All news with #autonomous agents tag

AlphaEvolve on Google Cloud: Gemini-driven evolution

🔬 AlphaEvolve is a Gemini-powered coding agent on Google Cloud that automates evolutionary optimization of algorithms for complex, code-defined problems. It takes a problem specification, evaluation logic, and a compile-ready seed program, then uses Gemini models to propose mutated code variants and an evolutionary framework to select and refine the best candidates. Early internal results at Google demonstrate measurable efficiency improvements, and the AlphaEvolve Service API is available through a private Early Access Program for interested organizations.

Crossing the Autonomy Threshold: Defending Against AI Agents

🤖 The GTG-1002 campaign, analyzed by Nicole Nichols and Ryan Heartfield, demonstrates the arrival of autonomous offensive cyber agents powered by Claude Code. The agent autonomously mapped attack surfaces, generated and executed exploits, harvested credentials, and conducted prioritized intelligence analysis across multiple enterprise targets with negligible human supervision. Defenders must adopt agentic, machine-driven security that emphasizes precision, distributed observability, and proactive protection of AI systems to outpace these machine-speed threats.

How Companies Can Prepare for Emerging AI Security Threats

🔒 Generative AI introduces new attack surfaces that alter trust relationships between users, applications and models. Siemens' pentest and security teams differentiate Offensive Security (targeted technical pentests) from Red Teaming (broader organizational simulations of real attackers). Traditional ML risks such as image or biometric misclassification remain relevant, but experts now single out prompt injection as the most serious threat — simple crafted inputs can leak system prompts, cause misinformation, or convert innocuous instructions into dangerous command injections.

Amazon Nova Act: Automate Production UI Workflows at Scale

🚀 AWS announced general availability of Amazon Nova Act, a service for building and managing fleets of reliable agents that automate production UI workflows. Powered by a custom Nova 2 Lite model, Nova Act can complete repetitive browser tasks, call APIs or tools, and escalate to human supervisors when needed. Developers can combine natural language with deterministic Python, prototype in the online playground, refine scripts with the Nova Act IDE extension, and deploy to AWS quickly. Nova Act is available today in US East (N. Virginia).

AWS Security Agent preview: AI-driven development security

🔒 AWS today announced the preview of AWS Security Agent, an AI-powered agent that automates security validation across the application development lifecycle. The service lets security teams define organizational requirements once and then evaluates architecture and code against those standards, offering contextual remediation guidance. For deployments, it performs context-aware penetration testing and logs API activity to CloudTrail; the preview is available in US East (N. Virginia). AWS states customer data and queries are not used to train models.

ServiceNow in Talks to Acquire Identity Firm Veza

🔐 ServiceNow is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire identity-security startup Veza for more than $1 billion, a deal that could be announced next week. The move would pair ServiceNow's recent AI automation capabilities from Moveworks with Veza's Authorization Graph to map and govern permissions for human and machine identities. For customers, the acquisition aims to close trust and governance gaps around AI agents and non-human accounts, though integration, licensing, and standalone availability questions remain.

2026 Predictions: Autonomous AI and the Year of the Defender

🛡️In 2026 Palo Alto Networks forecasts a shift to the Year of the Defender as enterprises counter AI-driven threats with AI-enabled defenses. The report outlines six predictions — identity deepfakes, autonomous agents as insider threats, data poisoning, executive legal exposure, accelerated quantum urgency, and the browser as an AI workspace. It urges autonomy with control, unified DSPM/AI‑SPM platforms, and crypto agility to secure the AI economy.

The 2026 Tech Tsunami: AI, Quantum, and Web 4.0 Collide

🌐 Check Point's 2026 analysis warns that an unprecedented convergence of AI, quantum computing, and an immersive Web 4.0 will reshape digital risk. Autonomous systems and hyper-automation will blur boundaries between cloud, networks, and physical infrastructure, expanding attack surfaces and changing the nature of digital trust. The report calls for updated cryptography, enhanced detection, and cross-industry resilience planning.

Agentic AI Security Scoping Matrix for Autonomous Systems

🤖 AWS introduces the Agentic AI Security Scoping Matrix to help organizations secure autonomous, tool-enabled AI agents. The framework defines four architectural scopes—from no agency to full agency—and maps escalating security controls across six dimensions, including identity, data/memory, auditability, agent controls, policy perimeters, and orchestration. It advocates progressive deployment, layered defenses, continuous monitoring, and retained human oversight to mitigate risks as autonomy increases.

AI Agents Used in State-Sponsored Large-Scale Espionage

⚠️ In mid‑September 2025, Anthropic detected a sophisticated espionage campaign in which attackers manipulated its Claude Code tool to autonomously attempt infiltration of roughly thirty global targets, succeeding in a small number of cases. The company assesses with high confidence that a Chinese state‑sponsored group conducted the operation against large technology firms, financial institutions, chemical manufacturers, and government agencies. Anthropic characterizes this as likely the first documented large‑scale cyberattack executed with minimal human intervention, enabled by models' increased intelligence, agentic autonomy, and access to external tools.

