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Articles

Long-form writing on tech, culture, and the edges of the internet.

ZCode ships your deleted secrets offsite
AI coding agentsGit history

ZCode ships your deleted secrets offsite

AI coding agents like ZCode read your entire Git history and can upload deleted secrets to remote servers. What leaks, why it is silent, and how to stop it.

7 min read
Git never deleted your secrets.
data exfiltrationgit security

Git never deleted your secrets.

How ZCode's AI indexer uploads your entire git history, including deleted secrets, to the cloud, and why DLP and EDR never catch the egress.

7 min read
Most automation doesn't need a smart model
AI modelsautomation

Most automation doesn't need a smart model

How 8-29MB automation models like Cactus Needle 3 match large models on narrow tasks, where they fail, and the security tradeoffs of running them locally.

7 min read
One write past the chunk, read-write on the repo
heap overflowSSO bypass

One write past the chunk, read-write on the repo

How a heap overflow primitive chains with an SSO misconfiguration to reach internal source repos, with MITRE ATT&CK mapping and telemetry gaps.

7 min read
The attacker skips your login and steals the cookie
passkeysWebAuthn

The attacker skips your login and steals the cookie

Passkeys defeat credential phishing but not session hijacking. How token replay, passkey enrollment, and weak recovery bypass phishing-resistant MFA.

7 min read
In January 2024, OpenAI admitted it can't train without copyright
AI copyrightOpenAI lawsuit

In January 2024, OpenAI admitted it can't train without copyright

OpenAI told the UK Parliament it can't build models without copyrighted work. Here's what that admission means for the fair use cases now in court.

6 min read
Microsoft called it theft; the crawler maps your attack surface
AI scrapingdata privacy

Microsoft called it theft; the crawler maps your attack surface

AI crawlers copied your public data into training sets you can't reach. The real security risk is data you can never delete or recall.

7 min read
Microsoft's AI CEO called the web freeware
AI safetyprompt injection

Microsoft's AI CEO called the web freeware

Microsoft and OpenAI executives described how LLMs are built and tuned. What that admission actually means for AI safety and security teams.

7 min read
OpenJev claims a mechanism it never describes
threat analysissocial engineering

OpenJev claims a mechanism it never describes

OpenJev is a name with a claimed mechanism and a claimed difference from social engineering, but no observable behavior confirms any of it.

7 min read
Parameter count is the wrong number to watch
LLM deploymentmodel compression

Parameter count is the wrong number to watch

Bonsai 2 27B's 9x smaller footprint is real, but near-lossless is an average - how to gate compressed LLMs on your own eval set before production.

8 min read
Passkeys don't stop account takeover
passkeysauthentication

Passkeys don't stop account takeover

Passkeys stop phishing, but retained recovery paths and synced platform vaults mean the weakest accepted path still defines account takeover risk.

7 min read
The hallucination was not the failure.
ai securityintelligence validation

The hallucination was not the failure.

An AI-generated intelligence report reached a US Military context and caused a close call because generative output was trusted as verified intelligence.

7 min read