Posted on 04/29/2026 1:40:16 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Mr. Goldstein is a professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence
Anthropic recently sent a shock wave through the cybersecurity world when it said its new artificial intelligence model, Claude Mythos, had exhibited an extraordinary ability to find previously unknown vulnerabilities in software — a hacker’s fantasy. Concern over the tool’s power caused Anthropic to restrict its release mainly to bigger companies, allowing them time to secure their software.
What is everyone else supposed to do? Smaller companies, organizations, nonprofits and regular people are just as much at risk as larger companies. But they most likely lack the skills and resources to address these challenges before their systems are compromised.
Many people may think these problems belong only to the world of cybersecurity experts or tech people, but that’s no longer true. New A.I. tools are going to increase how much insecure software you use in your day-to-day life, while giving attackers a new, powerful weapon to exploit vulnerabilities. If you’re still being careless about things like the strength of the passwords you choose, you’re in for a pretty bad time. If there was ever a time to finally take your cybersecurity practices seriously, it’s now.
I often give talks on cyberdefense to small groups. Inevitably, the conversation turns to personal concerns. Is this app OK? What should I do to protect my phone? Typically, I find a vulnerability for each person. One hasn’t installed bug fixes or security updates on their phone; another doesn’t use two-factor authentication on critical applications. Many have a dangerous app on their device. When confronted with the reality that they are at risk of attack, most insist that enjoyment and convenience outweigh the potential downsides.
That’s always been a dangerous miscalculation, but it’s worse now. We need to correct our behavior...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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These days, it should be changed each month, 30 characters long and stored in a password manager.
If I were nefarious and had access to Claude, I would sic it on Password Manager software.
The one I use is on my phone. A password to get in, yes...but a fingerprint to unmask each password.
Something weird that’s going on these days is the two factor authentication. I have do it for relatively minor accounts (is someone going to hack my account and pay my power bill or order new prescriptions?) but not for shopping sites, bank account, credit cards, etc.
If it can be programmed, it can be hacked. If you don’t want to lose your info, your money, you identity, stay waaaaaayyyy off the internet for as long as you can. It’s been obvious for some time why governments want all personal info on the internet, so it can be altered and stolen.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. My passwords are NOT “probably “ and “screwed”. Where do they get these nuts?
I posted the following on another thread, but it bears repeating:
While I am sure there are vulnerabilities, not all vulnerabilities are easily exploited. They may require certain uncommon settings to be set, or certain online behavior. Besides that, not every vulnerability leads to the same payoff. A vulnerability that causes a browser to crash at will, for instance, is not as serious as one that compromises the password manager.
There is no substitute.™
So...good luck with that.
The ‘bigger companies’ are the biggest crooks, especially on Wall Street.
This article is an argument for bitcoin stored in a wallet offline
“...Your Passwords Are Probably Screwed...”
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I use:
Screwed#9
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