Description
Sit down with legendary cybersecurity researcher Niels Provos as he reflects on three decades of breaking, building, and securing software. From sneaking into Canadian university labs to write exportable cryptography and co-authoring bcrypt to protecting billions of users with Google Safe Browsing, Niels shares the core principles behind durable software defense. Discover why he is developing Project Iron Curtain to protect autonomous AI agents against prompt injection and intent drift, and how modern model harnesses are locating decades-old bugs across open-source codebases. Explore his candid thoughts on open-source sustainability, the roots of the word hackathon, and the enduring Cicada 3301 puzzle.
— CHAPTERS —
00:00 Early days and entering computer science
01:29 Discovering unix vulnerabilities and bcrypt
03:17 OpenBSD and the origin of hackathons
05:11 AI vulnerability discovery and iron curtain
07:30 Google safe browsing and search worms
09:57 Honeypots, honeyd, and agent security
14:45 Open source maintainers and software licensing
18:15 Cybersecurity EDM songs and music
21:24 The cicada 3301 mystery and steganography
24:39 Bladesmithing and mindfulness
#Cybersecurity #OpenSource #GitHub
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