What happens when a 27-year-old gets handed the keys to completely refactor nearly all of Cisco's code? This week's episode dives into tech's strangest management bets and the friction brewing inside one of the industry's giants.

• Cisco gives a 27-year old the task of recoding 98% of their software with AI.
• A serious but not earth shaking vulnerability found in PXE booting.
• The largest ($6.3 BILLION) financial heist in history (with crypto).
• 710 Polymarket gambling wallets emptied of $2.7 million.
• A new robots.txt control for AI bots, and agreement to obey it.
• Google generates haiku from the first orbital AI.
• From our listeners: Does stealth updating make sense, how to move web servers off the Internet, books don't contain knowledge, a small company attacked by powerful AI, how would an "AI kill switch" be implemented.
• Another new and worrisome application of reverse-engineering AI

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1103-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Mikah Sargent

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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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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.

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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As AI becomes startlingly capable, top minds at OpenAI admit they can't always control what their own creations do—or even fully understand how they think. This episode dives into the real-world tension between rapid progress and the growing challenge of keeping AI truly aligned.

• GLM-5.3 can be and has been abliterated. What does that mean?
• Firefox 157 repairs a large number of high-impact vulnerabilities.
• A surprising reduction in RSA crypto strength has been discovered.
• Powerful agentic AI is being used to attack merchants.
• A new and potent Spectre-style processor attack has been designed.
• A neighbor falls victim to a Bitcoin scam. What can be done?
• A new and surprising use was found for GRC's DNS Benchmark.
• An examination of the growing alignment challenges created by more intelligent AI

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1099-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:

• guardsquare.com
• bitwarden.com/twit
• threatlocker.com/twit
• doppel.com
• material.security