SIN-05 Security and Innovation Newsletter March 28th 2025
Hello my fellow security enthusiast! Welcome back to a new exciting edition of the 'Security and Innovation' Newsletter. Get ready to continue diving into the world of AI security in this issue. We've packed it with research and fresh stuff you won't want to miss. Please share it with colleagues and friends to help our community grow. Happy reading!
Let's start with a pretty critical and messy vulnerability, that caused a lots of headaches this week, Wiz.io researchers disclosed 'IngressNightmare' vulnerabilities in the Kubernetes Ingress NGINX Controller can allow attackers to exploit the admission webhook if it's exposed to the internet. To determine if your system is vulnerable, check your ingress-nginx version and configuration settings. Article
🛡️ SAML Tester is a developer-friendly tool designed to simplify the testing process for SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) and SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) integrations. It allows users to simulate an Identity Provider (IdP) and validate their Single Sign-On (SSO) implementation with ease, making it a valuable resource for developers working on authentication and identity management systems. If you have a SaaS product and offers SSO this is a great tool to try test your setup. Try it here
🤖 🛡️ Nice article from Harry Wetheral, on Explainability. Security products often struggle with explainability, making it hard for users to trust their decisions. Large Language Models (LLMs) can improve this by providing clear and detailed explanations of their reasoning. As LLMs and Agents evolve, they promise to make explainability in security products much better, helping users assess and trust these tools more easily. Article
🤖 🛡️ Security Checklist and Prompt For Vibe Coders: To continue with the current trend, this article discusses the importance of security in AI-generated code, highlighting a common issue where AI coding assistants often produce functional but insecure code unless explicitly prompted about security concerns. Article + Prompt
🤖 🛡️ How AI Coding Assistants Could Be Compromised Via Rules File Are you still Vibing? here are some potential risks surrounding the use of AI-driven code generation tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, etc. Several users express concerns about the security implications, particularly the possibility of hidden Unicode characters being used to obfuscate malicious instructions in code. This issue is highlighted by the fact that such tools are often integrated into ecosystems where software might be built with inherent vulnerabilities. Article
🛡️ Threat Modeling the Trail of Bits way: has developed a unique threat modeling process called TRAIL, which stands for Threat and Risk Analysis Informed Lifecycle. This method is designed to maximize value for clients by minimizing the effort required to update the threat model as systems evolve. The TRAIL process combines elements from various methodologies, including Mozilla’s Rapid Risk Assessment (RRA) and NIST guidelines, to create a comprehensive approach that covers all in-scope parts of a system and their relationships. give it a go here Article
🤖 🛡️ Agentic AI Threat Modeling Framework: MAESTRO This document introduces MAESTRO (another Threat Model framework :) ), a new threat modeling framework specifically designed for Agentic AI, and critically evaluates existing frameworks (OCTAVE, Trike, VAST, etc.) for their applicability to this emerging field. The analysis reveals that while established frameworks offer valuable general security principles, they consistently fall short in addressing the unique challenges posed by autonomous, learning, and interactive AI agents – particularly regarding internal agent vulnerabilities like adversarial inputs, data poisoning, and emergent behaviors. Article
🛡️ Probo is an open-source compliance platform designed to help startups achieve SOC-2, GDPR, and ISO27001 certifications efficiently. It stands out by being accessible, transparent, and community-driven, offering features such as context-aware security controls, smart automation for risk assessment and policy generation, and no vendor lock-in, allowing users to own their compliance data. The platform is free to use, with the option to pay only for specific services needed, making it a cost-effective solution, to the $$$ commercial ones. Repo
🤖 🛡️ Promptfoo is a very complete tool designed to enhance the security and reliability of Large Language Models (LLMs) through automated red teaming and continuous monitoring. It offers customizable probes that adapt dynamically to your application, uncovering common failures such as PII leaks, insecure tool use, cross-session data leaks, prompt injections, jailbreaks, harmful content generation, and specialized medical or legal advice issues. Definitely worth checking it out: Site
🤖 🛡️ Cursor AI Security, If you are curious about how Cursor deal with security, code indexing, LLM usage, etc. This is a nice document to read. Article
🤖 “The 70% Problem, Hard truths about AI-assisted coding” argues that while AI coding tools are excellent for accelerating software development – particularly prototyping and automating routine tasks – they aren’t yet a solution for democratizing coding. The author observes a pattern where AI can get projects to around 70% completion, but the final 30% – achieving production-ready, maintainable, and robust code – still requires significant engineering knowledge and expertise. Non-engineers often struggle with this final stage, getting stuck in cycles of fixing AI-suggested changes that create new problems due to a lack of underlying understanding. Article
🤖 🛡️ Vulnerability Analysis for Container Security Blueprint by NVIDIA: This content highlights NVIDIA's "Container Security Blueprint" powered by NVIDIA NIM and generative AI. The blueprint focuses on rapidly identifying and mitigating security vulnerabilities within containerized environments. It leverages AI models, specifically llama-3_1-70b-instruct and nv-embedqa-e5-v5, to achieve this. If you use Nvidia ecosystem this could be really interesting Project Repo
🤖 🛡️ EnIGMA is a new LM agent designed to autonomously solve Capture The Flag (CTF) challenges, a key benchmark for cybersecurity AI. Developed by researchers from multiple universities, EnIGMA distinguishes itself through the introduction of “Interactive Agent Tools” – allowing the agent to utilize essential cybersecurity tools like debuggers and server connections. This innovation significantly improves performance compared to previous LM agents, achieving state-of-the-art results on benchmarks like NYU CTF, Intercode-CTF, and CyBench. Project
Final thoughts
“So much can be accomplished in one focused hour, especially when that hour is part of a routine, a sacred rhythm that becomes part of your daily life.” — Dani Shapiro
Work becomes great when curiosity drives it beyond obligation. - Shane Parrish
When we lack real problems, we create imaginary ones; when we lack meaningful work, we perfect the unimportant. - Shane Parrish
Thanks for reading, and please share with your network.
Chris