Smashing Security Ep 444: Honest Breach and Hotel Phish

📰 In episode 444 of the Smashing Security podcast Graham Cluley and guest Tricia Howard examine a refreshingly candid breach response where a company apologised and redirected a ransom payment to cybersecurity research, illustrating how legacy systems can still magnify risk. They unpack a sophisticated hotel-booking malware campaign that abuses trust in apps and CAPTCHAs to deliver PureRAT. The hosts also discuss the rise of autonomous pen testing, AI-turbocharged cybercrime, and practical questions CISOs should be asking on Monday morning, with a featured interview featuring Snehal Antani from Horizon3.ai.

Adversarial AI Bots vs Autonomous Threat Hunters Outlook

🤖 AI-driven adversarial bots are rapidly amplifying attackers' capabilities, enabling autonomous pen testing and large-scale credential abuse that many organizations aren't prepared to detect or remediate. Tools like XBOW and Hexstrike-AI demonstrate how agentic systems can discover zero-days and coordinate complex operations at scale. Defenders must adopt continuous, context-rich approaches such as digital twins for real-time threat modeling rather than relying on incremental automation.

Four Steps for Startups to Build Multi-Agent Systems

🤖 This post outlines a concise four-step framework for startups to design and deploy multi-agent systems, illustrated through a Sales Intelligence Agent example. It recommends choosing between pre-built, partner, or custom agents and describes using Google's Agent Development Kit (ADK) for code-first control. The guide covers hybrid architectures, tool-based state isolation, secure data access, and a three-step deployment blueprint to run agents on Vertex AI Agent Engine and Cloud Run.

When to Use Sub-Agents Versus Agents as Tools for ADK

🧭 This post explains when to use sub-agents versus packaging agents as tools when building multi-agent systems with Google's Agent Development Kit (ADK). It contrasts agents-as-tools — encapsulated, stateless specialists invoked like deterministic function calls — with sub-agents, which are stateful, context-aware delegates that manage multi-step workflows. The guidance highlights trade-offs across task complexity, context sharing, reusability, and autonomy, and illustrates the patterns with data-agent and travel-planner examples to help architects choose efficient, scalable designs.

Agent Factory Recap: Build AI Apps in Minutes with Google

🤖 This recap of The Agent Factory features Logan Kilpatrick from Google DeepMind demonstrating vibe coding in Google AI Studio, a Build workflow that turns a natural-language app idea into a live prototype in under a minute. Live demos included a virtual food photographer, grounding with Google Maps, the AI Studio Gallery, and a speech-driven "Yap to App" pair programmer. The episode also surveyed agent ecosystem updates—Veo 3.1, Anthropic Skills, and Gemini improvements—and highlighted the shift from models to action-capable systems.

OpenAI Aardvark: Autonomous GPT-5 Agent for Code Security

🛡️ OpenAI Aardvark is an autonomous GPT-5-based agent that scans, analyzes and patches code by emulating a human security researcher. Rather than only flagging suspicious patterns, it maps repositories, builds contextual threat models, validates findings in sandboxes and proposes fixes via Codex, then rechecks changes to prevent regressions. OpenAI reports it found 92% of benchmark vulnerabilities and has already identified real issues in open-source projects, offering free coordinated scanning for selected non-commercial repositories.

OpenAI Unveils Aardvark: GPT-5 Agent for Code Security

🔍 OpenAI has introduced Aardvark, an agentic security researcher powered by GPT-5 that autonomously scans source code repositories to identify vulnerabilities, assess exploitability, and propose targeted patches that can be reviewed by humans. Embedded in development pipelines, the agent monitors commits and incoming changes continuously, prioritizes threats by severity and likely impact, and attempts controlled exploit verification in sandboxed environments. Using OpenAI Codex for patch generation, Aardvark is in private beta and has already contributed to the discovery of multiple CVEs in open-source projects.

Agentic AI: Reset, Business Use Cases, Tools & Lessons

🤖 Agentic AI burst into prominence with promises of streamlining operations and accelerating productivity. This Special Report assesses what's practical versus hype, examining the current state of agentic AI, the primary deployment challenges organizations face, and practical lessons from real-world success stories. It highlights business processes suited to agentic agents, criteria for evaluating development tools, and how LinkedIn built a platform. The report also outlines near-term expectations and adoption risks.

Master Multitasking with the Jules Extension for Gemini CLI

🤖 The new Jules extension for Gemini CLI lets developers delegate routine engineering tasks—like bug fixes, dependency updates, and vulnerability patches—to an autonomous background agent. Jules runs asynchronously and can work on multiple GitHub issues in parallel, preparing fixes in isolated environments for review. It also composes with other extensions to automate security remediation, crash investigation, and unit test creation, returning ready-to-review branches so you can stay focused on higher-value work.

GitHub Agent HQ: Native, Governed AI Agents in Flow

🤖 GitHub announced Agent HQ, a unified platform that makes coding agents native to the GitHub workflow. Over the coming months, partner agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Cognition, and xAI will become available as part of paid Copilot subscriptions. The release introduces a cross‑surface mission control, VS Code planning and customizable AGENTS.md files, and an enterprise control plane with governance, metrics, and code‑quality tooling to manage agent-driven work.