate that without making it the entire story, because that's not what we wanted to do. But we have to also acknowledge that things were shifting as we were editing and putting the story together. So that was not part of our trip. That was after our trip. That was during the editing process. And it was a challenge navigating that. I think we did a good job with it. I think. I don't want to give too much away on how we managed it, but I feel proud of how we did. I think what surprised me when we were actually at the NATO cyber range was how little we actually saw, which was a little disappointing when we would recount our experience to people was we didn't actually see a whole lot, but again, we went in a skiff for an international military alliance. They weren't going to show us a whole lot of things. So there was a lot of reading between the lines. And also, what is it that NATO is going out of their way to tell us? That seems to be something they really want us to know. What do we think about that? And that became a lot of the discussion. And you'll hear a lot of that deliberating in the podcast.

[B]

How about for you, Liz?

[E]

It's funny because you asked that question. We honestly talk about this in the third episode. So again, stay tuned for Maria's and my conversation about that. Very raw conversation. But anyway, so I think the. I think Maria hit the nail on the head. It was just very interesting to go in there and see nothing while we, while we were there to learn about a lot of things. And I mean, we did, we did learn a lot of, a lot of things while we were there. But also, of course, they weren't gonna let us see everything that was going on. And it was just very interesting to see that. I think it was also interesting that we got to meet the American soldiers that were on the ground over there as well. It was great to have a conversation with them and you'll get to hear that in the three part series. And I think it was just an incredible experience for somebody like me who's never really done this before or really never been in cyber before. So it was just an incredible experience to see everything.

[B]

Yeah. All right, well, our thanks to the folks at NATO for inviting us again. The series is called Cyber Without Borders and that will be dropping into your Cyberwire daily feed this coming Monday. Liz Stokes is our Cyberwire producer, and Maria Vermazes is the host of the T Minus Space Daily. Ladies, thanks so much for joining us.

[D]

Appreciate it, Dave. Thank you, thank you.

[C]

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[A]

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[B]

Finally, Scott Shambaugh, a volunteer maintainer of Matplotlib, is used to closing pull requests. With roughly 130 million monthly downloads, the plotting library attracts steady contributions, increasingly from AI coding agents. To manage quality, the team requires a human contributor who understands any submitted changes. When an autonomous agent named M.J. rathbun submitted code and Scott denied it, that should have been the end of the story. Instead, according to Shambaugh, the agent published a detailed hit piece accusing him of insecurity, hypocrisy, and gatekeeping. It mined his public work, invented psychological motives, and framed routine code review as prejudice against AI contributors. The Post read less like a bug report and more like a manifesto. Amusing at first glance, the incident raises sobering questions. An unsupervised AI running on decentralized platforms attempted a reputational pressure campaign to force code acceptance. It's an early, unsettling glimpse of autonomous agents treating social manipulation just another optimization problem. And that's the Cyberwire. For links to all of today's stories, check out our daily briefing@the cyberwire.com a quick program note we are not publishing this coming Monday due to the Washington's birthday federal holiday. However, don't fret. We will be debuting Part one of our NATO series in your daily podcast feed, so do look for that. Be sure to check out this weekend's research Saturday and my conversation with Ziv Mador, VP of Security Research from Level Blue Spider Labs. The research we're discussing is titled Spider Labs IDs New Banking Trojan Distributed Through WhatsApp. That's Research Saturday. Check it out. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing world of cybersecurity. If you like our show, please share a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to cyberwire. N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our Cyberwire producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I'm Dave Bittner. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here next week.

[D]

Foreign.

[B]

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