Oracle warned its corporate customers that there is a critical-rated vulnerability in its PeopleSoft software, which is used by large companies to manage payroll and human resources, a day after a cybercrime group took credit for abusing the flaw as part of a mass-hacking campaign.

The company published the security advisory on Thursday after the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed to have breached more than 100 organizations that use PeopleSoft servers.

Mandiant, the Google-owned security unit that investigates cyberattacks, warned in a blog post that the new Oracle flaw is the same bug that the ShinyHunters group is abusing in its hacking campaign targeting PeopleSoft customers. 

Oracle, which has not released a patch for the vulnerability at the time of writing, said in the advisory that the bug can be exploited over the internet without needing any authentication, such as a password. 

The tech giant recommended that customers who use PeopleSoft software apply its mitigations to prevent exploitation.

On Wednesday, a ShinyHunters member told TechCrunch that the gang compromised the companies by abusing an unpatched flaw in PeopleSoft servers. The bug is known as a zero-day because the company affected, in this case Oracle, had no time to fix it before it was discovered and exploited.

Mandiant confirmed that it has also notified more than “100 global organizations,” most of them in the United States, in an effort to restrict access to their potentially vulnerable systems. The cybersecurity group said that about two-thirds of these organizations are in higher education, which aligns with what ShinyHunters previously claimed.

“While several organizations successfully blocked the activity or remediated the vulnerabilities, others experienced compromise, resulting in stolen data being published on the ShinyHunters [Data Leak Website],” Mandiant wrote. 

Oracle did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. 

The ShinyHunters member told TechCrunch this week that some of the hacked organizations are universities and colleges.

The hacker shared a message they said was sent to one of the victim schools, in which the hackers claimed to have stolen “hundreds of thousands of student records containing full name, home address, phone, email, date of birth, gender, ethnicity, enrollment status, GPA, major, and student ID across all campuses,” among other data. 

PeopleSoft, and its customers, are the latest victims in a long series of hacking campaigns where the ShinyHunters gang targeted organizations that all share the same vulnerable software. 

In the last year, the group targeted several companies that use Salesforce and Gainsight, as well as software provided by education giant Instructure, and among others. 

Once the hackers identify vulnerable software and companies that use it, they try to steal corporate or customer data and then threaten to release it unless the victims pay a ransom. 

Earlier this year, education tech company Instructure said it paid the hackers after they breached the company’s systems twice. As part of the hacking campaign, ShinyHunters defaced the login pages of several schools that use Instructure’s popular school information portal Canvas.

TL;DR

Attackers brute-forced Dashlane’s 2FA system to register new devices on fewer than 20 accounts, downloading their encrypted password vaults. The vaults remain encrypted with master passwords Dashlane never stores, but users with weak passwords face offline cracking risk.

Dashlane disclosed on Sunday that an external attacker launched a brute-force attack against its two-factor authentication system, successfully bypassing 2FA protections on fewer than 20 personal plan user accounts and downloading copies of their encrypted password vaults. The attack, which began on 31 May, triggered automatic account lockouts across a wider set of targeted users as Dashlane’s security controls detected the high volume of authentication attempts.

The method was straightforward. Attackers used automated software to rapidly submit every possible numeric combination for time-based 2FA codes, attempting to guess the correct sequence before each short-lived code expired. When successful, this allowed them to register a new device on the targeted account, which in turn gave them the access required to download the user’s encrypted vault from Dashlane’s servers.

What was taken and what it means

The encrypted vaults contain the user’s stored passwords, secure notes, and other credentials, but they are encrypted with the user’s master password, which Dashlane says is never sent to its servers in plaintext. The zero-knowledge architecture means that even with a copy of the vault, an attacker cannot access its contents without the master password. Dashlane states that its vault encryption “ensures that any attempts to gain access to the vault are statistically unlikely to succeed, even over a long period of time.”

That assurance holds only if the affected users chose strong, unique master passwords. If any of the fewer than 20 users whose vaults were downloaded used weak or reused master passwords, those vaults could be cracked offline using dictionary attacks or brute-force methods. Credential stuffing attacks, which use passwords exposed in other breaches, are particularly effective against users who reuse credentials across services.

The 2FA weakness

The attack exploited a fundamental limitation of time-based one-time password (TOTP) 2FA codes: they are typically six digits, giving only one million possible combinations per 30-second window. Automated systems can submit thousands of attempts per second, and if rate limiting is insufficiently aggressive, the probability of guessing a valid code within its lifespan becomes non-trivial over many attempts.

Dashlane’s security controls detected the attack and locked affected accounts, which prevented broader compromise but caused disruption for legitimate users who found themselves locked out. The tension between security lockouts and user experience is a recurring challenge for authentication systems: aggressive lockouts stop attackers but also create denial-of-service effects for real users.

Dashlane says its investigation found no evidence that its own systems were compromised. The attack targeted user accounts externally rather than exploiting a vulnerability in Dashlane’s infrastructure.

