Decipher Security Podcast

This week we discuss the new White House memo on using private sector operators in offensive cyber operations, Lindsey's deep dive into the origins of the ExploitGym AI benchmark, and the rash of attacks on water utilities in the U.S.LinksInside ExploitGym: https://decipher.sc/2026/08/20/inside...White House memo: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidenti...OpenAI post: https://openai.com/index/the-defender...

Adam Meyers of CrowdStrike joins Dennis to dive into the rapidly changing nature of both attacker and defender behavior in the AI age and how organizations need to shift their priorities to combat agentic threats. Then we talk about the new White House policy loosening the restrictions on private sector operators doing offensive cyper ops.

AI security pioneer and machine learning expert Gary McGraw helps Dennis separate the facts from fiction about the recent OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic model escapes, what the real risks to enterprises are from agentic AI, and what he sees as the true threats on the horizon.

We can't go a week without an AI model escaping its bounds, and this week we talk about a new test by the AI Security Institute in which OpenAI and Anthropic models escaped the evaluation environment and tried to start a supply chain attack, then we discuss news of Zbtlink routers having a persistent backdoor.

Project Hail Mary is many things: an instant classic, a heartwarming buddy movie, a brilliant scientific tale. And it's also a pure hacker movie. Wendy Nather and David Mortman join Dennis and Lindsey to talk about Ryland Grace's hacker ethos and why he and Rocky typify the can-do attitude of hackers everywhere. It's time go!

Cybercrime has become professionalized and industrialized to the point that these groups are essentially at the level of state-backed APTs. Mike Sweeney of Silent Push joins Dennis Fisher to talk about this evolution, how AI is enabling this shift, and how defenders and vendors are working to take incremental bites out of their ecosystem.

Michael Clark, director of Threat Research at Sysdig, talks about a recent LLM-driven extortion campaign dubbed JADEPUFFER, touching on how the team discovered it, how attackers’ “intent is now legible,” and what that means for defenders.
LinkSysdig research: https://www.sysdig.com/blog/jadepuffe...

This week we have some old-school disclosure drama when a researcher used full disclosure after months of silence from Cursor, then we discuss the enormous Patch Tuesday from Microsoft--662 bugs--and what it might mean going forward, and finally some news about DoJ sanctions and Scattered Spider members being sentenced.

Old malware like Conficker never really dies, and in industrial control and SCADA environments it can live forever undisturbed. Lesley Carhart of Dragos joins Dennis Fisher to talk about the myriad challenges of incident response in ICS networks, how ancient malware can cause trouble for years on end, and why we need more ICS security engineers desperately.

Jack Cable, co-founder and CEO of Corridor and a former senior technical advisor at CISA, discusses AI's impact on cybersecurity, vulnerability discovery, and coding practices.

It's a pre-July 4th extravaganza! To celebrate, we dive into a little cybersecurity history with a story about the MySpace Samy worm, then we jumpe into the news of the week, including an update on the Fable 5 export control drama, and the emergence of the ARToken operator panel.

Hacker and legendary vulnerability disclosure expert Katie Moussouris of Luta Security joins Dennis to talk about the Fable 5 munitions classification controversy, the recent re-emergence of the disclosure debate, how AI-assisted bug hunting is reshaping the defensive landscape, and what the future holds for attackers and defenders.

It's a non-AI podcast! This week we dig into the new Gaslight macOS implant that tries to trick security researchers with some anti-forensics techniques, then we discuss the Operation Endgame takedown of some malware infrastructure, and finally we discuss a Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN bug that was exploited as a zero day.

Alex Pinto, one of the lead authors of the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, joins Dennis to talk about his organization's newest publication, the Breach Impact Study, which digs into the real world cost of breaches, both in dollars and in organizational impact. Spoiler: Breaches are expensive.

Verizon BIS: https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/2026-breach-impact-study-dbir.pdf

Perhaps no film captures the paranoia and anxiety of the 1970s better than The Conversation, Francis Ford Copolla's masterpiece about reclusive surveillance expert Harry Caul, a man who it's safe to say has some demons. Decades before we all agreed to carry tracking and recording devices in our pockets, The Conversation shows us just how invasive and damaging technology can be.

We regret to inform you that there are more npm supply chain attacks this week, and a new variant of the Shai Hulud worm is involved. We also talk about the new analysis from Anthropic on a year of data relating to how attackers are using AI in their operations, and the continuing adventures of Microsoft's relationship with security researchers.