Risky Bulletin

Tom Uren and James Wilson talk about Chinese AI labs stealing the special sauce of American AI models in ‘distillation attacks’. These attacks are fed by a grey market in which Chinese consumers buy access to American models, where one of the byproducts is logs of user requests and responses. These make wonderful inputs into distillation attacks and the whole market might be subsidised by Chinese AI Labs paying for these logs.

They also discuss the possibility that last year’s hack of Jaguar Land Rover was caused by a group of Russian hackers. Was it Russians? Was it state-directed or endorsed? Who knows, but even the possibility that it was has some benefits for the Russian state.

This episode is also available on YouTube



Show notes

An anonymous researcher has dropped a giant cache of zero-day exploits, a sensitive DHS network got hacked, the US Supreme Court restricts geofence warrants, and security firm Huntress has denied accusations of a malicious insider.



Show notes



Risky Bulletin: Researcher drops giant cache of zero-days

In this edition of Between Two Nerds, Tom Uren and The Grugq discuss whether cyber organisations should actually be separated from Signals Intelligence organisations. The Grugq argues that having cyber expertise subordinate to intelligence collection means that many opportunities are never explored.

This episode is also available on YouTube.



Show notes



All the Shah's Men - Wikipedia

The White House asks OpenAI to keep a tight grip on ChatGPT 5.6, the US Secret Service made some appalling OpSec mistakes, AMD has reintroduced a CPU security feature after consumer backlash, and an Iranian APT operator has been arrested in Montenegro.



Show notes



Risky Bulletin: Microsoft disrupts StegoAd operation

In this sponsored interview James Wilson chats with Corelight’s VP of Product Vijit Nair about defence strategies for the AI era. When agents can find and exploit vulnerabilities at machine speed, you need to balance between proactive and reactive measures.

On the proactive side, you need modelling of assets and threats. On the reactive side you’ll need telemetry so you can act quickly if a threat becomes a reality.

Corelight makes NDR hardware that runs a heavily optimised version of the Zeek network monitoring tool. Combined with its Agentic Triage product, customers can detect threats in their networks, and monitor the effectiveness of their mitigation strategies.



Show notes