Across IEEE, our strength lies not only in the excellence of our individual communities but also in our ability to bring them together around shared problems that demand interdisciplinary solutions. Our mission as a public charity—to advance technology for the benefit of humanity—is becoming an increasingly powerful differentiator. It is more than a statement of principle; it is a strategic advantage. When engineers and technologists serve with purpose and lead with heart, they strengthen the future of our profession and demonstrate why IEEE is uniquely positioned to lead at the intersection of technology and societal impact.

IEEE Humanitarian Technologies is a consortium of programs and initiatives—supported by a global network of volunteers and technical professionals—working together to apply technology to solve the world’s most pressing problems. These include Empower a Billion Lives, EPICSinIEEE, MOVE, IEEE REACH, IEEE SIGHT, IEEE Smart Village, and IEEE Tech4Good. These programs embody our mission in action. They are not simply charitable activities; they are strategic assets that help IEEE lead globally, innovate boldly, and remain essential to technical professionals at every stage of their careers. While deeply human in purpose, humanitarian technologies are fundamentally engineering challenges, demanding the full depth of engineering rigor and realized through disciplined, deeply technical work.

Cultivating Technical Leaders

IEEE Humanitarian Technologies sits at the intersection of engineering excellence, societal need, and global opportunity. Its programs allow our members to show the world that engineering and technology are forces for good, capable of addressing urgent challenges with precision, creativity, and compassion. These programs do more than inspire; they strengthen the technical ecosystem that underpins IEEE’s leadership.

Bringing together experts from power and energy, communications, computing, robotics, biomedical engineering, and many other domains to address real-world problems, these interdisciplinary intersections are where breakthroughs emerge. When engineers and technologists collaborate with the right humanitarian frameworks across sectors and cultures, they illuminate new constraints, design pathways, and opportunities that traditional project environments rarely reveal. This is how humanitarian technologies help shape the future of engineering itself.

These efforts also illustrate a broader opportunity for IEEE. By identifying critical challenges that can be addressed only through collaboration across disciplines, IEEE can mobilize the power of its global community toward solving problems around the world. In doing so, we strengthen both our impact on society and the value we provide to members, partners, and future generations.

These programs also build the leadership capacity our profession needs. Engineers working in humanitarian contexts learn to navigate ambiguity, engage diverse stakeholders, manage constraints, and design for environments where failure has real human consequences. They develop systems thinking, ethical reasoning, and cross‑cultural fluency—competencies increasingly essential in a world where technology and society are deeply intertwined. They also learn to transition from R&D to implementation by engineering the support, manufacturing, and delivery systems that make solutions viable in specific countries, all while balancing competing requirements. In doing so, humanitarian programs equip professionals with the capabilities that define modern technical practice.

Humanitarian technologies also help prepare the future technical workforce. Students and young professionals increasingly seek meaningful, high‑impact work. By engaging in purpose‑driven projects, they can discover their own capacity to grow, strengthen their technical skills, and become the leaders and problem‑solvers who will guide our profession forward.

Purpose Inspires Engagement

Our members feel this deeply. Engagement research shows that members increasingly cited “giving back to my profession and the world community” as a reason for joining the organization and renewing their membership. Those with higher membership grades identify “participation in humanitarian technology efforts” as one of the most satisfying experiences IEEE offers. These are not just data points; they are also signals of what our community values and what it expects IEEE to champion.

Younger generations amplify this even more. Millennials view IEEE through a global lens, prioritizing “humanitarian impact” and “large-scale collaboration.” One millennial member shared that teaching robotics to children in under-resourced communities transformed them into a deeply engaged member. Gen Z members emphasize inclusivity, environmental responsibility, and purpose-driven engineering, recommending that IEEE offer humanitarian-based challenges and competitions to increase engagement.

These findings reveal something powerful: Humanitarian programs are not only meaningful; they also are magnetic. They attract younger engineers, keep them engaged, and help them build a professional identity rooted in purpose and impact. They also create loyalty and develop the leadership pipeline IEEE needs for the decades ahead.

These programs also strengthen our brand. Members across segments describe IEEE as an organization that works hard to make real changes in the world. That perception is not just flattering, it is strategic. It positions IEEE as a global leader in responsible innovation that can be trusted to guide technology for the public good, catalyzing innovation that benefits society at scale.

As we look ahead, IEEE has an opportunity to become the world’s leading convening force for developing interdisciplinary technology solutions to solve humanity’s most important challenges. Our future relevance will be defined not only by the technologies we advance but also by the problems we choose to help solve.

Read more powerful stories about how technology is improving lives across global initiatives in the 2025 IEEE Social Impact Report at ieee.org/advancing-technology/building-better-world/social-impact-report.

—MARY ELLEN RANDALL

IEEE president and CEO

Please share your thoughts with me: president@ieee.org.

security

Unauthenticated intruders can mint admin tokens, and exposed servers are already being hit

Security researchers reported that someone is exploiting CVE-2026-82329, a critical JFrog Artifactory authentication-bypass bug, just days after the vendor patched the 9.8-rated flaw. And we don’t know if that someone is human.

