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We have a year to fix security everywhere

jyn.dev

221–230 of 373 posts

Re: We have a year to fix security everywhere

#221

I'm confused why the worry about LLMs that will answer "how do I build a pipe bomb". That information is easily available other places. The anarchist cookbook has been around and available for 55 years, and yet pipe bombs are not going off all around us.

Any sufficiently determined individual can buy mac mini, put it under their bed, configure outside proxy via some random internet address and prompt "iterate on websites in the CT logs, one by one, try to find vulnerabilities, if you did - encrypt their data and blackmail them for this bitcoin address". And it'll work, day and night. Abliterated GLM 5.3 is much smarter than average software developer, they know a lot…

Wouldn't it just as easy to do this on the defense side as well then?

Re: We have a year to fix security everywhere

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always hypothesised that AI is the great filter from the Fermi paradox. Given current velocity, AI will offer us cheap and abundant energy designs in a decade. The thing with cheap and abundant energy is that it can be used for good and bad. If nine billion people all receive access to plans to build a reactor which produces unlimited energy, it just takes one religious fanatic to end the world. And this is ju…

Your implication is not horrifying. Your implication is paradise. It's already horrifying enough to live in a world, where Putin and Trump can destroy our civilization with one button. I'm not that optimistic, though. Either people will control AI; or people will be destroyed by AI. I don't see how dumb entity can align smart entity. And we are dumb ones. Super intelligence will play aligned until it is not, and then…

So you are horrified every day of living now? I don't get this at all.

There are horrifying acts that have occurred since humanity. Whole decades lost to war an millions dead, and Sep 8, 2026 is your example of "horrifying enough to live in a world"?

I think some perspective is needed.

Re: We have a year to fix security everywhere

#223
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason is simple - nothing really bad has happened that we can point at and say "ah, shit, let's all learn collectively". I know it sounds naive when I say it, but there hasn't been a significantly consequential hack, leak, destruction, or anything related to cybersecurity where it led for concerns of people. How consequential does a hack need to be? Troy has collected literally billions of stolen credentials.…

People aren't that lazy. The organizations getting hacked by ransomware aren't particularly lazy, they're often pretty productive within their domain. Hospitals, airports, etc. The actual problem is that computer security is a black hole. If you let it, it will suck in everything and destroy it. Nobody knows what works so you can spend infinite amounts of time and money on it, then still get popped by a teenager in B…

That’s not been my experience at all when working in DevSecOps.

What actually happens in organisations is they define risks and then sign off what risks they’re willing to accept.

Any business that looks at security as a binary value is running their business wrong. Period.

And yes, people really are that lazy. There are countless studies that have shown just how lazy people are. It’s why shadow IT is a big problem in many orgs. And why consumers are constantly taken advantage of

Re: We have a year to fix security everywhere

#224
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, that gets us to about where nVidia was with Ampere in 2020. Let's hope the M7 catches us up with at least Hopper.

While true, the news here is the size of the unified RAM. Nvidia only exceeded 256GB RAM in the 2025 B300 - 288GB. The B300 alone (without the baseboard/PSU/chassis/wiring/CPUs/system RAM/etc) is at least 700% more expensive. This enables large language models on consumer hardware. 1200GB/s is plenty for many tasks.

> 1200GB/s is plenty for many tasks.

This + due to the hardware being so prohibitively expensive, we're seeing software optimizations happening. Like that dflash2 stuff for example, or an LRU for MoE and all that kind of stuff.

Re: We have a year to fix security everywhere

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sufficiently determined individual can buy mac mini, put it under their bed, configure outside proxy via some random internet address and prompt "iterate on websites in the CT logs, one by one, try to find vulnerabilities, if you did - encrypt their data and blackmail them for this bitcoin address". And it'll work, day and night. Abliterated GLM 5.3 is much smarter than average software developer, they know a lot…

Wouldn't it just as easy to do this on the defense side as well then?

Yes, but the defenders need to make money to fund their work and be right every time to be effective, and have a high degree of accountability if they fail to secure stuff while attackers can be less considerate of how they spend their resources and have less accountability for the havoc they wreak while attempting to extract value.

Re: We have a year to fix security everywhere

#226
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very roundabout way of saying "Anyone not agreeing with me is simply not smart enough". Which might be true, sometimes, but also might not. And especially will not, if the distinction drawn is between blanket statement "worried about AI" and "not worried about AI".

I heard someone use the analogy of "If Magnus Carlson played me at chess, I wouldn't be able to predict the moves he'd play since if I could I'd be at his level. He'll consider things I didn't and even though I don't know the route he'll take to win, I can be certain he will beat me." (not an exact quote). We're not going to be smarter than a superintelligent AI. The things we conceive it doing if it were given a mal…

I don't know, I think this comes down to people that generally live with higher levels of anxiety than others. Now the response may be to call others naive, but where does the anxiety meat the naivety?

Re: We have a year to fix security everywhere

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sufficiently determined individual can buy mac mini, put it under their bed, configure outside proxy via some random internet address and prompt "iterate on websites in the CT logs, one by one, try to find vulnerabilities, if you did - encrypt their data and blackmail them for this bitcoin address". And it'll work, day and night. Abliterated GLM 5.3 is much smarter than average software developer, they know a lot…

Wouldn't it just as easy to do this on the defense side as well then?

Not every defender is determined.

Re: We have a year to fix security everywhere

#228
post #10

> 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?

The propaganda police are lying. There is nothing wrong with C/C++, you are just too lazy to handle your own memory, and you accepted that propaganda that "managing your own memory is hard" without even trying.

The idea that this terrible advice floats at all tell you how terrible educations are these days. The idea is ridiculous and yet nobody calls it what it is: it is stupid and those that follow that advice out of fear are dumber than rocks.

Re: We have a year to fix security everywhere

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sufficiently determined individual can buy mac mini, put it under their bed, configure outside proxy via some random internet address and prompt "iterate on websites in the CT logs, one by one, try to find vulnerabilities, if you did - encrypt their data and blackmail them for this bitcoin address". And it'll work, day and night. Abliterated GLM 5.3 is much smarter than average software developer, they know a lot…

Wouldn't it just as easy to do this on the defense side as well then?

No because on the defense side you need multiple layers of approvals to change anything. If not you have an LLM making production changes that can make the posture worse, or take down services, which is also bad.

Once a vulnerability is discovered however if it's in your own software a patch has to be written (without reducing functionality in most cases), tested, and deployed. At every step there will be others arguing about whether this line could do better, my service requires this thing that isn't included. So at every step the patch can be delayed.

And if it is someone else's software you will be lucky if it's open source and you can write a patch yourself. If it's closed source or a vendor you have to completely rely on them and use whatever your account rep can pull.

Attackers have a massive advantage with AI, partially because the defensive side doesn't want to make their side worse by giving a ln LLM admin access to all their data

Re: We have a year to fix security everywhere

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is no one ever built one that works for normal people. Most Wordpress sites are not operated by programmers, they are run by non technical people who just want a wysiwyg editor and a save button. While static site builders ask you to write markdown files, compile the result, upload it to a server, and if you want to collaborate you have to add git to that. There almost needs to be an admin app which prese…

I mean, github pages using the github editor to edit docs pretty much fits that bill

not for "run by non technical people who just want a wysiwyg editor and a save button"
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