Bankless

Black October! What Is Happening to the Internet? | Hari Mulackal & Odysseas Lamtzidis

45 min

The episode discusses the alarming state of cybersecurity, dubbed 'Black October,' where AI-powered attacks have made hacking scalable and cheap. Security experts Hari Mulackal and Odysseas Lamtzidis explain that the cost of hacking is dropping exponentially, turning the internet into a 'dark forest' where all data is vulnerable. They advise individuals to audit the security of services they use, consider not self-custodying assets, and prepare for a new reality where persistent, agent-based attacks are the norm.

Summarized by Podsumo

🎙️ Ask about this episode

✨ Key Takeaways

1

AI has made hacking scalable and cheap, with costs dropping 15x in 2024 and expected to drop 10x more every 6-12 months, turning cybercrime into an industrial-scale operation.
2

The 'zero-day clock' is now negative, meaning companies are already on borrowed time and must act immediately to secure their systems or risk data breaches.
3

Crypto companies like Coinbase are better prepared than traditional banks because they evolved in adversarial environments, but the entire internet is now a 'dark forest' of persistent threats.
4

Data from health records, personal finances, and even AI agents like ChatGPT are now at risk, with attackers able to use leaked data for personalized scams at scale.
5

The only effective defense is to use AI to attack yourself first, fix vulnerabilities, and make it expensive for attackers to target you.

💬 Notable Quotes

"Hacking has become scalable where you can build a factory that will turn in exploits and no humans need it, and the economics is falling to zero. — Hari Mulackal"
"The zero-day clock is negative days. You are living on borrowed time. — Hari Mulackal"
"Crypto was always the dark forest. We grew up in that environment. But the internet was never a dark forest. Suddenly, within a few months, the whole internet is a dark forest. — Odysseas Lamtzidis"