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The Justice Department charged 17 Iranian hackers tied to the Mabna Institute even as password spraying surged 155-fold and data-theft crews battered public networks from Latvia to Texas.
Latest developments: Latvia's road-traffic agency confirmed thieves took data on roughly 1.2 million residents—about two-thirds of the population—drawing demands that senior officials resign; Berlin isolated its urban-development and mobility ministries from the government network after a breach; and the University of Texas at San Antonio delayed its fall semester three days to August 24, 2026 after weekend intrusions.
Attackers hit public institutions across three countries; UT San Antonio, serving more than 42,000 students under Senior Executive Vice President Andrea Marks, took phones and academic systems offline, and Berlin's precautionary cutoff has held since Friday.
Sources: The Record · The Record · The Record · Help Net Security · ↑ top
Latest developments: Clop listed more than 40 victims of its PTC Windchill and FlexPLM data-theft campaign, naming Shell, Philips, Fiserv, Zebra, Mindray, and Largan Precision on its leak site.
Clop exploited a critical flaw in PTC's product-lifecycle-management software and planted a custom JavaServer Pages web shell built to decrypt stored credentials and map engineering data, then moved to extort the manufacturers it breached.
Sources: SecurityWeek · The Hacker News · BleepingComputer · ↑ top
Latest developments: The Justice Department charged 17 members of Iran's Mabna Institute with breaching email accounts at US government agencies and stealing intellectual property from dozens of universities, and the State Department offered rewards up to $10 million for information on five of the defendants.
The indicted hackers, tied to the Iranian government, targeted hundreds of universities and organizations in the United States and abroad; the Rewards for Justice program will pay for information leading to five named suspects.
Sources: The Record · SecurityWeek · ↑ top
Latest developments: Huntress measured a 155-fold jump in password-spraying attacks in the first half of 2026, including one campaign that fired more than 81 million login attempts in two weeks, while Palo Alto's Unit 42 updated its guidance after an actor calling itself TheHatman claimed a large haul of credentials from organizations' Microsoft Entra tenants.
The attacks exploit legacy authentication and login flows that bypass multifactor authentication; defenders should disable legacy protocols and close gaps that leave some sign-ins unprotected.
Sources: BleepingComputer · Unit 42 (Palo Alto) · ↑ top
Latest developments: Researchers exposed SilkParasite, a previously unreported espionage operation striking government bodies across Central Asia with seven remote-access-tool families, five of them never documented before: DriveSilkRAT, CookiETagRAT, NomadRAT, GoginRAT, and NodeEdgeRAT.
First spotted in late 2025, the intrusion set steals from Central Asian government agencies using an unusually broad custom toolkit.
Sources: The Hacker News · ↑ top
Latest developments: Hunt.io reconstructed Operation CameraSwarm from a 407-megabyte exposed working directory, finding attackers compromised more than 14,530 Dahua devices between June 17 and July 22, 2026 using credential attacks, two authentication-bypass flaws, and a peer-to-peer relay technique.
The campaign hijacked Dahua surveillance cameras and recorders at scale; owners should replace default credentials and patch the exploited authentication bypasses.
Sources: The Hacker News · ↑ top
Latest developments: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent moved August 19 to double the department's buybacks of long-term government debt, and 30-year yields dove on the news even as officials said they will not use repurchases to calm acute market stress.
The selloff that began with the August 13 U.S. 30-year auction had driven long-term borrowing costs to multi-decade highs worldwide, and the Treasury's step to double repurchases pulled yields back for now; the intervention matters to every leveraged holder of duration, and some Wall Street desks warn the rout has further to run.
Sources: Financial Times · Wall Street Journal · Wall Street Journal · ↑ top
Latest developments: Oil rose a fourth straight day August 19 as talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war stalled, and France moved to expel two Iranian officials after accusing Tehran of attacking French diplomats.
The U.S. blockade of Iranian ships has throttled traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint for much of the world's seaborne oil, keeping crude bid; France's expulsion of two Iranian officials widens a confrontation that has already drawn threats of Iranian strikes on American and European targets.
Sources: Wall Street Journal · Financial Times · ↑ top
Today: Partly Sunny then Slight Chance Showers And Thunderstorms, high 81F.
Tonight: Slight Chance Showers And Thunderstorms then Chance Showers And Thunderstorms, low 64F.
Thursday: Rain Showers Likely, high 79F.
Latest developments: Kennywood opened a job fair August 19 to fill more than 300 seasonal positions, including scare actors and makeup artists, before its Phantom Fall Fest opens.
The West Mifflin amusement park Kennywood is recruiting scare actors, makeup artists, and other seasonal staff to run Phantom Fall Fest, its autumn Halloween event.
Latest developments: Pittsburgh Magazine reported August 19 that Okane, at 245 Fourth Avenue Downtown, runs three distinct dining experiences across its three floors.
Okane occupies a three-story building at 245 Fourth Avenue in Downtown Pittsburgh; its ground-floor Sweet Spot pours Vietnamese coffee and fruit teas and plates desserts such as a fish-shaped matcha taiyaki, with sushi service upstairs.
Sources: Pittsburgh Magazine · ↑ top
Latest developments: The Sharpsburg Community Library will close its five-year emergency food pantry to concentrate on what it calls a bigger need for toiletries.
The Sharpsburg Community Library ran an emergency food pantry for five years and now plans to redirect that effort toward supplying toiletries to residents.
Latest developments: The Deer Lakes School District starts the 2026 school year with new leadership and 10 newly hired teachers.
The Deer Lakes School District in the Allegheny Valley begins the academic year under a new administration, adding 10 teachers to its ranks.
Latest developments: Pittsburgh City Paper reported August 19 that the inaugural Cat Walk will center on Legion Memorial Park, pairing the walking tour with craft vendors and community tables.
Pittsburgh holds its first Cat Walk on Saturday, August 22, in the Brighton Heights neighborhood, combining a walking tour with craft vendors and organizations tabling at Legion Memorial Park.
Sources: Pittsburgh City Paper · ↑ top
Latest developments: In his August 19 chat, Post-Gazette Steelers writer Ray Fittipaldo took reader questions on Aaron Rodgers, head coach Mike McCarthy, T.J. Watt, and cornerback Joey Porter Jr.'s contract.
Post-Gazette Steelers writer Ray Fittipaldo held his weekly chat August 19, working through the quarterback picture under new coach Mike McCarthy and questions about T.J. Watt and Joey Porter Jr.'s contract situation.
Sources: Post-Gazette Steelers · ↑ top
Latest developments: A Post-Gazette Off The Bat column asked whether the Pirates can still learn from their 2024 second-half collapse as this year's fade deepens.
The Post-Gazette's Off The Bat column drew a line between the Pirates' current downturn and the team's 2024 collapse, questioning whether Pittsburgh can change course before the season slips away.
Sources: Post-Gazette Pirates · ↑ top
Latest developments: ESPN reported August 18 that Portland Thorns and United States forward Olivia Moultrie will miss the rest of the NWSL season with a torn ACL.
Olivia Moultrie, the young United States women's national team forward, tore her ACL and will sit out the remainder of the NWSL season, though her Portland Thorns keep climbing ESPN's power rankings in her absence.
Sources: ESPN Soccer · ↑ top
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