Latest / Along The Edge Podcast: Breaking, Defending, and Understanding Agentic AI / AI Security Brief - October 15, 2026
Transcript
- Andrius Useckas: Welcome to another new segment of Along the Edge. I'm Andrzej Suchetskić. I come from security background, 25 plus years in security and been doing AI security now for a couple of years. Just Alex: And I'm just Alex. I'm Alex Katz. I've been breaking and protecting all things AI related for a few years now. Andrius Useckas: A bit of a slow week in AI news, I suppose. So marketing departments are churning, and OpenAI and Anthropic as well. So first Anthropic, I guess they claim that they deployed a model across a bunch of TV boxes, and then OpenAI has some kind of spy in the headquarters deploying an actual physical recording device. And then we'll also talk about other stuff like Bank of America. Hiring 1,000 consultants to fix all the vulnerabilities found by Mithus. Anyway, so let's dive into the first story, which is Anthropic and a bunch of TV boxes. I think what was that like 15, 16 TV boxes that they deployed the model across Just Alex: This it it's just comical Andrius Useckas: Why? Just Alex: to me right away. Like I can't even I can't even hold it in. It's stupid. Andrius Useckas: Yeah, well, give some background why it's comical to you. Just Alex: it's gonna be so slow. It's gonna it's gonna be like point zero zero one tokens per second, maybe, or like point zero three or Andrius Useckas: No, they gave the actual count. I mean, it was 0.37, I believe, tokens per sec. No, 0.39 Just Alex: wow, okay, yeah, great. Andrius Useckas: to be correct, yes. Just Alex: actually so zero point three nine. I mean that's not terrible. like it could be worse, I guess, but that's still Andrius Useckas: Well the question is can you still watch your TV while this is churning at 0.39 tokens a second? Just Alex: I well probably not. Probably not. The thing is smoking. Andrius Useckas: Probably not because it's all in the CPU. I think your Netflix are gonna struggle. Yeah Just Alex: What happens when one of burns up and like white puff of smoke shoots out the top, or we do we go down to like point two seven? Andrius Useckas: Well, I mean, the interesting question here is this is not a new attack. We have seen botnets Just Alex: No, I mean no. Andrius Useckas: taking over TVs, cable box, cable modem boxes, everything pretty much. But Just Alex: Everything. I any Io IoT device. Yeah. Andrius Useckas: if you have this kind of access, if you're an attacker, why would you waste it on running an LLM? Yeah, Just Alex: I don't know. Andrius Useckas: you would deploy a small binary. That's what you would do. And then you would use like RSC channel for command and control. And you would use an actual AI model to actually guide all of those parts. Just Alex: Yeah, orchestrate remotely. That makes per that makes all kinds of sense. Now I got all these IPs. I can like test a little bit. I can run a little scanner with this one IP, then maybe take those findings or the use like the orchestrator is going to do this for you. The orchestrator will then take and use those findings and kind of do the next step and just keep hopping around through the 15 TVs. I mean, that would be much more six cost effective and successful. And you'd fly under the radar much better than burning up the TV and someone's just gonna go and unplug it and be like, I can't even turn this thing off. Just rip the cable out of the wall. Andrius Useckas: Yeah, I mean, it's just an interesting. mean, it's marketing. It's clearly marketing. It's not really that even sound technically, but it still ends up in all of these media outlets, which is, I mean, it's working. Just Alex: Is this is this the new this is the new version of it can run doom? This is the new version of I can run doom on this thing. Andrius Useckas: I guess so, it's like me saying, know, pigs can fly. If I put them in some kind of crate and attach a bunch of helium balloons to that crate, you know, they could eventually evolve and figure out how to do it themselves, you never know. Just Alex: Yeah. I mean pigs fly every day, don't they? They get they get flown around in planes to different locations, I think. Andrius Useckas: The pet ones, I suppose so, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, Just Alex: Yeah. Andrius Useckas: but it's also