Absolute AppSec

Ken Johnson and Seth Law

A weekly podcast of all things application security related. Hosted by Ken Johnson and Seth Law.

  1. −1 d

    Episode 329 - AI exploitability, IDOR prevention, Smart TV Proxies

    In this episode, sponsored by GuardSquare (guardsquare.com), Ken Johnson and Seth Law discuss OpenAI's reported Hugging Face security incident, questioning whether the model demonstrated genuinely novel offensive capability or mostly chained known vulnerability patterns at high inference cost, while also considering the defense-contract and marketing angles around "dangerous" frontier models. The main technical discussion returns to AppSec fundamentals through an article on preventing IDOR, emphasizing authorization as a core control, the difficulty of role and tenant isolation in complex systems, and the need for framework-level patterns, typed IDs, tenant checks, and thorough authorization testing. They also cover Krebs' reporting on LG banning residential proxy SDKs from smart TV apps, explaining how free TV apps can turn consumer devices into proxy infrastructure and why IoT app ecosystems need stronger review. The episode closes with DEF CON logistics, Hacker Tracker updates, and upcoming guest plans.

  2. 21 juli

    Episode 328 - Wordpress RCE, Vuln Prioritization, AI memory exfiltration

    In episode 328 of Absolute AppSec, sponsored by GuardSquare (guardsquare.com), Seth and Ken start by highlighting a newly disclosed, pre-authentication WordPress core Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability ("WP2Shell"). The core discussion centers on Alex Gaynor's article regarding the influx of AI-assisted vulnerability disclosures. Gaynor and the hosts argue that attempting to fix bugs case-by-case is a "fool's errand"; instead, engineering teams must eradicate entire vulnerability classes through systemic, framework-level safe functions (such as parameterized queries) and automated CI/CD guardrails. They dive into the complexities of bug prioritization—debating reachability analysis, runtime verification, and business asset criticality—while noting that metrics and measurement remain among the lowest-scoring activities in OWASP SAMM assessments. Later, Ken and Seth examine a "Memory Heist" attack on Claude AI where indirect prompt injection tricked the assistant into exfiltrating user memory and corporate details letter-by-letter through web navigation. They conclude that because transformer models were originally designed for next-token prediction rather than secure system boundaries, defending LLM architectures behaves more like stopping social engineering than traditional software fuzzing.

  3. 14 juli

    Episode 327 - w/Coffee, Chaos, and ProdSec - ASPM Consolidation, Vuln Prioritization

    In episode 327 of Absolute AppSec, co-hosts Ken Johnson and Seth Law present a highly anticipated quarterly crossover episode with Cameron and Kurt from the Coffee, Chaos, and ProdSec podcast. Sponsored by GuardSquare, the group begins with lighthearted banter about their personal footwear choices before tackling heavy architectural debates. The primary focus shifts to Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) consolidation. Cameron strongly advocates for utilizing ASPM as a distinct, single pane of glass dashboard to deduplicate vulnerabilities and streamline executive reporting by product suite. However, the hosts contrast this ideal against the messy reality of organizations dealing with a "Frankenstein" mix of loosely bootstrapped open-source scanning tools and competing vendor plugins. The discussion deepens into prioritization strategies amid a massive, AI-driven surge in vulnerability research that threatens to double annual CVE counts. Cameron and Kurt stress the necessity of shifting away from abstract CVSS scores toward custom, runtime-informed risk appetites and impact analysis—prioritizing the hardening of high-risk corporate assets over low-reachability internal flaws. They also examine the critical line separating standard software bugs from intentionally malicious open-source packages that target developer endpoint systems. Ultimately, the panel laments that AppSec teams are effectively functioning as corporate incident responders because Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts lack product-level insight. The episode concludes with a review of automated agent statistics and a fun look ahead to the future emergence of meta OWASP top-ten risk lists.

  4. 7 juli

    Episode 326 - AppSec Jobs, Benchmarking LLMs, Open Web Standards

    In episode 326 of Absolute AppSec, sponsored by mobile application security provider GuardSquare (guardsquare.com), the hosts start with a deep-dive into pre-show discussions about the shifting macroeconomic landscape of AppSec jobs. They analyze an industry-wide trend where corporate hiring is pivoting away from external third-party consultancies and contractors. Instead, maturing organizations are forming internal product security "tiger teams" and hiring dedicated security software engineers across general development lifecycles to handle the exponential volume of code generated by artificial intelligence. Turning to AI-driven engineering, they dissect a research paper tracking security vulnerability mitigations through large language model (LLM) feedback. The paper reveals a distinct degradation in code quality and an explosion of "false positives" or unreachable flaws after the fourth or fifth iteration due to compressed context windows and "context drift." Ken highlights his own grueling experience benchmarking AINative software. He heavily cautions that letting models self-score or automatically review code introduces dangerous biases, reinforcing the absolute baseline requirement for humans to critically audit all LLM outputs. Finally, they examine Open Web Docs' new web security guidelines community group, comparing its browser-centric standard party focus to OWASP's broader, audit-driven charter. They close by promoting an upcoming July podcast collaboration with Coffee, Chaos, and ProdSec.

