Applying Zero Trust Principles to Agents - Kieran Human - ASW #397
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
Release Date: 08/25/2026
The AI Threat Multiplier: Securing Mobile Apps in the Automated Era - Ryan Lloyd, Jason Cortlund - ASW #400
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
While agents and LLMs haven't fundamentally changed core mobile vulnerability types, they have supercharged speed, scale, and accessibility—democratizing threats like automated phishing, synthetic identity fraud, and easier identification of hard-coded secrets. Ryan Lloyd and Jason Cortlund break down how threat actors leverage LLMs as a force multiplier to accelerate mobile app attacks. Then we discuss actionable defense strategies, from viewing agents as an active adversary to leveraging server-side threat telemetry, attestation, and layered defense strategies combined with polymorphic...
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Security Conversations on AI, Agents, and Emerging Threats from Black Hat 2026 - Michael Leland, Ido Geffen, Sean Murphy, Idan Plotnik - ASW #399
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
We showcase recordings from this year's Black Hat. The Hidden Risks of the AI Supply Chain - Black Hat interview with Michael Leland, VP and Field CTO of Island Agents can independently discover and install tools, but the emerging ecosystem of Skills and MCP servers lacks many of the trust and security controls applied to traditional software. Michael Leland discusses Island's research uncovering thousands of malicious repositories, widespread security flaws across MCP servers, and a new attack technique called “AgentBaiting,” in which attackers manipulate agents into finding and...
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Fixing Software Weaknesses Rather Than Just Finding More Flaws - Gil Geron, Nidhi Aggarwal, Braden Russell - ASW #398
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
AppSec has always emphasized techniques and tools for discovering vulns, along with taxonomies and lists for describing them. But just piling up more CVEs into a prioritized patching queue has never been an effective strategy. Nidhi Aggarwal talks about some of the economics and decisions that orgs evaluate when figuring out how to improve and protect their software. LLMs might be effective assistants in generating code, but only when they have the context of secure patterns to follow. We also talk about what some of the bug bounty data reveals in terms of successful researchers finding more...
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Applying Zero Trust Principles to Agents - Kieran Human - ASW #397
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
Sandboxing, least privilege, and monitoring are well-established controls in terms of the defenses they provide against unexpected and unauthorized actions. But being well-established in theory doesn't always translate to successful in practice. Kieran Human talks about some of the properties that a good sandbox should have and how monitoring creates a feedback loop to refine allow lists and access controls. In practice, the potential unpredictable behavior of an agent isn't much different from malware. We talk through some of the ways orgs can securely deploy agents without unnecessarily...
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Augmenting Threat Intel Analysis with Agents - Chris Wallis, Sai Kiran Uppu, Ramin Farassat - ASW #396
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
All sorts of cybersecurity disciplines are adopting agents to help humans save time and automate routine activities. Sai Kiran Uppu describes his work on creating a platform for agents to analyze external threat intel, examine internal systems, and present triage decisions to operators. This type of work is especially useful to orgs that deal with petabytes of data and thousands of systems. And, as Kiran notes, it's important to keep that scale from blowing up your budget or turning triage into a procession of false positives. Ideally, this kind of threat intel that's paying attention to...
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Using LLMs for Vuln Discovery - Rishi Sharma - ASW #395
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
Finding flaws has always been a focus of appsec. And now with open source projects and open weight models orgs have modern tools to review code and conduct pentests. Rishi Sharma describes the motivation behind creating a platform of LLM-driven security tools and the effective ways to keep the tools in scope, on budget, and for engineering teams. We talk about how prompts influence LLM activity, as well as the external constraints to keep the LLMs on task. And even if finding flaws is a major focus of appsec, its goal should be delivering secure software and systems. We touch on some of the...
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Prompting for Patches That Fix Vulns Without Adding New Ones - Keith Hoodlet - ASW #394
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
There's already an increase in volume of security flaws found by LLMs. And orgs are already turning to LLMs to write code. So, what happens when orgs lean on LLMs to create patches for those security flaws? Keith Hoodlet gives an exclusive early look at his team's recent research into the success, quality, and failures of LLM-generated security patches. Notably, they saw scenarios across a spectrum from robust, effective patches to patches that changed the software's behavior to patches that introduced new vulns to patches that didn't even fix the original vuln while also introducing a new...
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Inside the OWASP Agent Security Regression Harness Project - Mert Satilmaz - ASW #393
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
Orgs need to be able to use agents, MCPs, and LLMs in ways that don't lead to unexpected actions and undesirable outcomes. The OWASP Agent Security Regression Harness project is an approach for defining customizable scenarios and testing whether those systems fail against known security threats. Mert Saltimaz talks about the background of the project, how orgs can use it as they bring more LLMs into their environment, and how the project intends to grow. Importantly, we also talk about the security controls and designs that orgs can build around the systems and data that models interact with...
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MacOS Security Design Features, Flaws, And Futures - Patrick Wardle - ASW #392
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
Appsec often frames usability and security as at odds with each other. Apple's software has famously emphasized the importance of usability while also creating a solid security foundation. Patrick Wardle talks about how he's seen malware shift from Windows to macOS, how Apple's aggressive stance on deprecation benefits security, and the areas of the OS where he still sees plenty of opportunity for more security research. We discuss how developers make defensible design choices, why privacy needs security, and some security principles that any app developer should keep in mind regardless of...
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Discovering & Securing Your AI Agent Attack Surface - Jeremy Snyder - ASW #391
Application Security Weekly (Audio)
While LLMs and agents are new to appsec and everyone else, a lot of AI security requirements translate to well-known API security requirements. Jeremy Snyder helps us frame the OWASP LLM Top 10 into five layers in order to help orgs understand and prioritize their attack surface. A lot of orgs don't have to deal with model-specific threats or building their own GPU architecture, but every org adopting LLMs and agents should be aware of how those agents are being invoked and the output those agents are producing. That awareness of input and output helps in identifying and mitigating prompt...
info_outlineSandboxing, least privilege, and monitoring are well-established controls in terms of the defenses they provide against unexpected and unauthorized actions. But being well-established in theory doesn't always translate to successful in practice. Kieran Human talks about some of the properties that a good sandbox should have and how monitoring creates a feedback loop to refine allow lists and access controls. In practice, the potential unpredictable behavior of an agent isn't much different from malware. We talk through some of the ways orgs can securely deploy agents without unnecessarily increasing their attack surface.
Resources
- https://www.threatlocker.com/blog/the-principle-of-least-privilege-for-ai-agents
- https://www.threatlocker.com/blog/applying-threatlocker-to-agentic-ai-tools
- https://www.threatlocker.com/blog/why-the-five-eyes-alliance-sees-zero-trust-as-the-best-defense-against-agentic-ai-threats
This interview is sponsored by ThreatLocker. Visit https://securityweekly.com/threatlocker to learn more about them!
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Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-397