ideal circumstances. So all of these were deployed on a single network. The latency is not an issue. Now if you compromise a bunch of TVs, you will actually deal with latencies. Just Alex: Wait, you're was this like so like they're like, okay, let's target this office Andrius Useckas: in the lab. Just Alex: and then we're all we're just gonna like run it across all these TVs in the office just my gosh. So they didn't even f Andrius Useckas: Absolutely, I mean it's all you know, set up in a lab. Just Alex: my gosh. Okay. So the the real tokens per second, if these were like distributed TVs, would be significantly less. There's no way that this is Andrius Useckas: What would be nothing? I mean, you can't even do it. mean, whatever, man. Just Alex: Point three is already basically nothing. I can't imagine trying to do anything with point three any any tokens per second. Andrius Useckas: I mean you could execute a meaningful account takeover attack in maybe like 200 years. Just Alex: Yeah, absolutely sure. Yeah. A couple hundred years. Andrius Useckas: I don't know, what's time when you're a model, I guess, evolving slowly across the TV Just Alex: my gosh. Andrius Useckas: boxes. Anyway, moving on. So OpenAI, another marketing, I don't know if it's a marketing stint. What is this? mean, so basically somebody deployed a recording device, a physical recording device wrapped in toilet paper behind one of the TVs in the conference room in the OpenAI headquarters. Just Alex: it looked for like show. Like I was so confused. I've never seen like if you're gonna plant a bug, I mean I don't wanna like in self-incriminate here about how to plant bugs or something, but like that's not how I would do it. Like this you have this like when I saw the picture, if it was the real picture, it was like total black background and there's like this giant, unusually shaped white triangle thing like sticking out of the back. who's not gonna notice that? I mean like I don't know. Andrius Useckas: Well, the funny part of all of this is when the press release came out, they were like, we used our model to figure out Just Alex: Yeah. Andrius Useckas: what this device was. It's like, why would you need to do that? What does the model have to do in it? Just Alex: Why do you need to say that? Why do you need to say that? You're you're announcing that there was a bug in the office, and you're like, and our model helps save the day. Andrius Useckas: I mean, this marketing is just getting comic at this point. If you understand what they're saying, but yet media outlets will pick it up and normal people will read it and they will go, Just Alex: Yeah. Andrius Useckas: scary stuff, what's going on here? AI is unleashing itself. And yet, go out there and ask your favorite model, Grok, whatever open AI model you run or whatever anthropic model you run to pick a number from zero to 10. And most of the time it's gonna be seven. So, I mean, where is this AGI coming from? I mean, it's just math. Just Alex: S I now, S I. Andrius Useckas: S-I, okay, yeah, right. Because if we say AI, we're going to be enemies of the state. I forgot about that. All of this thing is just like... Just Alex: Yeah, how many how many R's are in the word strawberry? Can you tell me please? Andrius Useckas: Actually, I think they finally aligned the models to actually do that properly, yes. But now, yeah, just Just Alex: okay. We c but just for strawberry, right? Just for strawberry. Andrius Useckas: for strawberry, probably. But like random number generation, it's still Gaussian function behind all of this, I guess. So it's like, it's still probability curve is gonna be on that seven between zero and 10. So, you know, if you ask that question a bunch of times, most of the time, the answer is gonna be seven. It is not ASI, AGI or whatever else. It is still math all behind. Anyway, moving on. Bank of America, they announced that they're hiring a thousand contractors to fix all the bugs that Mythos found. First of all, why would you have that many vulnerabilities? Second of all, why would you need thousand contractors to fix all of it? Isn't mythos supposed to fix all of those things? Just Alex: Yes. Andrius Useckas: Yes. Just Alex: Or at least you could take the plan from Mythos and use Opus, like if you don't want to burn the tokens. I mean someone it's a bank, right? Like they're