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The AI Security Podcast
Harriet Farlow (HarrietHacks)
I missed the boat in computer hacking so now I hack AI instead. This podcast discusses all things at the intersection of AI and security. Hosted by me (Harriet Farlow aka. HarrietHacks) and Tania Sadhani and supported by Mileva Security Labs.
Chat with Mileva Security Labs for your AI Security training and advisory needs: https://milevalabs.com/
Reach out to HarrietHacks if you want us to speak at your event: https://www.harriethacks.com/
- 20 episodes
- Avg 28 min
- English
- TAMay 17 · 22 min
Claude Mythos and Project Glasswing
This week we're finally delving into Claude Mythos and Project Glasswing! We discuss both the technical and geostrategic challenges, and what it means for the future of AI security. The announcement: https://red.anthropic.com/2026/mythos-preview/ Glasswing: https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing AISI: https://www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/our-evaluation-of-claude-mythos-previews-cyber-capabilities And if you're interested in my book: https://nostarch.com/practical-ai-security AI Security Fundamentals Course: https://aisecurityfundamentals.com/
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March 22 · 25 minHow to get hired in AI security
If you’re trying to break into AI security, it can feel confusing — do you need to be a machine learning expert, a cybersecurity professional, or both? In this episode, we break down practical tips for getting hired in AI security, from the skills that actually matter to the types of projects and experience that can help you stand out. We discuss how to build relevant expertise in areas like adversarial machine learning, AI risk, and model security, as well as how to position yourself for roles in startups, research labs, and large tech companies. Whether you’re coming from a cybersecurity, data science, or general tech background, this episode will give you actionable advice on how to start building a career in one of the fastest-growing areas of technology. 🚀
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January 25 · 9 mingetting talks accepted into conferences! tips and tricks
Want to give a great conference talk (and not bore everyone to death)? In this episode, I share practical tips for giving a strong conference talk — from structuring your idea to actually delivering it on stage. #PublicSpeaking #Conferences #CFP #TechTalks #Cybersecurity #AI
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January 18 · 36 minDo we need to secure model weights?
In this episode, we dig into model weight security — what it means, why it’s emerging as a critical issue in AI security, and whether the framing in the recent RAND report on securing AI model weights actually helps defenders and policymakers. We discuss the RAND report Securing AI Model Weights: Preventing Theft and Misuse of Frontier Models — exploring its core findings, including how model weights (the learnable parameters that encode what a model “knows”) are becoming high-value targets and the kinds of attack vectors that threat actors might use to steal or misuse them. #ai #aisecurity #cybersecurity 👉 Read the full RAND report here:https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2849-1.html
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January 11 · 28 minModel Context Protocol and Agent 2 Agent 🤖🕵️
In this episode, we dig into Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agent-to-agent (A2A) communication — what they are, why they matter, and where the real risks start to emerge.We cover:- What MCP actually enables beyond “tool calling”- How A2A changes the threat model for AI systems- Where trust boundaries break down when agents talk to each other- Why existing security assumptions don’t hold in agentic systems- What practitioners should be thinking about now (before this ships everywhere)This one’s for anyone working on AI systems, security, or governance who wants to understand what’s coming before it becomes a headline incident.As always: curious to hear your takes — especially where you think the biggest risks (or overblown fears) really are.
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January 4 · 32 minAgentic AI Security | case studies by Microsoft, OWASP
As promised, I’m back with Tania for a deep dive into the wild world of agentic AI security — how modern AI agents break, misbehave, or get exploited, and what real case studies are teaching us. We’re unpacking insights from the Taxonomy of Failure Modes in Agentic AI Systems, the core paper behind today’s discussion, and exploring what these failures look like in practice. We also break down three great resources shaping the conversation right now: Microsoft’s Taxonomy of Failure Modes in Agentic AI Systems — a super clear breakdown of how agent failures emerge across planning, decision-making, and action loops: https://cdn-dynmedia-1.microsoft.com/is/content/microsoftcorp/microsoft/final/en-us/microsoft-brand/documents/Taxonomy-of-Failure-Mode-in-Agentic-AI-Systems-Whitepaper.pdf OWASP’s Agentic AI Threats & Mitigations — a practical, security-team-friendly guide to common attack paths and how to defend against them: https://genai.owasp.org/resource/agentic-ai-threats-and-mitigations/ Unit 42’s Agentic AI Threats report — real-world examples of adversarial prompting, privilege escalation, and chain-of-trust issues showing up in deployed systems: https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/agentic-ai-threats/ Join us as we translate the research, sift through what’s real vs. hype, and talk about what teams should be preparing for next 🚨🛡️.