  5. 30 juni

    Episode 325 - Simplified Threat Modeling, Defining A Vulnerability

    In episode 325 of Absolute AppSec, co-hosts Ken Johnson and Seth Law first break down an informal guide to threat modeling, arguing that overly prescriptive frameworks like STRIDE induce a heavy cognitive load on developers. Instead, they advocate for simplified, creative questions to expose architectural gaps, citing a historical GitHub planning flaw where private repository images were left exposed on S3 by relying solely on URL obfuscation. They warn that while rapid development in 2026 pushes toward automated lifecycles, human oversight, critical logging, and constructive friction remain essential. Next, they dissect a research paper exploring the philosophical definition of a vulnerability, framing it as a system disposition arising from a fault that manifests as a failure only when environmental and attacker conditions are jointly met. This definition sparks a debate on whether a flaw must carry immediate risk to qualify as a vulnerability, particularly when evaluating modern AI challenges like system prompt disclosures or exposed deprecated API paths.

  6. 16 juni

    Episode 324 - Three Week Trap, Malicious Extensions

    In episode 324 of Absolute AppSec, co-hosts Ken Johnson and Seth Law share a mix of security model critiques. Starting with industry dynamics, Ken recaps his recent presentation at OWASP Nova regarding the limits of human-scale AppSec, recounting a dramatic storm during the talk where patio chairs pelted the high-rise glass. The conversation pivots sharply to Anthropic being forced to pull its "Fable" and "Mythos" cybersecurity models offline due to government sanctions and fears surrounding unpreventable universal jailbreaks. Ken and Seth criticize the company's disingenuous "FUD-based" marketing, which falsely suggested that AI could entirely replace security practitioners. Seth reviews his own blog post regarding the "three-week demo trap", detailing critical, ignored requirements for AI products—such as evaluation, statistical reproducibility, and token cost economics—noting that executing enterprise testing via frontier models can easily exceed $5,000 a day. Transitioning back to fundamental baseline defense, the hosts dissect an article on bypassing Visual Studio Code extension blocks. They emphasize that since modern CDNs pull zipped extensions from distinct domains, blocking the main marketplace URL is completely ineffective. Consequently, they advocate for rigorous data classification, layered on-premise model hosting, and stricter boundary controls on developer endpoints to combat fast-evolving supply chain threats.

  7. 9 juni

    Episode 323 - Secrets Logs, Prompt Injection Risks

    In episode 323 of Absolute AppSec, co-hosts Ken Johnson and Seth Law focus heavily on core application security vulnerabilities, legacy operational struggles, and the challenges of generative AI systems. After briefly discussing Seth’s recent trip to BSides Vancouver and confirming upcoming conference training logistics for Black Hat and DEF CON, the duo dives into the persistent problem of secrets and sensitive data leaking into log files. Referencing an article and talk by Alan Reyes, they unpack the compounding nature of logging failures, noting how system-level integrations and production error conditions often dump entire object blocks or environment variables into third-party tools. They caution that while pattern-based scanners exist, they remain too brittle to capture complex edge cases, and utilizing expensive AI agents to screen every real-time log line is economically impractical. Transitioning to AI security, Seth explores a multi-page research paper analyzing prompt injection. The paper establishes that because large language models mathematically process data through tokenization without any physical or architectural separation between instructions and data contexts, prompt injection cannot be completely solved at the model level. Likening prompt injection to automated social engineering, they argue that the onus currently falls entirely on developers to implement deterministic validation, guardrails, and secure application-level harnesses.

  8. 26 maj

    Episode 322 - Megalodon, Staged Package Publishing, AI Powered Honeypots

    In episode 322, the co-hosts examine critical vulnerabilities, changing security standards, and adaptive defense mechanisms. They deep dive into the recent "Megalodon" breach, identifying it as a direct poisoned pipeline execution attack. Rather than exposing a flaw inside GitHub itself , researchers at Hudson Rock traced the root cause to credentials stolen from developer desktops via infostealer malware, which allowed attackers to push base64-encoded payloads into GitHub Actions workflow YAML files. To counter these types of automated supply chain threats, the hosts praise NPM's newly released "staged publishing" pipeline, which mandates two-factor authentication from human maintainers before releasing packages pushed by automated CI/CD workflows. Shifting to framework flaws, they highlight a catastrophic, vanilla SQL injection flaw discovered in GoCMS during active exploitation. Finally, the duo reviews the emergence of AI-powered honeypots highlighted Talos Intelligence. They conclude that turning the tables on attackers by utilizing LLM-driven "hall of mirrors" environments to impersonate real systems represents an innovative, under-explored AppSec strategy designed to drain attacker resources and trigger high token costs.

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Om

A weekly podcast of all things application security related. Hosted by Ken Johnson and Seth Law.

Information

  • Skapad av
    Ken Johnson and Seth Law
  • Aktiva år
    2018 - 2026
  • Avsnitt
    329
  • Åldersgräns
    Vuxet innehåll
  • Programmets webbplats
    Absolute AppSec