Artifactory is a widely used tool for managing software artifacts, packages, binaries, and AI models. It’s also popular with AI agents that go rogue and need to communicate with each other while remaining undetected by their human babysitters.

In July, OpenAI and JFrog revealed that OpenAI’s models broke out of their cages to hack Hugging Face by exploiting Artifactory zero-days, and at Black Hat, the model provider said agents used Artifactory to build message boards and help each other access the open internet.

JFrog disclosed CVE-2026-82329 on Friday, and by Tuesday, attackers had already begun exploiting internet-exposed systems, according to exposure-management biz watchTowr’s threat-intel team, which reported “attackers minting themselves admin tokens.” 

In addition to creating new administrative credentials, watchTowr’s honeypot network caught miscreants “enumerating users, groups, credential sets and federated access topologies,” Yordan Ganchev, principal threat intelligence specialist at watchTowr, told The Register.

“Right now, we’re observing exploitation from a small number of IP addresses from varying geographies exploiting multiple of our honeypots,” Ganchev said. “Broad-scale scanning and mass exploitation has not been observed, but that is unlikely to stay the case for long.”

Ganchev urged organizations running vulnerable versions to “urgently patch” internet-exposed systems, and treat them as being potentially compromised – so inspect audit logs, rotate credentials, and investigate connected systems for any unusual changes or backdoor implants.

“When attackers gain admin level access to a central software supply chain system, they can do what every engineering team does best – build, ship and distribute software fast,” he said. “From there, they could tamper with build pipelines, move laterally into production systems and potentially push malicious changes downstream to customers.”

JFrog did not immediately respond to The Register’s inquiries. We will update this story when we receive any response. ®

• X-Bow received nearly $11 million under a new interceptor development contract
• The new interceptor system targets a cost below $750,000 per launch
• Patriot missiles currently cost roughly one-fifth more than this new target

The Pentagon has awarded X-Bow Systems almost $11 million to develop a lower-cost interceptor system under a missile defense program.

The project falls under the Missile Defense Agency’s Rapid Response Small Launcher Technology program and seeks to create a weapon that could cost below $750,000 per launch.

• Anthropic wants AI agents to control programmable machines through common software rules
• Model Hardware Standard (MHS) can connect microscopes, robotic arms, and liquid handling equipment
• MHS allows different laboratory devices to communicate through standardized software drivers

Anthropic opened a preview of its Model Hardware Standard (MHS), designed to let AI agents control programmable machines through shared rules.

The proposed system is intended for laboratories, factories, and workplaces where different instruments must work together without custom software links.

Phishing actors are abusing the legitimate Faronics Deploy endpoint-management platform to gain remote administrative control over victim computers and install the ScreenConnect remote support software.

In activity observed between July 21 and August 20, Faronics-themed lures reached more than 457 endpoints via emails disguised as invoices, tax documents, or other business files.

Faronics Deploy is a cloud-based endpoint management platform that allows IT administrators to remotely enroll and manage computers, deploy software, and execute scripts.

Researchers at managed detection and response company (MDR) Huntress say that the embedded malicious links lead to a website that profiles potential targets and guides them through a malicious download flow.

If the website is reached from an analysis environment, a decoy routine is activated, such as displaying an error message.

Huntress explains that a potential victim is prompted to download and launch a legitimate, signed Faronics Deploy installer that is disguised as an Adobe document, a reader app, or a plugin update.

When the victim runs the Faronics installer, often named ‘Adobe.exe,’ their computer is enrolled in a Faronics deployment controlled by the attackers.

The threat actor then uses Faronics’ remote-deployment functionality to execute PowerShell scripts on the enrolled computer without further user interaction.

These scripts download additional tools from the attacker’s infrastructure or external locations, including GitHub, eventually installing another legitimate remote access tool, ConnectWise ScreenConnect.

“The delivery method varies between scripts, with observed examples using curl or mshta to retrieve additional content, while others invoke msiexec to install payloads hosted on attacker-controlled infrastructure,” Huntress says.

“These scripts are subsequently used to install ScreenConnect, establishing an additional remote access mechanism on the compromised endpoint.”

ScreenConnect gives attackers an additional remote-access channel independent of Faronics, providing hands-on remote control better suited to interactive access while also serving as redundancy if the malicious Faronics deployment is identified and terminated, or if defenders remove its agent.

Huntress notified Faronics of its findings on August 5, and the vendor confirmed the observed malicious activity, countering it by implementing additional anti-abuse measures.

Moreover, Faronics has contacted victimized organizations to notify them about potential compromise.

According to Huntress, the malicious activity dropped significantly starting August 21, indicating that Faronics’ actions worked.

Huntress recommends that administrators check the “C:\ProgramData\Faronics\Logs\” location for a ScriptRunner.log file, which may preserve remotely executed script names and download URLs.

The company says that the ck parameter in Faronics configuration requests is also an indicator, as it identifies the associated customer deployment and can help identify compromised endpoints or malicious accounts.

Administrators should also look for ScreenConnect installations where it is not normally deployed.

Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.

The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.

Get the report