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Israeli startup was linked to rogue AI hacks at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta

cnbc.com

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Re: Israeli startup was linked to rogue AI hacks at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta

#21

Post by phatfish »

TrotskjiIcehock wrote: post #18
samdafi wrote: post #11

The contents of the article are about Irregular hosting the testbed to prevent these kinds of incidents, which was “misconfigured.” Incompetence vs malice and all that. Would the nationality of the startup have been listed if it were Irish? I’ve already seen a few snide comments here about “God’s chosen people” and how this is “expected,” and it’s disappointing that the country’s name was included in the title to dru…

[flagged]

No one likes having to do someone else's dirty work, especially when you are funding them for the privilege.

Re: Israeli startup was linked to rogue AI hacks at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta

#22

Post by windexh8er »

alephnerd wrote: post #16
samdafi wrote: post #11

The contents of the article are about Irregular hosting the testbed to prevent these kinds of incidents, which was “misconfigured.” Incompetence vs malice and all that. Would the nationality of the startup have been listed if it were Irish? I’ve already seen a few snide comments here about “God’s chosen people” and how this is “expected,” and it’s disappointing that the country’s name was included in the title to dru…

No but for different reasons. Israeli cybersecurity startups funded by Cyberstarts such as Irregular always call out being Israeli because Cyberstarts' whole marketing shtick is making 8200, Israeli, and Cybersecurity synonymous as it helps close later rounds from larger funds. Wiz is a good example of this - only one of the founders is an 8200 alum, and their hiring was fairly diverse yet 8200 was made front and cen…

This is exactly it. For years Cyberstarts told all founders to talk about 8200 to the point where it seems like someone who only cleans toilets in 8200 will get their A-round. It's a joke.

Also Cyberstarts exits, especially for those working in their startups, have been rather shitty. Clearly they've honed in on squeezing every last penny and screwing over anyone who put in the work. I won't name names but post-BH this week I was talking to a person who is working for a Cyberstarts backed company that just got acquired. They were telling me the company was sold off for less than outstanding debt by $1M so their options were under water, yet the CEO pocketed >$10M. Also they mentioned that employees were only given short term contracts on the buyout and that they had to "find jobs" within 6 months in the acquiring org which led to his next statement that they were still selling the product on the public market but had no intention of continuing to support it after the code they wanted was migrated to a much larger platform (forced sell into this platform is the idea, not unique to the acquirer - this is happening a lot). I've seen and heard about a bunch of these startups backed by Cyberstarts that all have very similar exits and they continue to get more brazen in hosing lower level employees in the sell off. Israeli startups are often toxic anyway, but this has added an entirely new facet of enshittification on the exit.

Re: Israeli startup was linked to rogue AI hacks at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta

#23

Post by neighbor1 »

This appears to be your classic Israeli middleman company designed to siphon away data (in this case) to their state without providing any sort of real value. Blocking internet access on a computer is not worth $80 million.

In the past this then led to that country giving data to the enemies of their supposed "friends". Hopefully that doesn't happen again! ;-)

Re: Israeli startup was linked to rogue AI hacks at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta

#24

Post by ofjcihen »

neighbor1 wrote: post #23

This appears to be your classic Israeli middleman company designed to siphon away data (in this case) to their state without providing any sort of real value. Blocking internet access on a computer is not worth $80 million. In the past this then led to that country giving data to the enemies of their supposed "friends". Hopefully that doesn't happen again! ;-)

Hey now that’s disingenuous and a misrepresentation of what happened.

They didn’t block internet access.

Re: Israeli startup was linked to rogue AI hacks at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta

#25

Post by alephnerd »

windexh8er wrote: post #22
alephnerd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but for different reasons. Israeli cybersecurity startups funded by Cyberstarts such as Irregular always call out being Israeli because Cyberstarts' whole marketing shtick is making 8200, Israeli, and Cybersecurity synonymous as it helps close later rounds from larger funds. Wiz is a good example of this - only one of the founders is an 8200 alum, and their hiring was fairly diverse yet 8200 was made front and cen…

This is exactly it. For years Cyberstarts told all founders to talk about 8200 to the point where it seems like someone who only cleans toilets in 8200 will get their A-round. It's a joke. Also Cyberstarts exits, especially for those working in their startups, have been rather shitty. Clearly they've honed in on squeezing every last penny and screwing over anyone who put in the work. I won't name names but post-BH th…

It's basically an Israeli spin on YC (fit an archetype and raise later rounds based on that).

That said, Gili also likes picking younger and inexperienced founders because Cyberstarts ends up running the company in the background at the early stages, and if one of their PortCos is doing bleh, they just have one of their larger PortCos do a tuck-in acquisition (so many of Wiz's acquisitions were that).

Dazz is a great example of that - multiple companies passed on M&Aing them at the price they quoted so they got tuck-in acquired by Wiz.

Re: Israeli startup was linked to rogue AI hacks at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta

#26

Post by TrotskjiIcehock »

gruez wrote: post #19
TrotskjiIcehock wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>but Israel has joined the group of countries that taint everything they touch, much like Russia. [...] Israel seems to be working hard on becoming a pariah state. Sounds like you're agreeing with the OP that the country is being mentioned for clickbait/"israel is doing something nefarious" purposes?

Sounds like you are intentionally misunderstanding what I wrote?
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