#040 - Cyber AI Chronicle - Intro to AI Programming Assistant

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Cyber AI Chronicle

By Simon Ganiere · 20^th October 2024

Welcome back!

Project Overwatch is a cutting-edge newsletter at the intersection of cybersecurity, AI, technology, and resilience, designed to navigate the complexities of our rapidly evolving digital landscape. It delivers insightful analysis and actionable intelligence, empowering you to stay ahead in a world where staying informed is not just an option, but a necessity.

Table of Contents

• What I learned this week

  • TL;DR

• What Are AI Programming Assistants?

  • The Benefits for Developers

  • The Productivity Debate: Are AI Assistants Really …

  • Mixed Results on Productivity Gains

  • Security Considerations

  • Future Outlook

• Worth a full read

  • Generative AI’s Act 01

• Research Paper

  • On the Feasibility of Fully AI-automated Vishing A …

• Wisdom of the week

• Contact

What I learned this week

TL;DR

• AI programming assistants are everywhere. From professional solution (like GitHub Copilot) to solution that seems to promise a zero code approach (like bolt.new) there is a lot of new aspect to coding. What does this mean from a security perspective? We will explore this week and the next. We start by going through the basics and the promise of AI programming and next week we will focus on the security aspect and what a CISO should know and what can be done to ensure security is not an afterthought. » READ MORE

• A must read article from Sequoia Capital about the evolution of GenAI. The article highlights the shift from a “fast thinking” (pre-trained responses) model to a “slow thinking” (reasons at inference time). It also explores the implication of that shift for the AI market and the emergence of a new cohort of agentic applications. » READ MORE

• The scary world of cyber is still out there. To counter this, here is a short list of some key wins for the week:

  • The Hacker allegedly behind the hack of the FBI, Airbus, National Public Data has been arrested in Brazil » READ MORE

  • In an interesting twist, Russia is prosecuting members of the REvil group. We will see if the charges will stick and if someone is actually being indicated as might be a shift as normally Russia is not going after Russian nationals. » READ MORE

  • The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has announced arrests and charges against several individuals and entities in connection with allegedly manipulating digital asset markets as part of a widespread fraud operation » READ MORE

• No Chinese researchers have not broken AES encryption using quantum computers. Lots of sensationalism in the news. Don’t read me wrong, it will happen at some point and knowing the complexity to move to quantum safe algorithms it’s probably a good advise to work on this sooner rather than later but that research paper is not creating an immediate threat to existing encryption algorithms » READ MORE

• On a different note, and if you are like me and like to read about some big engineering projects and challenges, did you know that 99% of the digital communication rely on subsea cables? Impressive but how about repairing those deep sea cables when they break? You can read all about it on the BBC website » READ MORE