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Comments (82)

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  archi42
  Zzzzz, we should have gotten security right a few decades ago. But security costs money and isn't a flashy feature to attract new customers, or cuts into your margin if you're a "real" business producing stuff or offering some service. Or whatever the decision makers in Berlin were thinking when they ignored security.Yeah, we would still see hacks, but we would see less of them if security wasn't optional.Maybe the AI craze helps by forcing more decision makes to see security as imperative, and by giving us another powerful tool for our tool box.N.b.: I work in the security industry, our customers obviously want to improve their security. We've been seeing an uptick in awareness, but that's mostly due to NIS2 and other legislative efforts. Those force them to do something. AI is a curiosity for small talk to many of them.
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  sho
  > On September 22, Apple is releasing the M5 Mac Studio with 256 GB of unified memory [..] it will probably [..] enough to write this snippet of code in 3 secondsThe author has obviously never ran an LLM on a mac! In 3 seconds, it will have possibly started to think about maybe scheduling a date to contemplate the planning timeline for processing the second token in your prompt.
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  pmlnr
  Here's an idea: as a first step, simplify everything, and make sure you're aware how your stack works, and what it imports.As an example: WordPress is a horrible thing, but the core has been through so much, that it's suprisingly secure. Then plugins and themes come, and whoosh, the security is gone.We need a new KISS: keep it simple, stupid, secure.
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  simonw
  I don't think we even have a year. The current batch of LLMs are ferociously good at identifying vulnerabilities.
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  aenis
  I think we have less time and the only remaining limitation is the actual cost to run such hacking campaigns. It does not appear expensive, but is not free, and there is a LOT of things to scan for vulnerabilities.The models are already here, and one can rent a GPU cluster to run such workloads at speed - no need to play with slow local machines. I'd assume one can host the thinking at an unsuspected public cloud provider, proxy the network traffic to some botnet to evade blocking - and the only thing remaining is time and cost.I do wonder what tools exist for boring, legitimate companies to try and do the same to their own systems to find the vulnerabilities before the bad guys do. The paradox here is I can't run a de-restricted chinese model with the same tools that hackers are using - but I think enterprises actually HAVE to do it in order to stand a chance in preparing for the onslaught.
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  hypfer
  > This probably sounds like nonsense words or hysterical overreacting to most people, so here's what that means: "GLM" is a kind of LLM (AI) [...]The post also sounds like that to people that understand the technology.Calling that out like this and trying to pin that assessment to lack of knowledge is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, nor a good move.__Edit: Having spent some time letting the article marinate in my mind.On the defending side, it is written that> LLMs are good at writing patches, but not as one-off-prompts.But this for me kinda conflicts with what is written on the attacking side:> GLM 5.3-flash is so good at those tasks that human involvement in those tasks can be negligible. As a result, we are now in a world where cybersecurity attacks can be run in a for loop.What is it? Can it be this autonomous terrifying entity or can it not be?Yes, yes, attackers only need to win once, whereas defenders need to win every time, but that's not my point.
• andy_ppp
  Not sure, the labs will probably just cripple the security features of these models for a while I think and even potentially put back doors into systems for the security services…
• zkmon
  The standard strategy of a security salesman since 1945. Develop dangerous weapons, show the damage they can do, and sell security cover to the terrified people.Every single piece of technology did this. As a side effect or direct effect, they make bad guys more powerful and then keep on piling up new tech to deal with that. The cycle continues.
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  ma2kx
  I don't see much hope since I last explored some github repositories. There was a time when a successful repo had about 10 - 20k stars and usually those older repos stay around this level. But now there is a ton of vibe coded slop 50k + stars. Most of them have a "nice look", maybe even extensive docs but are usually build with no security considerations at all. One recommended to provide a "google app password" to the agent which has the same permissions as your regular login. Another was a browser plugin with permissions to read all cookies, inject js, open background tabs etc. You would probably assume the chrome store would at least put some visible warnings on the app store page or force the user to actively confirm those permissions. But because they are already stated in the manifest there is only a small footnote and it's even "recommended by google".
• the_arun
  How to secure our identity layers(AuthN & AuthZ)? Let alone the products.
• petesergeant
  Mmm, a world where a defender-LLM is essentially required is great news for people selling inference.
• gherkinnn
  The title reads like a Diary of a CEO thumbnail but unlike those discussions this article has a point.Impotent slop code on one side and potent automated vulnerability exploitation on the other will lead to fun times.
• chris_wot
  More tired “don’t use C or C++” advise.
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  protocolture
  Just like Cryptolocker, this will be the "Finding Out" phase for everyone who has been putting off best practice security.But, lets be clear, Best Practice will save you. We can engineer assuming there are zero days in path. Go to your CTO now cap in hand and ask for overlapping controls, wafs, application monitoring, backups and all the other shit you haven't been doing.Because when you find out, I will laugh, it will be very very very funny to me.
• acedTrex
  Maybe all these vital infrastructure companies should not have spent the past decades in a race to the bottom of cybersecurity. There is going to be a reckoning.
• jf
  Another similar issue, with similar consequences and timeline, is Post Quantum Cryptography.
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  LoganDark
  It's just the same advice as ever: be extremely, exceedingly careful in what you expose to any network. When I set up machines for production, they don't respond to pings and they don't even have an SSH port open without knocking. There are also ways to eschew the need for an SSH port entirely.People who never took that seriously will never take this seriously either, and that's their loss. (And loss of the commons, unfortunately.)There's just also new advice: you can't afford to expose an unsecured system to the internet even for a moment. Think of those IPv4 address space scanners, except this time any one of them could be capable of developing individualized attacks in mere minutes. They don't sleep, they don't take breaks.
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  dbdr
  > Invest in formal verification, fuzzing and property testing, and memory-safe languages. LLMs are good at writing Lean and fuzz tests. I don't care whether you use Go or Rust but for the love of god please don't use C or C++ for new code.How accepted is this thinking in your respective domains?
• techpression
  Remember how GLM 5.3 was going to cause massive hacks, break banks and ruin everything (it was even newsworthy since media picked up how people were working overtime in preparation).And yet here we are.
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  uecker
  [flagged]
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  hn_submit
  Or we could just dump Linux and Windows and switch to a microkernel operating system, which is much more secure.These endless patching cycles are simply not going to work in the long run. Operating systems get orphaned all the time, especially the ones in cheap Chinese stuff.