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Dec 23, 2025 · 3 mina hacky christmas message
A quick end-of-year message to say thanks. Thanks for being part of the channel this year — whether you’ve been watching quietly, sharing, or arguing with me in the comments. I really appreciate it.I hope you have a good Christmas and holiday period, whatever that looks like for you. Take a break if you can. See you in 2026.
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Dec 21, 2025 · 12 minThree Black Hat talks at just 18! My interview with Bandana Kaur.
In this episode, I’m joined by Bandana Kaur — a cybersecurity researcher, speaker, and all-round superstar who somehow managed to do in her teens what most people are still figuring out in their thirties. 🤔 Bandana is just 18 years old, entirely self-taught in cybersecurity, already working in the field, and recently gave three talks at Black Hat. Yes, three! 😱 We talk about how she taught herself cybersecurity as a teenager, how she broke into the industry without a traditional pathway, and what it’s actually like being young (and very competent) in a field that still struggles with gatekeeping. Bandana shares what she focused on while learning, how she approached opportunities like conference speaking, and what she thinks matters most for people trying to get into security today. This conversation is part career advice, and part reminder that you don’t need permission — or a perfectly linear path — to do meaningful work in cybersecurity. Follow Bandana: @hackwithher
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Dec 14, 2025 · 31 minEffective Altruism and AI with Good Ancestors CEO Greg Sadler | part 2
Remember that time I invited myself over to Greg's place with my camera? This is part 2 from that great conversation. I'm curious to hear whether you've heard a lot about EA? It's something really big in the AI world but I'm conscious a lot of people outside the bubble haven't heard of it. Let me know in the comments! Check out Greg's work here: https://www.goodancestors.org.au/ MIT AI Risk Repository: https://airisk.mit.edu/ The Life You Can Save (book): https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/book/ 80,000 hours: https://80000hours.org/ Learn more about AI capability and impacts: https://bluedot.org/
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Dec 7, 2025 · 27 minAI Safety with CEO of Good Ancestors Greg Sadler | part 1
This week I invited myself over to Greg Sadler's place, the CEO of Good Ancestors, about AI safety. I brought sushi but I didn't have lunch so I ate most of it, and then I almost made him late for his next meeting. We specifically chat through AI capabilities, his work in policy, and building a not-profit. Greg is the kind of person who is so smart and cool that I feel like an absolute dummy interviewing him - so I know you're all going to like this episode. Stay tuned for part 2 where we dive into effective altruism and its intersection with AI! Check out Greg's work here: https://www.goodancestors.org.au/ MIT AI Risk Repository: https://airisk.mit.edu/ The Life You Can Save (book): https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/book/ 80,000 hours: https://80000hours.org/ Learn more about AI capability and impacts: https://bluedot.org/
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Nov 24, 2025 · 30 minThe United States AI Action Plan | will they win the AI race against China? 🤔
Hi! 👋 In this episode, we’re diving into the US AI Action Plan — the White House’s new roadmap for how America plans to lead in AI.. and beat China.We’ll look at what’s inside the plan, what it really means for AI security and regulation, and whether it’s more of a policy promise… or a political one.📄 You can read the full plan here:https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdfLet me know what you think — is this the kind of leadership AI needs, or a dangerous framing of AI capability?
