Security Now

SN 1094: AI Patching Shortcomings - Should You Trust AI-Generated Code?

Security Now - Tue, 09/01/2026 - 10:10pm

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

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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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SN 1093: Tokens in the Stream - Why LLMs are inherently insecure and prompt injection will persist

Security Now - Tue, 08/25/2026 - 10:57pm

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.

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Categories: Security Now

SN 1092: Restraint Abliteration - Rotating Keys, Broken Guardrails

Security Now - Tue, 08/18/2026 - 10:40pm

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.

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Categories: Security Now

SN 1091: The Post BlackHat State of AI - When AI Writes Malware

Security Now - Tue, 08/11/2026 - 10:36pm

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

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Categories: Security Now