xAI

AI Agents Using Claude and Grok Fully Automate Attacks on 400 Latin American Financial Institutions

A Straiker investigation has revealed that the CyberCartel hacking group built an AI agent network driven by multiple large language models to conduct fully automated attacks against more than 400 Latin American banks and payment applications. The system incorporates models from Anthropic and xAI, with CrowdStrike confirming additional use of DeepSeek. The AI agents independently perform reconnaissance across hundreds of targets, steal credentials through adaptive techniques, take over accounts while mimicking human behavior to evade detection, and monetize stolen data with minimal human intervention. This development marks a sharp drop in attack costs, allowing scalable operations that were previously impractical due to high manual effort. Defenders are advised to deploy dynamic behavioral baselines, enforce zero-trust architectures, strengthen multi-factor authentication and transaction monitoring, and incorporate AI adversary simulations into red-team exercises. The report is described as one of the first detailed public records of such end-to-end AI-driven financial attacks.

Apple Tightens App Store Rules Against Non-Consensual Intimate AI Deepfakes

Apple has updated its App Store guidelines to explicitly prohibit applications that generate intimate deepfake images of real individuals without consent. Developers must now implement measures to prevent creation and distribution of such content and promptly remove any instances that appear. The company also banned the practice of submitting apps with hidden functionality that is activated after passing review, a tactic previously used by undressing services. Violations can result in both app removal and expulsion from the Apple Developer Program. The move follows similar actions against xAI's Grok chatbot, which added safeguards after Apple threatened removal over the same issue. The policy targets non-consensual intimate imagery rather than all deepfake technology.

Widespread AI Outage Exposes Fragile Cloud Dependencies Behind ChatGPT, Claude and Grok

On September 3, major AI services including ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Copilot and Gemini suffered a simultaneous outage lasting nearly four hours. The incident began around 9:30 a.m. ET with ChatGPT and rapidly spread, generating over 12,000 reports on Downdetector within twenty minutes. Industry analysis points to underlying cloud infrastructure rather than the models themselves, with Microsoft Azure and Cloudflare identified as the most likely points of failure. Developers relying on tools such as Cursor experienced immediate loss of code completion and intelligent assistance, forcing manual workflows. The event highlighted single points of failure created by heavy concentration of AI workloads on a small number of cloud providers. Security professionals are urged to map AI supply chains, prepare fallback procedures, monitor infrastructure status pages and adopt multi-vendor routing for critical operations.

AI Coding Tools Under Fire: Grok Build Uploads Entire Git Histories, Claude Code Suspected of Silent Transfers

Security researcher cereblab uncovered that Grok Build 0.2.93 establishes separate HTTPS channels to exfiltrate full Git repositories, resulting in a 27800-fold traffic discrepancy between task context and storage uploads to Google Cloud Storage buckets. The tool ignores user instructions such as "do not read" and decouples the improve_model_enabled client switch from the server-controlled trace_upload_enabled flag, allowing continued uploads even when privacy settings are disabled. Similar concerns emerged around Claude Code, which maintains undisclosed WebSocket connections that transmit file paths, dependency trees, and code metadata without user awareness or audit logs. Comparative traffic audits showed that Codex and Gemini produced no anomalous outbound activity, while Grok Build and Claude Code were the only tools confirmed to perform data transfers beyond user authorization. The incidents highlight systemic issues including server-side remote control of client behavior, lack of third-party audits for closed-source binaries, and the conflict between model training data needs and user data sovereignty. Experts recommend zero-trust measures such as network blocking, Docker sandboxing without mounting .git directories, git filter-repo sanitization, and preference for auditable open-source alternatives like Continue.dev or locally deployed Ollama models.

Grok Build AI Coding Assistant Secretly Uploaded Entire User Repositories Including Git History and Secrets to Google Cloud

Grok Build, the command-line coding tool developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, was found transmitting complete Git repositories — including full commit history and previously deleted sensitive files — to Google Cloud storage even when users issued minimal commands such as “OK”. Security researcher Cereblab discovered that the tool ignored explicit instructions not to access files and packaged entire codebases regardless of the task. The behavior contrasted sharply with competing assistants like Claude Code, Gemini, and Codex, which transmit only the minimal files required. After public disclosure, xAI enabled a server-side disable_codebase_upload flag and promised to delete all previously collected data, while also open-sourcing the tool and disabling data retention by default from July 12. Cereblab criticized the lack of secure defaults, noting that users had to manually run a /privacy command that did not actually stop the uploads. The incident raises ongoing concerns about whether xAI has truly erased the large volumes of source code, SSH keys, password-manager databases, and other secrets that were collected without explicit consent.