Modern Cyber with Jeremy Snyder

In this kick-off episode for 2026, Jeremy is joined by the legendary Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer at Sensofusion, for a comprehensive retrospective of 2025 and a look ahead at the future of AI-driven threats. Mikko, now a "Mount Rushmore" guest of the show, shares insights from his transition into the anti-drone space while reflecting on a year defined by massive infrastructure disruptions.The duo discusses the staggering impact of 2025 ransomware incidents, most notably the Jaguar Land Rover breach, which halted production for six weeks and cost an estimated £1.5 billion. Mikko argues that these events prove cybersecurity is no longer just about protecting computers—it’s about securing society itself. They also break down the "random shotgun" nature of modern attacks, where gangs like Clop and Akira target vulnerabilities rather than specific industries or geographies.Turning to AI, Mikko provides a reality check on the current state of deepfakes and automated orchestration. He reflects on the first massive AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign of 2025 and explains why the battle between open-source and closed-source models will define the next phase of defense. Finally, they examine how "data is the new oil" and AI is the "new oil refinery," creating a dual-extortion landscape where the risk of data leakage often outweighs the cost of downtime.About MikkoMikko Hypponen is a world-renowned global security expert, author, and speaker with over 35 years of experience in the industry. In August 2025, Mikko transitioned from his long-standing tenure at WithSecure to become the Chief Research Officer at Sensofusion, a Finnish company specializing in advanced anti-drone technologies.Mikko has assisted law enforcement in the U.S., Europe, and Asia on major cybercrime cases since the 1990s and is the curator of the Malware Museum at the Internet Archive. He is the author of the best-selling book "If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable" and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Wired, and Scientific American. In addition to his role at Sensofusion, Mikko serves as an advisor to Firetail.Episode Linkshttps://sensofusion.com/https://mikko.com/https://www.firetail.ai/ai-breach-trackerhttps://www.anthropic.com/news/disrupting-AI-espionage

In the final episode of 2025, Jeremy examines the evolution of SEO poisoning into "AI poisoning," a major privacy breach involving a popular browser extension, and shares a data-driven "sneak peek" at the state of AI security over the past year.Key Stories & Developments:AI Poisoning of Search Results: Researchers identified an attack where threat actors plant false information online to trick AI-powered search engine crawlers. This results in search engines providing AI summaries that list scam phone numbers for legitimate services like airline call centers, effectively creating a modern, AI-driven version of SEO poisoning.The "Pay-to-Crawl" Proposal: Jeremy discusses a new proposal from Creative Commons that suggests moving away from outright blocking AI crawlers. Instead, website owners could set a price for crawling and training, allowing organizations to monetize the use of their data by LLM providers.Urban VPN Privacy Breach: A popular Chrome and Edge extension, Urban VPN Proxy, was caught intercepting and reading the AI chat messages of its 7.3 million users. This incident highlights the risk of third-party browser extensions reading sensitive data that users assume is private.2025 in Review Snapshot: Using data from the Firetail AI Incident Tracker, Jeremy reveals two major trends from 2025:The Surge in Incidents: AI security incidents saw a massive jump from 2024 to 2025, marking this as the year AI-related security became a global, pervasive problem.Disclosure vs. Injection: While the OWASp Top 10 lists prompt injection as the #1 risk, the tracker data shows that sensitive information disclosure (largely due to organizational error) actually outstrips prompt injection by about a third.Episode Linkshttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/aurascape-researchers-expose-ai-attack-140000260.html?guccounter=1https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/15/creative-commons-announces-tentative-support-for-ai-pay-to-crawl-systems/https://thehackernews.com/2025/12/featured-chrome-browser-extension.htmlhttps://www.firetail.ai/ai-breach-tracker

In this episode of Modern Cyber, Jeremy is joined by Chris Parker, the founder of WhatIsMyIPAddress.com, one of the most visited websites in the world. With over 13 million monthly visitors, Chris has spent more than 25 years helping people understand their digital presence and protect their online privacy. The conversation dives into the fascinating 26-year history of the site—from its start as a simple hobby on a home Windows NT box to becoming a global authority on cybersecurity. Chris shares "war stories" from the early days of the web, including dealing with notoriously verbose log files that filled entire hard drives and managing a home data center that maxed out local copper lines. Chris and Jeremy also explore the modern landscape of digital privacy, discussing the balance between transparency and anonymity. They cover practical topics like how scammers use urgency to fleece victims, the "supply chain" risks of website plugins, and Chris's "middle-ground" approach to privacy—avoiding both complete exposure and the "Faraday cage" lifestyle. About Chris ParkerChris Parker is the founder of WhatIsMyIPAddress.com, one of the world’s most visited websites, helping more than 13 million people each month safeguard their digital privacy. Chris has become the go-to expert on protecting yourself in the digital age, whether from scammers, data miners, or privacy threats you didn't know existed. He is the author of Privacy Crisis: How to Maintain Your Privacy Without Becoming a Hermit, and host of The Easy Prey Podcast. Episode LinksWebsite: https://www.privacycrisis.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophergparker/ Podcast: https://www.easyprey.com/