The LastPass echo

The incident will inevitably draw comparisons to the 2022 LastPass breach, in which attackers stole encrypted password vaults belonging to millions of users. In that case, researchers later confirmed that some vaults with weak master passwords were cracked, leading to cryptocurrency thefts and other real-world harm. Law enforcement has increasingly targeted cybercriminal infrastructure, but offline vault cracking happens beyond the reach of any server-side protection.

The scale is different, fewer than 20 vaults versus millions, but the principle is identical: an encrypted vault is only as secure as the master password protecting it. Dashlane’s advice to affected users is to review registered devices, remove any unrecognised ones, enable 2FA if not already active, and, most critically, use a strong, unique master password that is long and difficult to guess.

The disclosure follows responsible security communication practices, with Dashlane publishing its advisory promptly and providing specific remediation steps. But the incident raises a broader question for the password manager industry: if 2FA can be brute-forced to register new devices, what additional authentication layers are needed to protect the most sensitive consumer security product most people use?

Password manager maker Dashlane says hackers have obtained at least a dozen encrypted vaults used for storing customer passwords during a weekend cyberattack.

The company said on its website that hackers brute-forced the company’s two-factor authentication system, granting the hackers access to about 20 customer accounts. By defeating its two-factor mechanism, the hackers were able to download a copy of certain customers’ encrypted vaults, which store their passwords and other sensitive credentials.

Dashlane said on its incident page that there was no evidence of compromise of its own systems, but it has not yet said how the hackers were able to defeat its two-factor protections in order to access customer accounts. Two-factor is a security feature that protects accounts from being accessed with just a stolen username and password, typically by requiring an additional passcode to be sent to the phone of the account holder.

“The goal of the attack was to brute-force two-factor authentication (2FA) protections to allow the attacker to register new devices on existing user accounts,” said Dashlane. The company said that attackers can use automated software to “rapidly submit every possible numeric combination to the system, hoping to guess the exact sequence before the short-lived [two-factor] security code expires.”

The company said it has “taken steps to mitigate the risk of future incidents,” without saying what those were.

Dashlane said it has notified the 20 or so customers whose encrypted vaults were stolen. It’s not yet clear if the specific customers were targeted for a reason, such as because of who they are or what they do for a living.

Spokespeople for Dashlane did not respond to a request for comment. The company has not said if it knows who targeted its customers, or if the hackers contacted Dashlane with demands, such as a ransom.

The stolen vaults are scrambled and cannot be read without the customer’s master password, which is only known by the customer and is not uploaded to Dashlane in plaintext, the company’s website says. But Dashlane said that customers with an easily guessed master password may be at greater risk of having it guessed and their password vaults decrypted.

Data breaches affecting password manager companies are rare, but can have lasting consequences.

In 2022, LastPass confirmed that customer password vault backups were stolen during a cyberattack. While the vaults were protected with passwords only known to the customer, the password requirements for early customers were far weaker than the later standard, allowing hackers to brute-force and easily guess the passwords of some customers’ vaults. There have been several reports of hackers stealing vast amounts of customers’ crypto, likely by using private keys stored in stolen LastPass vaults that had their master passwords cracked following the breach.

A year earlier, Australian software house Click Studios warned all of its customers who use its flagship password manager, Passwordstate, to “reset all credentials” after hackers compromised its software update mechanism to plant malware on customer systems.

Instagram has fixed a scary security flaw that allowed hackers to take over accounts using Meta’s own AI support chatbot. The issue came to light over the weekend, when multiple users on Reddit and X reported that their accounts had been compromised. 

Even my Instagram account got hacked

The password got changed without my knowledge and I was getting different password reset attempts throughout yesterday. And I got repeatedly logged out from the IG iOS app

Quite concerning https://t.co/F6wjKYrlBo

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 1, 2026

As reported by TechCrunch, security researcher Jane Wong was also among those affected. “The password got changed without my knowledge, and I was getting different password reset attempts throughout yesterday,” she said. “Quite concerning.”

How did the hack work?

A video posted on X showed the entire process, and it’s alarming in how simple it was. The hacker first used a VPN to spoof the location, bypassing Instagram’s automated account protections. Then, they opened a chat with Meta’s AI Support Assistant and simply asked the bot to add a new email address to the target’s account.

Instagram had an exploit that allowed you to use Meta AI to reset passwords to accounts with no MFA on them. The exploit was patched a short time ago.pic.twitter.com/PEUwLvmllj

— Dark Web Informer (@DarkWebInformer) June 1, 2026

Here’s where it gets wild. The chatbot sent a verification code to the hacker’s email, not the victim’s. The hacker shared the code back with the chatbot, which then offered a button to reset the password. That’s how easy it was to take over the account of anyone on Instagram. 

TechCrunch verified that the hacker’s public email mailbox did receive the verification code, confirming the attack worked exactly as shown.

Is your account at risk?

The scariest part of this attack is that the hacker never needed access to the victim’s real email address at any point. The entire process bypassed the actual account owner completely.

Instagram spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed on Monday that the issue has now been fixed. However, it remains unclear how many users had their accounts compromised before the patch. So, the good news is that you don’t have to worry about this issue anymore.

