October 05, 2026

Presented By

It’s Monday! On this day in 1962, the London Pavilion premiered Dr. No, the first of many James Bond films that, in addition to high-suspense espionage sequences, brought a surprising amount of tech to the pen, wristwatch, and cigarette. Know the assets in your environment—suspicious bagpipes included!

In today’s edition:

🤖 Breakout performance

🔒 The ClickFix is in

✅ At your self-service

—Patrick Kulp, Billy Hurley, Caroline Nihill

CYBERSECURITY

Off the rails

Photo illustration showing robotic hands typing on a keyboard, with a lock and text input field.

Illustration: Morning Brew Design, Photos: Adobe Stock

Before a business like a consultancy or consumer mortgage lender rolls out a new agentic system, they might turn to Scale AI to try to break it.

The startup, which has tried to remake itself after a Meta quasi-acquihire last year, keeps a stable of human red teamers who simulate the intentional or unwitting antagonists an AI agent might face in the wild—casual users, trolls, hackers, or misaligned agents.

“Are [users] encouraging an agent, and is the agent simulating access it shouldn’t have? Is it claiming that it’s a human when it’s not? Is it granting a loan on terms that would be illegal in an enterprise context?” Patrick Oathout, Scale’s red team and safety lead, told us of scenarios they simulate.

Exercises like these are even more important in the agentic era, when companies may not start with a comprehensive picture of all the ways networks of autonomous bots can go awry, according to Oathout.

Find the right policies for awry AI.—PK

Sponsored By Softr

Let teams build with IT governance

Are your teams vibe coding apps? Connecting company data through personal AI accounts? How does IT stay in control?

Softr helps by giving teams a sanctioned place to build with AI. It handles authentication, permissions, and data restrictions separately from generated code. Meanwhile, IT can control access to company data and set the guardrails that teams build within.

Workspace roles, SSO, and granular permissions determine who can build, sign in, and access or modify records. IT maintains oversight as the team builds, with a shared governance layer and audit logs to review changes.

Softr manages hosting and the backend, so every app doesn’t become another infrastructure project. Stay in control with Softr.

CYBERSECURITY

Click click oof

a fishing rod coming out of a computer screen

Francis Scialabba

Why go through all the trouble of executing malicious malware yourself when you can just get the victim to do it for you?

Tech and security companies have seen increases in ClickFix attacks: social-engineering lures that lead users to copy-and-paste malicious code, and essentially hack themselves. The ClickFix could include ruses like fake CAPTCHAs, error messages, and software installation prompts.

Telemetry from cybersecurity company ESET found that ClickFix detections more than doubled between H2 2025 and H1 2026. Microsoft noted this upward trend beginning in 2024, followed by “widespread adoption” of the tactic in 2025, according to its own report. That Microsoft study also found that ClickFix led initial access methods for cyberattacker intrusions, followed by phishing, password-spray attacks, SEO poisoning, and vulnerabilities.

And in September, multiple reports (including research from cybersecurity company ADAMnetworks and infostealer intelligence firm Hudson Rock) revealed that fake HBO Max ads, posted on Reddit, linked readers to lookalike pages. Directions on these phony pages asked users to add malicious commands into macOS Terminal to install software holding infostealing malware. A Windows version of the attack involved commands to PowerShell and built-in Microsoft utilities.

How to keep employees from hacking themselves.—BH

WORD OF THE WEEK

Glossary term: Pig butchering. Pig butchering scammers will likely have access to a list of phone numbers exposed through data breaches or data brokers.

Pig butchering: A scam, often associated with cryptocurrency, where malicious actors use social engineering to convince their victims to invest money in fake investment platforms. Learn more.

IT OPERATIONS

Serving!

A human hand reaching out toward a robot hand

Getty Images

More IT teams are embracing self-service portals and tools in lieu of a fully staffed IT help desk. But are these self-service investments actually cutting ticket volume, or just adding to employees’ irritation?

Help desk teams can operate on the leaner side when it comes to budget and resources, often at the cost of longer response times. Atomicwork CEO Vijay Rayapati, told IT Brew that automating aspects of the help desk can reduce ticket volume reaching IT professionals, while potentially introducing more user irritation.

No employee likes dealing with automated menus and chatbots, in other words. But deciding whether to deploy self-service IT help (and in what context) is often a nuanced issue, especially when it involves AI integration.

“On one side, business is using AI to reduce work, but on the other side, business is also buying more technology, that means [AI] creates more work,” Rayapati said.

Just make the agent as human-like as possible.—CN

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 15 games to 1 and 4 draws. That’s the record of AI system Ataraxos against a top human player of Stratego, a game that until now has baffled superbots. (Ars Technica)

Quote: “It’s important to establish the finish line first, and then measure cost, quality, and employee involvement against that standard.”—Chris Bennett, vice president of the Global AI Practice at Unisys, on agent deployment strategies (TechTarget)

Read: Tired of going all-in with the hyperscalers? Some CIOs are checking out an alternative: the “neocloud.” (CIO)

Sanctioned vibe coding: Let your team build with AI, without building shadow IT debt. Softr gives teams a sanctioned place to build internal tools and portals while IT maintains visibility and control. See how it works.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Share the Brew

Share the Brew, watch your referral count climb, and unlock brag-worthy swag.

Your friends get smarter. You get rewarded. Win-win.

Your referral count: 0

Click to Share

Or copy & paste your referral link to others:
itbrew.com/r/?kid=71df84e8

Written by Patrick Kulp, Billy Hurley, and Caroline Nihill

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Get smarter in just 5 minutes

Tech & AI News: Tech Brew
Markets News: Brew Markets
Real Estate News: The Playbook
Money & Career: Bossy

Take The Brew to work

Interested in podcasts?

Check out ours here.

ADVERTISE//CAREERS//SHOP//FAQ

Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here.
View our privacy policy here.

Copyright © 2026 Morning Brew Inc. All rights reserved.
22 W 19th St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10011

☕ Burn notice