"AI is giving attackers a huge advantage!"
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@cR0w @jackryder Asbestos in brake pads and lead in paint did improve the product though. If they weren't so horriffic to human health, we would still be using them. Conversely, I've yet to see an instance where AI has actually improved anything. At best it lets people who are mediocre at their jobs output a higher quantity of mediocre work.
@Mustardfacial @jackryder That's completely fair.
At best it lets people who are mediocre at their jobs output a higher quantity of mediocre work.
But that is the "benefit" as seen by so so many people.
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@cR0w @jackryder Asbestos in brake pads and lead in paint did improve the product though. If they weren't so horriffic to human health, we would still be using them. Conversely, I've yet to see an instance where AI has actually improved anything. At best it lets people who are mediocre at their jobs output a higher quantity of mediocre work.
@Mustardfacial @cR0w @jackryder exactly this. And they also were not DIRECTLY harmful. Asbestos wrapped around pipes is totally safe, UNTIL you disturb it or it starts breaking up into fibers. Lead paint is safe as long as it isn't crumbling because the lead content is fully contained.
Slop is immediately harmful for no benefit. There is no safe state. It only APPEARS to increase mediocre output when in fact it only increases DEFECTIVE output.
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"AI is giving attackers a huge advantage!"
"Yes, it is. It's amazing how quickly it has destroyed dev, sec, ops, management, company missions and priorities, regulations, information literacy, and civil society, making everyone more vulnerable."
@cR0w
It briefly amazed me, now it just dismays me. I work for the government. Almost all our management and about half the devs are all-in for AI. I'm older and more sceptical. I've seen a few silver bullets fly by in the past, and I don't have much desire to rearrange my job to prompting, reviewing, and hoping the AI code turns out okay. I should be able to hold out until retirement, but younger folks don't have that luxury. -
"AI is giving attackers a huge advantage!"
"Yes, it is. It's amazing how quickly it has destroyed dev, sec, ops, management, company missions and priorities, regulations, information literacy, and civil society, making everyone more vulnerable."
@cR0w Until recently I worked somewhere that was pressuring developers into using the AI tools it was paying for.
One feature of working for that company was its "security" - pretty well anything you tried to do ran into some roadblock or other because "security".
So I asked the AI: "How do I get round this 'security' feature?"
And instead of reporting me to security it actually gave me an answer. Which, in the nature of code generated by AI, didn't actually work, but it gave me a clue as to how to come up with something that did.
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@Mustardfacial @jackryder That's completely fair.
At best it lets people who are mediocre at their jobs output a higher quantity of mediocre work.
But that is the "benefit" as seen by so so many people.
@cR0w @Mustardfacial Yup
and it gives them the justification they need. -
@Mustardfacial @cR0w @jackryder exactly this. And they also were not DIRECTLY harmful. Asbestos wrapped around pipes is totally safe, UNTIL you disturb it or it starts breaking up into fibers. Lead paint is safe as long as it isn't crumbling because the lead content is fully contained.
Slop is immediately harmful for no benefit. There is no safe state. It only APPEARS to increase mediocre output when in fact it only increases DEFECTIVE output.
@rootwyrm @cR0w @jackryder Asbestos was directly harmful to the people producing the sheets that you wrapped around pipes, lead in the paint was directly harmful to the people producing the paint. It was awful to the factory workers themselves more than to the average consumer.
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@Mustardfacial @jackryder That's completely fair.
At best it lets people who are mediocre at their jobs output a higher quantity of mediocre work.
But that is the "benefit" as seen by so so many people.
@cR0w @jackryder
But that is the "benefit" as seen by so so many people.This is unfortunately the truth.
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@rootwyrm @cR0w @jackryder Asbestos was directly harmful to the people producing the sheets that you wrapped around pipes, lead in the paint was directly harmful to the people producing the paint. It was awful to the factory workers themselves more than to the average consumer.
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@rootwyrm @cR0w @jackryder God dammit. This is the worst fucking timeline.
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@cR0w @jackryder Asbestos in brake pads and lead in paint did improve the product though. If they weren't so horriffic to human health, we would still be using them. Conversely, I've yet to see an instance where AI has actually improved anything. At best it lets people who are mediocre at their jobs output a higher quantity of mediocre work.
