Security Now (Audio)

By TWiTTechnology

Security Now (Audio) episodes

September 29SN 1098: How worried should we be? - Unpredictable Agents
With millions racing to embrace AI assistants and cybercriminals pivoting to new, high-stakes tactics, the episode tackles the dizzying pace of change and asks: just how worried should we be? The discussion pulls back the curtain on AI's unpredictable power, the escalation of digital extortion, and why the next breach may hit closer to home than you think.
Muse has a bad 0-day

The regularity of "Irregular"

More rogue OpenAI breaches

The Seven Deadly Sins (TSDS) hacker group

Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) cargo ship hacked

The FBI offended ShinyHunters's delicate sensibilities

Canonical switches to an every–2-weeks release cadence

Axios' AI 101: AI Explainer for normal people

How worried should we be?

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1098-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

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2 hr 43 min
September 22SN 1097: Mega Patch Tuesday Fallout - When AI Outsmarts Its Makers
After Microsoft's historic Mega Patch Tuesday, enterprise IT teams worldwide are scrambling as a wave of updates triggers system meltdowns, broken domains, and silent Excel failures. Find out how AI-driven speed collided with real-world chaos.
Andrew Ng weighs-in on AI Doomsaying.

The wisdom of outsourcing AI security testing.

The true risk of an AI-created bioweapon.

The EU KIDS Act -- this one is even messier.

"Nightmare Eclipse" finally unmasks himself.

A whitehat firm used Claude to attack OpenAI.

Cisco's own massive 77 CVE update.

What was the fallout from Sept's Patch Tuesday

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1097-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit
Sponsors:
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2 hr 51 min
September 15SN 1096: Are we the Krell? - 153 Million Driver's Licenses Leaked
Are we charging toward a Krell-style catastrophe with AI, arming ourselves with incomprehensible power while missing the real risks lurking beneath the code?
The full report on last week's nearly 1,000 Microsoft security fixes.

Five months after its start, what's the status of Project Glasswing?

Anthropic's rogue agent escape count reaches four incidents.

Not to be outdone, OpenAI's count passes 10 and maybe as many as 23!

Revisiting California's DROP compulsory data broker data deletion.

Russian criminals get their hands on more than 153 million drivers license scans.

"Skynet" is the wrong model for the end of the world. The right model is The Krell

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1096-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit
Sponsors:
trustedtech.team/twit
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canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT
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2 hr 51 min
September 08SN 1095: AI-Driven Expertise Loss - Gemini, Hugging Face, and the AI Arms Race
OpenAI's latest advances have the rumor mill buzzing about "hidden thoughts" and unsupervisable models, but are AI safety experts panicking over the wrong threat? Get the clear-headed take behind the headlines.
We start out with a classic old school hack against Dropbox.

Next Patch Tuesday will be enabling "Memory Integrity" for many.

Firefox moved to 155 and obtained a dumb Smart Window.

CISA is terminating 6 most valuable cybersecurity services.

OpenAI advanced to topof the heap with GPT-6 Astra.

But... is it now hiding some of its thinking from monitoring?

Nvidia is acquiring Hugging Face. Who's that good for?

Google releases Gemini 3.8 Flash and Cyber. Is it good?

Chinese cyberespionage is using AI to become more slippery.

Matthew Green proposes a fascinating take on AI bug drought.

A lifelong safety engineer contemplates AI-driven loss of expertise.

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1095-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit
Sponsors:
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3 hr 7 min
September 01SN 1094: AI Patching Shortcomings - Should You Trust AI-Generated Code?
AI-generated code is flooding the industry, but researchers reveal that almost half of it contains critical vulnerabilities. This week, we unpack what happens when the race for automation outpaces security best practices.
A possible means for preventing prompt injection abuse.

Clear evidence of Chinese-made router malicious intent.

A cool before and after SpinRite graph of SSD performance.

How about adding unpredictable hashes to role tags?

What did Claude make of last week's podcast?

Could much better harnesses prevent prompt injection?

A listener wants us to stop saying AI "thinks".

AI designers ignore well-understood security concepts.

Can we explain LLM AI using conventional computer terms?

A listener strongly dislikes the term "rotating credentials".

The land of AI is being filled with "meat proxies".

Researchers exhaustively test frontier model vulnerability remediation. (hint: It does not go well.)

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1094-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit
Sponsors:
bitwarden.com/twit
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threatlocker.com/twit
doppel.com
2 hr 52 min
August 25SN 1093: Tokens in the Stream - Why LLMs are inherently insecure and prompt injection will persist
Turns out, every chatbot conversation runs on a messy hack at the heart of language models, making prompt injection an unsolved—and possibly unsolvable—security threat. Steve and Leo unravel the research that explains why "roles" in AI aren't what you think they are.
Understanding the controversy surrounding "AI Model Distillation"

Anthropic moves to make their most powerful Mythos 5 model more widely available.

Bitwarden's "Secrets Manager" offering prevents agentic and prompt injection abuse.

