669: Adam Engst (TidBITS): Slack Impersonation Malware, Anthropic's Mythos, and Why You Need a Personal AI Defender

About this episode

Adam Engst discusses a malware incident in a Slack group and the implications of AI in security.

Adam Engst (TidBITS) discusses a malware incident in a long-running public "Slack Bits" group where a bad actor impersonated Glenn Fleishman via a duplicate Slack display name, tricking him into downloading an info-stealer, prompting Engst to consider shutting down the 1,400-member community. The conversation shifts to Anthropic's Mythos and Project Glasswing (as covered by TidBITS security editor Rich Mogull), which reportedly found long-standing bugs (including in OpenBSD and FFmpeg), raising concerns about AI-accelerated vulnerability discovery, defender/attacker asymmetries, costs and compute barriers, and impacts on zero-day markets. They also cover Apple's iOS signing and update/upgrade distinctions, why Apple supports macOS differently than iOS, broader distrust in institutions, social media's advertising/algorithm problems (including Section 230), bots and AI-driven phishing, and the idea of local, user-controlled AI agents to help protect individuals online. 00:00 Welcome Back Adam Engst 00:20 Slack Impersonation Scare 02:15 Cleaning Up a Public Slack 03:40 Mythos and Glasswing Explained 05:19 AI Bug Hunting Reality Check 08:25 Red Team Blue Team Asymmetry 09:50 Compute…

People in this episode

Hosts: Jerry Zigmont, Joe Saponare, Sam Valencia

Guest: Adam Engst

Topics covered

• malware
• AI security
• Slack impersonation
• vulnerability discovery
• personal AI agents
• social media issues

Keywords

• malware
• Slack
• AI
• vulnerability
• security
• TidBITS
• personal AI
• social media

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: TidBITS, OpenBSD, FFmpeg, Anthropic

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