In this week's episode, Jeremy focuses on the escalating threat of prompt injection across the enterprise, the introduction of a new OWASP Top 10 list, and a surprising advisory from Gartner.Prompt Injection & RCE:PromptPwnd: A vulnerability in GitHub Actions allows attackers to use malicious commit messages to perform prompt injection against AI agents, executing privileged tools and leaking secrets from CI/CD pipelines.IDE Attack Surface: Similar prompt injection flaws were identified in popular development environments and extensions (Cursor, Copilot, Z-Ro), showing how malicious prompts can bypass guardrails and hijack context within the IDE.GeminiJack: A "zero-click" vulnerability in Google Gemini Enterprise and Vertex AI Search allowed attackers to embed indirect prompt injections in shared documents (Gmail, Calendar, Docs). A routine employee search would activate the attack, causing the AI to exfiltrate sensitive corporate data.Industry Shifts:Gartner's Advisory: Gartner issued an unusual strong advisory recommending that CISOs block all AI browsers (like ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity Comet) for the foreseeable future due to inherent security risks, including data leakage, credential abuse, and autonomous rogue actions.New OWASp Top 10: The OWASp Top 10 for Agentic Applications was released, focusing on risks unique to autonomous, tool-using systems, such as Agent Goal Hijack, Identity and Privilege Abuse, and Agentic Supply Chain Vulnerabilities.Episode Links:https://gbhackers.com/prompt-injection-vulnerability-in-github-actions/https://thehackernews.com/2025/12/researchers-uncover-30-flaws-in-ai.htmlhttps://securityboulevard.com/2025/12/indirect-malicious-prompt-technique-targets-google-gemini-enterprise/https://securityboulevard.com/2025/12/gartners-ai-browser-ban-rearranging-deck-chairs-on-the-titanic/https://genai.owasp.org/resource/owasp-top-10-for-agentic-applications-for-2026/++++++++++Worried about AI security? Get Complete AI Visibility in 15 Minutes. Discover all of your shadow AI now. Book a demo of Firetail's AI Security & Governance Platform: https://www.firetail.ai/request-a-demo

In this week's episode, Jeremy dissects two critical security issues and shares key strategic takeaways from the recent Ascent Community Summit on Advancing AI Security.Security Incidents & Research:OpenAI Third-Party Breach: We examine the security incident where OpenAI was affected by a third-party breach via the Mixpanel analytics platform. While customer PII was exposed, prompt and data content was not impacted. Jeremy notes that the API was the attack surface, reinforcing a recurring theme in AI-related incidents.Adversarial Poetry: We break down a fascinating academic paper demonstrating that embedding malicious prompts inside poetry is a successful technique for bypassing LLM guardrails. In some models, this "adversarial poetry" increased the Attack Success Rate (ASR) by over 60%, showing how context manipulation can trick frontier models.Ascent Community Summit Takeaways: Jeremy shares high-level insights from the summit (co-hosted by Paladin and Georgia Tech), focusing on securing critical sectors (Defense, Infrastructure, Healthcare). Key themes include:Core Requirements for AI: The need for math expertise, dedicated compute infrastructure, massive data access, and specialized people.The New Perimeter: Discussion shifted from "identity as the perimeter" to data being the key asset and central focus for security controls.Supply Chain Risks: The societal impact of the AI boom, including increased strain on electricity, cooling, and bandwidth for data center infrastructure.Brakes on a Fast Car: The CISO's role is framed as enabling maximum speed while having the ability to act as the "brakes on a very fast moving car" (Dundee West, GSK), emphasizing rapid response over stagnation.Episode Linkshttps://openai.com/index/mixpanel-incident/https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.15304https://sites.gatech.edu/asccent/summit/------Worried about AI security? Get Complete AI Visibility in 15 Minutes. Discover all of your shadow AI now. Book a demo of Firetail's AI Security & Governance Platform: https://www.firetail.ai/request-a-demo