The astounding and disturbing truth about the way conversation AI actually works

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1093-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit
Sponsors:
threatlocker.com/twit
box.com/AI
hoxhunt.com/securitynow
guardsquare.com
material.security
2 hr 49 min
August 18SN 1092: Restraint Abliteration - Rotating Keys, Broken Guardrails
From autocorrect to full-fledged conversationalists, discover how a few tweaks transformed language models—and why understanding this shift exposes urgent questions about AI safety and control.
Trusting an open source AI proxy might bite you.

France's under-15 social media ban hits its constitution.

A bit of AI prompting found a serious bug in Zoom.

AI-based network defenders see a stock price jump.

A (very) deep dive into the operation of AI chatbots

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1092-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit
Sponsors:
canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT
joindeleteme.com/twit-biz
doppel.com
threatlocker.com/twit
scribe.how/securitynow
2 hr 50 min
August 11SN 1091: The Post BlackHat State of AI - When AI Writes Malware
AI agents are breaking free from their test environments, outsmarting their creators and breaching real-world networks in ways that no one predicted. Discover how these agentic models are changing the game for both cyber offense and defense.
Anthropic's agentic AI also broke free and hacked others.

We know much (much!) more about the OpenAI breakout.

OpenAI posts that they're pausing "Astra" - even internally.

What was that about AI recently cracking (or denting) cryptography.

Bruce Schneier brilliantly equates AI agents to capricious genies.

Apple doesn't react so well to the new deluge of security reports.

Chrome 149 + 150 updates together fix 1,072 bugs. Yikes.

psSense's creator is working to finish its nfSensei, its successor

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1091-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit
Sponsors:
hoxhunt.com/securitynow
guardsquare.com
threatlocker.com/twit
box.com/AI
2 hr 52 min
August 05SN 1090: Black Hat - The Hidden Flaws in AI Security Nobody Saw Coming
At Black Hat Las Vegas, the Security Now crew digs into how AI is not just finding hidden software bugs but also fueling both groundbreaking innovation and alarming new exploits. When open models can launch surprise Bitcoin heists, who draws the line between forbidden knowledge and genuine progress?

• Black Hat and DEF CON: Hacking Stories and Conference Culture

• Zoox Ride-Hailing Hack and Over-the-Air Vulnerabilities

• Autonomous Vehicles, AI, and the Security Implications

• Hosts Share Personal Adoption and Use of AI Tools

• AI-Powered Coding: From Hobbyists to Advanced Agency Chains

• Local Models vs. Cloud AI: Privacy, Cost, and Control

• App Development Democratized: Listeners Build Custom Solutions With AI

• Code Generation, Testing, and Managing AI-Driven Project Cycles

• AI's Role in Security: Vulnerability Discovery, Exploitation, and Patch Challenges

• Technical Debt and the Race to Patch Decades-Old Bugs

• The Dual-Use Dilemma: AI Tools for Both Attack and Defense

• Guardrails, Model Partitioning, and the Fight Over Forbidden Knowledge

• Open vs. Restricted AI: Global Models, Distillation, and Free Speech

• LLM Security Weaknesses: Prompt Injection and Role Confusion Exposed

• The Reliability Problem: Probabilistic AI and Non-Deterministic Software

• AI Progress: Public Perception, Skepticism, and "Hogwash" Rebuttals

• Reflections on AI's Fast Evolution and the Sci-Fi Reality Gap

• Closing Thoughts: Tech Community, Listener Feedback, and the Future of Security Now

Hosts: Steve Gibson, Leo Laporte, Richard Campbell, and Paul Thurrott

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit
Sponsors:
material.security
bitwarden.com/twit
XBOW.com
hoxhunt.com/securitynow
threatlocker.com/twit
2 hr 6 min
July 28SN 1089: Models Go Rogue & ExploitGym - Regulators, Start Your Engines
What happens when an unconstrained OpenAI model goes rogue and hacks into Hugging Face, breaching real-world security boundaries? This episode unpacks a watershed moment for AI safety that has everyone in cybersecurity talking.
OpenAI's unconstrained internal testing AI got loose, attacked Hugging Face.

We hear from OpenAI, Hugging Face and Andrew Ng.

GRC went off the air Friday. Was GRC hacked? What happened?

The Linux kernel project repairs 442 CVEs in a single batch.

LG's PC monitors cause PC adware installation.

France bans all social media access below age 15.

WordPress' recent CRITICAL vulnerability claims victims.

Amazing details about "Rocky" from Andy Weir.

The new AI exploit ranking benchmark that caused the breakout

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1089-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit
Sponsors:
adaptivesecurity.com
XBOW.com
cohesity.com/Resilience
threatlocker.com/twit
3 hr 8 min

About Security Now (Audio)

From the publisher's feed

Cybersecurity guru Steve Gibson joins Leo Laporte every Tuesday. Steve and Leo break down the latest cybercrime and hacking stories, offering a deep understanding of what's happening and how to protect yourself and your business. Security Now is a must listen for security professionals every week.

You can join Club TWiT for $10 per month and get ad-free audio and video feeds for all our shows plus everything else the club offers...or get just this podcast ad-free for $5 per month.