I'm extremely good at what I do - belonging to that mythical home computer generation that started programming in ASM and never stopped learning how _everything_ works. To no one's surprise I'm thus working in cybersec today, partly as an ethical hacker focusing on hw/fw exploits at the really tricky low level stuff.
A few days ago I tested, for fun, having Mistral AI's Devstral-2 model do an analysis of a firmware dump of an eMMC I had just extracted from a fully proprietary ARM-based IoT device.
In a minute or so it had made the same conclusions as I would myself, nicely documented, on not just standard partitions and what they contained but also the fully custom stuff with no standard markers at all - including making "educated guesses" at the likely boundaries between headers and data, and what the data could be based on number of bits/bytes and entropy.
The question is whether you will now consider me to be mediocre.
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I'm extremely good at what I do - belonging to that mythical home computer generation that started programming in ASM and never stopped learning how _everything_ works. To no one's surprise I'm thus working in cybersec today, partly as an ethical hacker focusing on hw/fw exploits at the really tricky low level stuff.
A few days ago I tested, for fun, having Mistral AI's Devstral-2 model do an analysis of a firmware dump of an eMMC I had just extracted from a fully proprietary ARM-based IoT device.
In a minute or so it had made the same conclusions as I would myself, nicely documented, on not just standard partitions and what they contained but also the fully custom stuff with no standard markers at all - including making "educated guesses" at the likely boundaries between headers and data, and what the data could be based on number of bits/bytes and entropy.
The question is whether you will now consider me to be mediocre.
@troed @cR0w @jackryder No, you're looking for a fight.
What's that thing Socrates said? "I may be the smartest man alive because I know I don't know anything at all"Be humble bro.
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@rootwyrm @cR0w @jackryder God dammit. This is the worst fucking timeline.
@Mustardfacial @cR0w @jackryder as a subscriber to multiversal theory, I sometimes joke:
Three dimensions over, scientists are debating whether it was ethically right to kill Hitler in the cradle.
Two dimensions over has a supersoldier that punches Nazis into other dimensions.
One dimension over, scientists are debating the ethics of exiling young HIitler to another dimension.
And over here we're going 'where the fuck are all these Hitlers coming from!?' -
@troed @cR0w @jackryder No, you're looking for a fight.
What's that thing Socrates said? "I may be the smartest man alive because I know I don't know anything at all"Be humble bro.
I think the problem is with the "criti-hypes"* who believe they know better than everybody else (those "mediocres" of the world).
*) from https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/12/normal-technology/#bubble-exceptionalism
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"AI is giving attackers a huge advantage!"
"Yes, it is. It's amazing how quickly it has destroyed dev, sec, ops, management, company missions and priorities, regulations, information literacy, and civil society, making everyone more vulnerable."
@cR0w And even Western gov's are taking decisions using AI-powered chatbots that got trained with data up to the 90's it seems.
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I think the problem is with the "criti-hypes"* who believe they know better than everybody else (those "mediocres" of the world).
*) from https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/12/normal-technology/#bubble-exceptionalism
@troed @Mustardfacial @jackryder Damn, I already blocked that domain.
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I think the problem is with the "criti-hypes"* who believe they know better than everybody else (those "mediocres" of the world).
*) from https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/12/normal-technology/#bubble-exceptionalism
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"AI is giving attackers a huge advantage!"
"Yes, it is. It's amazing how quickly it has destroyed dev, sec, ops, management, company missions and priorities, regulations, information literacy, and civil society, making everyone more vulnerable."
@cR0w 2026 Cybersecurity Priority List (according to LinkedIn)
AI
AI for Security
AI Security for AI
Agentic SOC
AI-SPM
CNAPP
CWPP
CSPM
CIEM
KSPM
DSPM
ASPM
.
.
.
Patch your shit
The fucking basics -
@cR0w 2026 Cybersecurity Priority List (according to LinkedIn)
AI
AI for Security
AI Security for AI
Agentic SOC
AI-SPM
CNAPP
CWPP
CSPM
CIEM
KSPM
DSPM
ASPM
.
.
.
Patch your shit
The fucking basics@badsamurai Is asset inventory covered in "the fucking basics" or is it further down?
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@badsamurai Is asset inventory covered in "the fucking basics" or is it further down?
@cR0w I almost added but I think I blacked out