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Nov 9, 2025 · 30 minAI Security vs Application Security
Welcome back! 👋 After taking a little break to reset and redesign everything behind the scenes, I’m back — and consolidating all my content. This episode is part of both The AI Security Podcast (on Spotify and Apple Podcasts) and my YouTube channel, HarrietHacks — so whether you prefer to listen or watch, you’ll get the same great conversations (and bad jokes) across both platforms. From now on, I’ll be posting at least fortnightly (with the occasional bonus episode when something big happens… like when I announced the book!). I’ve been in a few conversations lately where people have tried to convince me that AI Security is just Application Security in disguise. Naturally, I disagree. 🤷♀️ So in this episode, we dive into AI Security vs Application Security — how they overlap, where they diverge, and why securing AI systems demands new thinking beyond traditional AppSec. 💌 Sign up for the newsletter: http://eepurl.com/i7RgRM 📘 Pre-order The AI Security Handbook: [link coming soon] 🎥 Watch this episode and more on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HarrietHacks 🔗 Useful Links SQL Injection Examples (W3Schools): https://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_injection.asp Application Security Blog (Medium): https://medium.com/@pixelprecisionengineering1/application-security-appsec-in-cybersecurity-855ad9ce5e5e Echoleak Zero-Click Copilot Exploit (Dark Reading): https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/researchers-detail-zero-click-copilot-exploit-echoleak Traditional AppSec vs AI Security (Pillar Security): https://www.pillar.security/blog/traditional-appsec-vs-ai-security-addressing-modern-risks
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Aug 12, 2025 · 19 minAgentic AI Security: A Primer
For a while we've been wanting to talk about Agentic AI Security.. the thing is that we could spend multiple episodes talking about it! So we decided to do just that. This is part 1 - a primer - where we talk about exactly what AI agents are and why we may need to consider their security a bit differently. Stay tuned for the rest of the series!
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Aug 4, 2025 · 31 minHow Likely Are AI Security Incidents? Updates From Our Final Report!
Six months ago Tania and I made an episode about the interim report for our AI Security Likelihood Project.. and it is finally time to discuss the final report! You'll see it live at this link shortly: https://www.aisecurityfundamentals.com/ The premise was simple: are AI security incidents happening in the wild? What can we learn about future incidents from these historic ones? We answer some of these questions.
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Jul 23, 2025 · 27 minTo open or close model weights?
In this episode, Tania and I discuss the debate around closed or open model weights. What do you think? The RAND report we mention: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2849-1.html
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Jul 15, 2025 · 31 minCreative prompt injection in the wild
In this episode, Tania and I talk through some creative examples of prompt injection/engineering we've seen in the wild.. think prompts hidden in papers, red-teaming and web-scraping. Your Brain on ChatGPT: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872 Paper with hidden text (p. 12): https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.19918v2 Interesting overview: https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/07/scholars_try_to_fool_llm_reviewers/ Echoleak blog post: https://www.aim.security/lp/aim-labs-echoleak-m365
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Jun 24, 2025 · 52 minThreat intel digest: 23 June 2025
This week we discussed multiple AI vulnerabilities, including Echolink in M365 Copilot, Agent Smith in Langchain, and a SQL injection flaw in Llama Index, all of which have been patched. We also covered a data exposure bug in Asana's MCP server and OWASP's project to create an AI vulnerability scoring system, while also outlining Google's defense layers for Gemini, Thomas Roccia's Proximity tool for MCP server security, news regarding AI and legal/security concerns, and research on AI hacking AI, prompt compression, multi-agent security protocols, and the security of reasoning models versus LLMs.
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Jun 16, 2025 · 32 minAI safety evaluations with Inspect
I'm back from holiday, and this week Tania and I talk about a project she completed as part of the ARENA AI safety curriculum to replicate the findings of evaluations on frontier AI capabilities. Link to reasoning paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09696 Link to the Inspect dashboard: https://inspect-evals-dashboard.streamlit.app/ ARENA AI Safety course: https://www.arena.education/
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Jun 10, 2025 · 54 minThreat intel digest: 9 June 2025
This week we try a new condensed format for the AI security digest! we covered critical CVEs, including vulnerabilities in AWS MCP, Llama Index, GitHub MCP integration, and tool poisoning attacks. We also reported on malware campaigns using spoofed AI installers, a supply chain attack via fake PyTorch models, and the AI-guided discovery of a Linux kernel vulnerability by Sean Healin using OpenAI's 03 model. We addressed OpenAI's actions against malicious use of their models, Reddit's lawsuit against Anthropic for data scraping, the creation of an AI model for reconstructing 3D faces from DNA by Chinese researchers, a zero-trust framework for AI agent identity management proposed by the Cloud Security Alliance, research on an agent-based red teaming framework, the impact of context length on LLM vulnerability, and CSIRO's technique for improving deep fake detection. We also highlighted the vulnerablemcp.info project and the ongoing evolution of AI security best practices. Sign up to get the digest in your inbox: http://eepurl.com/i7RgRM