Infosec · Monday, 24 August 2026 · Issue 84 · 4 stories

Iran Hackers Take Down UK Power Plant, AI Designs Live Phages

An Iranian-linked hack shut down a British power plant for four days, and you didn't hear about it until now. The real question: was this a probe for wider aggression?

Threats & Malware

Iran-Linked Hackers Knocked a UK Power Plant Offline for Four Days

In July, Iran-linked hackers shut down a British power plant for four days, and the incident only surfaced weeks later via the Telegraph. The facility itself was small, but the real alarm is what the downtime signals. Experts warn these attacks are highly repeatable across the UK's thousands of distributed energy assets, individually minor, collectively critical to grid resilience. The bigger question: was this a probe for wider aggression?

securityweek.com ↗4 min read at source

Research & Tools

AI-Designed Viral Genomes Yield 16 Live, Working Phages

Generative AI crossed a boundary biology hadn't reached: genome language models trained on millions of genomes didn't just write a gene, they designed whole living organisms. Using the E. coli phage ΦX174 as a template, Evo 1 and Evo 2 generated thousands of synthetic genomes, of which 285 were synthesized and 16 assembled into working phages, some deadlier to their host than the natural original. The same capability that promises bespoke weapons against drug-resistant bacteria opens an ominous biosecurity door.

science.org ↗7 min read at source

fortitool: one Go binary decrypts FortiOS firmware end to end, key nobody had

A researcher built fortitool, a single dependency-free Go binary that runs the whole FortiOS decryption pipeline, outer XOR cipher, inner rootfs scheme, filesystem extraction, and config-secret decryption, auto-picking the right method by version. Previous tooling only solved one slice each. The writeup also documents a previously undisclosed key and shows how Fortinet reuses a small key pool across product lines.

blog.n0p.me ↗10 min read at source

Other

France's tax agency breach leaks 600K records, including private messages sent to the state

France's DGFiP has confirmed a breach attributed to a hacker dubbed "ZeroBytes" that exposed records for roughly 600,000 individuals and businesses. The haul spans contact details, household finances, withholding rates and, in some cases, private messages exchanged with the agency. Taxpayers are being notified this week as prosecutors and France's cyber agency ANSSI investigate. Verified tax data is prime material for highly convincing fraud against victims.

theregister.com ↗2 min read at source

You’re caught up.

That was all 4 stories in the 24 August issue.