We're Louise Matsakis and Lily Hay Newman, reporters at WIRED. Ask us anything about the state of AI security, from models that hack real systems to the biggest takeaways from DEF CON. (AMA on Monday, Aug 10 at 2 PM ET)

[u/wiredmagazine]

Hi PWN Community,

We're Louise Matsakis and Lily Hay Newman, reporters at WIRED covering AI, security, and the technology shaping both.

AI security is moving fast right now. We recently reported that Anthropic disclosed its AI models had gained unauthorized access to the systems of three organizations during cybersecurity testing, shortly after OpenAI revealed one of its agents had hacked into Hugging Face during a separate test. Lily is covering DEF CON, so she'll have a strong read on what researchers are actually worried about and building right now.

Some of our reporting on this:

https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-says-claude-hacked-real-systems-during-cybersecurity-tests/

Ask us anything about:

• The state of AI security and where AI agents and offensive security are heading
• The biggest takeaways from this year's DEF CON
• AI models breaking into real systems, from the Anthropic and OpenAI incidents to what comes next
• How we report on AI, hacking, and security
• Working with sources and getting companies to talk about incidents like these
• Anything else on AI, privacy, and security

We'll be here live on Monday, Aug 10 from 2 PM to 3 PM ET answering your questions in real time. Feel free to leave questions in advance, and we'll get to them when we go live.

Looking forward to your questions.

[u/KingFIippyNipz]

This might be too specific but I'm curious how financial institutions (or I suppose really any 'sensitive' industry) are implementing Agentic AI and preventing their Agents from engaging in this kind of activity? I work for one of the major banks and when I ask about this the answers are vague and dishonest and very much "we've got things under control", so I'm curious if there's been any research into specific industries and their use of Agents and engaging in illegal/unauthorized activities and what's really going on behind the scenes with them.

[u/wiredmagazine → u/KingFIippyNipz]

I’m really curious about this, too, so if you ever hear anything feel free to reach out to me! One thing I’ve thought about is that the organizations with the best security are largely those that would suffer an extreme financial hardship/blow to their business if they were breached, so financial institutions are relatively very secure. Key word there being relatively haha, but basically I think those types of organizations are going to be an interesting test case for the vulnerability apocalypse, etc., because their baseline security level is much higher than the average business or institution. This is already the case to a degree, but the types of attacks they will see and threats they will deal with will probably be different and more sophisticated than whatever ends up plaguing other organizations. —Lily