looking at what's most cost effective and clearly they thought a thousand developers was cheaper than running the agent to fix all of these. Andrius Useckas: I don't know, or some kind of money laundering scheme at that point. I don't understand this at all. Yeah, exactly. mean, thousand contractors, Just Alex: I don't know, yeah, I don't know. I'm not I'm not speculating in that direction. That's Andrius Useckas: they just gonna introduce more vulnerabilities at that point while fixing the old ones and you'll need to hire a thousand more. I guess it's job security. Just Alex: So it's a thousand a thousand humans in the loop to one mythos. Andrius Useckas: Well, I assume it's going to be a large consulting company they hired. It's probably Pator Infosys or somebody like that. Just Alex: Yeah, I sure. Andrius Useckas: then there is an army of actual contractors, developers, writing probably Java, fixing it. I I'm just guessing at this point. Just Alex: Well, I mean, they're probably all using coding agents too, so I mean, Andrius Useckas: Yep, Just Alex: at this point. Andrius Useckas: I guess so. And something else, I I've been watching TV recently, I guess, and being bombarding with Musei ads is getting kind of old. Everywhere. Just Alex: Everywhere. Everywhere you look. Yeah. I mean on you I got hit with one on YouTube randomly. I mean they're it's like a massive ad campaign. Crazy. Andrius Useckas: What is this going evolve to? mean, from security perspective, I mean, obviously a lot of people are going to jump on this, especially with the cute, you know, Tamagotchi looking devices. It's obviously targeted against, you know, demographic younger people and all of that. I'm sure they'll have, well, we'll see. I mean, Metaverse was advertised to, but not to this extent and it still went nowhere. this looks attractive. I mean, if I didn't know all these security issues behind it, I would be, you know, probably trying it out. Well, actually I did try it out. see what the security was, but that's a different story. Just Alex: Yeah, we we talked about that one a few episodes ago. I don't Yeah, we gotta you know, you gotta plug Andrius Useckas: Absolutely. Yeah, no need to rehash it. Just Alex: you gotta plug your historic episodes sometimes. It helps. Andrius Useckas: Absolutely, absolutely. Just Alex: my take would be if I was a bad guy, I'd be hiding indirect prompt injections everywhere normal people are going. So maybe like billboards, like get it get get it in some images, you know, so get it into like family Christmas, Andrius Useckas: Facebook. Just Alex: yeah, dropping them on Facebook all over the place. Sure, yeah. gotta get creative with these prompt injections. Just start plasting them everywhere. Andrius Useckas: Yeah. No, I was on my Instagram. Absolutely. I I was on my Instagram and basically, Muse AI pops up and says, would you like your last year of Instagram summarized for you within the Muse AI? It's like, Just Alex: No. Andrius Useckas: no, thank you. But this is, as you said, like prompt injections. You don't even need to get creative anymore. Yes, mean, emails, if you hook up your email to it and everything else. But now you have all of these feeds. They're actually trying to get you to use it through their Facebook, through Instagram. So now all of those platforms will become basically ripe with the prompt injections. At least, you know, that's what I would do if I was a black hat, which I'm not. Just Alex: Instagram pictures. Yeah, that I mean comments and comments in places now. Yeah. Andrius Useckas: Or even just post them and you can put it in images. See how that's gonna look. Just Alex: Well I know, but you gotta tar like if you're trying to target pe like s particular people, then put it in their comments. So when they do a summary Boom Done. Andrius Useckas: Absolutely, Just Alex: Easy. Too easy. Ooh, that would be a good one. Make fake ads just loaded with prompt injections. Yes. That's a good one. Andrius Useckas: Even like Facebook Marketplace, wonder, mean, it's you know, Musei, said, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, we're not giving anybody any ideas. Yeah, absolutely. Just Alex: No, this is all just theory crafting. Nope. Andrius Useckas: This is all for educational purposes. Do not try this at home. All right, on that note, Thank you. We'll see you next week.