Michael Lubas on the State of Security

Michael Lubas, CEO of Paraxial.io and the first guest ever on this podcast, is back to check in on the state of security. We get into Microsoft's record Patch Tuesday, why AI keeps lowering the bar for attackers, the OpenAI sandbox escape story, and whether the AI labs are overstating the risk. Michael shares why cheap foundational checks still beat a frontier model, why small companies should skip bug bounties, and why Elixir gets no credit for its security. Plus live questions from chat. 00:00 - Introduction 02:34 - ElixirConf US and the Hex pentest talk 06:20 - Microsoft's record Patch Tuesday 13:50 - Engineers who stopped reading their code 14:54 - LLMs as offensive security engineers 17:40 - Sandbox escapes and the OpenAI incident 23:00 - Are the AI labs overstating the risk? 26:09 - The open weights debate 29:32 - Developer anxiety and the Rails World keynote 35:00 - Why it's getting worse for defenders 38:30 - Run grep before a frontier model 41:11 - Why Elixir has an edge right now 45:21 - Patch windows in the AI era 47:11 - Can a startup stop a nation state? 50:06 - Securing your Elixir app with AI 57:17 - Letting AI patch production live 1:01:38 - Learning security as a developer 1:03:42 - Why small companies should skip bug bounties 1:04:54 - Insecure MCPs and AI assistants 1:10:14 - Verifying beneficiaries in Killswitch 1:12:36 - Q&A: Simulating catastrophic events 1:13:25 - Q&A: Learning ethical hacking with AI 1:16:22 - Kids, social media, and regulation 1:23:17 - Q&A: Are garbage collected languages safer? 1:27:26 - Where to find Michael Resources Mentioned: - Securing Hex: https://paraxial.io/blog/hex-pentest?utm_source=elixir-mentor - PortSwigger Web Security Academy: https://portswigger.net/web-security?utm_source=elixir-mentor - The Web Application Hacker's Handbook (2nd ed.) - Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor Connect with Michael: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaellubas?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io on X: https://x.com/paraxialio?utm_source=elixir-mentor Sponsors: - BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor