Casey Ellis
Auditing My 2026 Security Predictions: Five Months In
Back in December I made eight predictions for what 2026 would bring in security. We're four months in, so it's
Thoughts on the #slopdemic
Move over #vulnpocalypse — there's a new term we need to talk about: the #slopdemic. AI didn't invent low-quality vuln reports, but it just turbocharged them, and F/OSS is drowning.
The "irrational asymmetry" in threat behavior
We've traditionally thought about defense through the lens of a financially motivated attacker or a nation state — predictable rewards. Open it to
Continued Monitoring of the Situation
Week two of an AI-powered House Finch nest monitor: four model biases, a Wyze cam back from the dead, and a full pipeline rewrite before the eggs hatch.
The top five turtles in a stack of 50
AI defense and code review get the funding, but hospitals still run XP and Ivanti falls over weekly. The security industry is ignoring 45 of its 50 turtles.
Cryptographically enforced disclosure
A speculative proposal: cryptographically enforced vulnerability disclosure using a drand-triggered dead-man switch to make CVD fallback dates unbreakable.
Peacetime cyber versus wartime cyber
Cyber defense doctrine was built during 15 years of peacetime; the transition to wartime and austerity demands a rewrite of what we accept as polite.
"Monitoring the Situation" - The Internet of Birbs
Two pale-blue speckled eggs on the sunroom bookshelf turned into three cameras, an Unraid NAS, two AI models, and a journal that writes itself every morning. None of it had to be useful — it just had to be possible. Because joy.
AI isn't the problem — asymmetry is
AI isn't the security problem — it widens the asymmetry between vulnerability discovery and remediation, putting attack capability in many more hands.
Mythos feels a lot like Snowden
Mythos is to vulnerability awareness what Snowden was to surveillance: the moment the zeitgeist finally caught up to what insiders already knew.
Security-focussed test/fix is basically “sparkling QA”
A short reaction to Firefox's claim that AI-found defects are finite: security-focused test-and-fix is basically QA wearing a fancier hat.
Spicy Takes from my Aikido Security Podcast
Nine takes from my RSAC conversation with Mackenzie Jackson on Aikido's Secure Disclosure podcast — on bug bounty, AI slop, hack-back, vibe coding, and why the internet still working is a minor miracle.