The state of AI in support

The rising prices of consumer electronics, the growing ease with which fraudsters can deceive people, and the challenges universities face as students use AI to cheat are just some examples of how AI has made our lives worse.

For me, the most annoying application of AI is in support chats. I recently ordered dinner, which was delayed. The AI support chat didn’t let me talk to a human for about two hours, repeatedly telling me that the food would arrive in the next 10 minutes. 

Before this was implemented, any query I had was resolved in minutes by a human customer service agent. Meta’s AI support chatbot is yet another example of how allowing AI in customer service is creating unnecessary stress for users.

Instagram has resolved a security issue that allowed several users’ accounts to get hacked. The attack appeared to rely on tricking Meta’s own AI-powered support chatbot into granting access to a victim’s account.

Over the weekend, several users on Reddit claimed that their Instagram accounts had been compromised, and a number of users on X warned of similar account hijackings. The compromised accounts include the Instagram handle for the Obama-era White House, which appears to have been inactive since 2017; and the account of the U.S. Space Force’s chief master sergeant John Bentivegna.

Security researcher Jane Wong said her Instagram account was also taken over. 

“The password got changed without my knowledge and I was getting different password reset attempts throughout yesterday,” said Wong. “Quite concerning.” 

A video posted on X showed the step-by-step process to hack someone’s Instagram account. The hacker allegedly used a VPN to spoof the targets’ presumed location to avoid triggering Instagram’s automated account protections. Then, the hacker opened a chat with Meta AI Support Assistant and asked the bot to add a new email address to the target’s account. The chatbot can be seen sending a verification code to the email address provided by the hacker; the hacker then shares the verification code with the chatbot, which prompts the chatbot to show a button to “Reset Password.” The hacker enters a new password and takes over the victim’s account. 

TechCrunch was able to verify that the hacker’s public email mailbox, which was displayed in the video, effectively received the verification code. 

The attack relied on the fact that at no point the hacker had to take over the legitimate email address linked to the victims’ Instagram account. 

On Monday, Instagram spokesperson Andy Stone said in a reply to Wong’s post and others that the issue was now fixed. It’s unclear how many Instagram users had their accounts improperly accessed.

Meta did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

Hackers hijacked Instagram accounts over the weekend by tricking Meta’s own AI-powered support chatbot into granting them access. The attack required no access to the victim’s email, no phishing link, and no malware. The hacker simply asked the chatbot to add a new email address to someone else’s account.

A video posted on X showed the step-by-step process. The hacker used a VPN to spoof the target’s presumed location, avoiding Instagram’s automated account protections. They then opened a chat with Meta AI Support Assistant and asked the bot to add a new email address to the target’s account.

The chatbot sent a verification code to the hacker’s email address. The hacker shared the code back with the chatbot. The bot then displayed a “Reset Password” button. The hacker entered a new password and took over the account.

At no point did the hacker need to access the legitimate email address linked to the victim’s Instagram account. TechCrunch verified that the hacker’s public email mailbox, displayed in the video, received the verification code. The attack exploited a fundamental flaw: the AI chatbot treated the person it was talking to as the account owner without verifying their identity.

The compromised accounts included the Obama-era White House Instagram handle, which had been inactive since 2017, and the account of US Space Force Chief Master Sergeant John Bentivegna. Security researcher Jane Wong said her account was also taken over.

“The password got changed without my knowledge and I was getting different password reset attempts throughout yesterday,” Wong said. “Quite concerning.” Multiple users on Reddit and X reported similar hijackings over the same weekend.

Instagram spokesperson Andy Stone said on Monday that the issue was fixed. It is unclear how many accounts were compromised. Meta did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

The attack is a textbook example of why deploying AI chatbots with account-level permissions is dangerous. Salesforce’s Agentforce customers have been reluctant to let AI agents take financially meaningful actions precisely because of this risk. Analyst Rebecca Wettemann described the fear as “the AI running off in the middle of the night and refunding a bunch of transactions.” Meta gave its AI the ability to reset passwords, and the AI did exactly what it was asked to do, for the wrong person.

The AI agent security landscape is producing new categories of vulnerability faster than companies can address them. OpenClaw’s Claw Chain exploit weaponised an agent’s own sandbox privileges. This Instagram attack weaponised an AI support bot’s account management privileges. The common thread: when an AI agent has the authority to act, the security of the system depends entirely on whether the agent can verify who is asking it to act.

The Meta AI Support Assistant was designed to reduce the cost of human customer service. It succeeded at that. It also created an attack surface that human support agents would not have: a human agent would have verified the caller’s identity before adding a new email to an account. The chatbot did not.

This is the third high-profile AI deployment failure in a single week. Starbucks scrapped its AI inventory system after nine months of miscounts. Waymo’s flood recall failed within two weeks. Meta’s AI chatbot gave hackers the keys to Instagram accounts. The pattern is consistent: AI systems deployed at scale fail in ways their designers did not anticipate, and the failures are more consequential than the efficiencies they were built to deliver.