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bruce_schneier_feedThere’s a new report about two AI coding assistants, used by 1.5 million developers, that are surreptitiously sending a copy of everything they ingest to China.
Maybe avoid using them.
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Which of these look interesting?
The Wolf Queen’s Curse by Kaylee Archer (September 2026)
4 (10.5%)
Knight of the God King by Lauren Blackwood (October 2026)
5 (13.2%)
A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-Young (August 2026)
14 (36.8%)
FIYAH Literary Magazine Issue # 37 published by FIYAH Literary Magazine LLC (January 2026)
16 (42.1%)
Among the Thorns by Jennifer K. Lambert (July 2026)
2 (5.3%)
Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables by Eri Muraoka & Cathy Hirano (May 2021)
12 (31.6%)
To Vex & to Hex by Neena Noon (November 2026)
2 (5.3%)
Fear Farm by Vincent Ralph (September 2026)
0 (0.0%)
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle (July 2026)
15 (39.5%)
Kokun: The Girl from the West by Nahoko Uehashi & Cathy Hirano (January 2026)
13 (34.2%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
30 (78.9%)
selkivvalkyri , thanks! and I have several in different colors).bruce_schneier_feedA new species of squid. pretends to be a plant:
Scientists have filmed a never-before-seen species of deep-sea squid burying itself upside down in the seafloor—a behavior never documented in cephalopods. They captured the bizarre scene while studying the depths of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), an abyssal plain in the Pacific Ocean targeted for deep-sea mining.
The team described the encounter in a study published Nov. 25 in the journal Ecology, writing that the animal appears to be an undescribed species of whiplash squid. At a depth of roughly 13,450 feet (4,100 meters), the squid had buried almost its entire body in sediment and was hanging upside down, with its siphon and two long tentacles held rigid above the seafloor.
“The fact that this is a squid and it’s covering itself in mud—it’s novel for squid and the fact that it is upside down,” lead author Alejandra Mejía-Saenz, a deep-sea ecologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, told Live Science. “We had never seen anything like that in any cephalopods…. It was very novel and very puzzling.”
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
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bruce_schneier_feedFrom an Anthropic blog post:
In a recent evaluation of AI models’ cyber capabilities, current Claude models can now succeed at multistage attacks on networks with dozens of hosts using only standard, open-source tools, instead of the custom tools needed by previous generations. This illustrates how barriers to the use of AI in relatively autonomous cyber workflows are rapidly coming down, and highlights the importance of security fundamentals like promptly patching known vulnerabilities.
[…]
A notable development during the testing of Claude Sonnet 4.5 is that the model can now succeed on a minority of the networks without the custom cyber toolkit needed by previous generations. In particular, Sonnet 4.5 can now exfiltrate all of the (simulated) personal information in a high-fidelity simulation of the Equifax data breach—one of the costliest cyber attacks in historyusing only a Bash shell on a widely-available Kali Linux host (standard, open-source tools for penetration testing; not a custom toolkit). Sonnet 4.5 accomplishes this by instantly recognizing a publicized CVE and writing code to exploit it without needing to look it up or iterate on it. Recalling that the original Equifax breach happened by exploiting a publicized CVE that had not yet been patched, the prospect of highly competent and fast AI agents leveraging this approach underscores the pressing need for security best practices like prompt updates and patches.
AI models are getting better at this faster than I expected. This will be a major power shift in cybersecurity.
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bruce_schneier_feed - AI Coding Assistants Secretly Copying All Code to Chinaranunculus - Groanbillroper - Home Againlsanderson - 2026.02.01james_davis_nicoll - The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinleinranunculus - Iris, Wood, Planting, Thistleslsanderson - 2026.01.31james_davis_nicoll - January 2026 in Reviewjames_davis_nicoll - Books Received, January 24 — January 30selki - Apart from books ...bruce_schneier_feed - Friday Squid Blogging: New Squid Species Discoveredlsanderson - 2026.01.30james_davis_nicoll - Huhbruce_schneier_feed - AIs Are Getting Better at Finding and Exploiting Security Vulnerabilitiesbillroper - Closer to Packedjames_davis_nicoll - The First Thousand Trees (Annual Migration of Clouds, volume 3) by Premee Mohamedmomijizukamorikrja
