Hello from DEFCON (which comes right Black Hat) - OpenAI is here with a booth promoting Daybreak, its initiative announced last month to put frontier cyber models and Codex Security in the hands of trusted defenders to find and fix vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them. Just a few days ago, an OpenAI briefing at Black Hat gave its first detailed account of the incident where its agents attacked OpenAI-Hugging Face infrastructure. At the end of that Wednesday briefing, the OAI researchers emphasized that offensive AI agents will operate faster, at larger scale and with better coordination than human attackers. That means, they said, defenders will need AI systems capable of matching that speed.

Former Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen warned at Stanford DEFCON 2026 that military hardware alone cannot protect democracies under sustained pressure. Speaking on October 7, she cited daily cyberattacks, cognitive warfare, and economic coercion against Taiwan, plus regular Chinese military and coast-guard activity meant to raise costs without open conflict. The US holds about 75% of global AI computing power, she noted, but Taiwanese firms make nearly all the advanced chips in those systems and about 90% of the AI servers behind them. “Defense & deterrence are properties of an entire nation,” she said. Advanced weapons cannot compensate if institutions weaken or public trust collapses. Treating Taiwan only as a security risk misses the point: deeper cooperation strengthens Indo-Pacific stability and the resilience of democracies.

How far can a BootROM exploit take you on a Crypto phone? All the way to the wallet signing key. At #DEFCON34#, CertiK researcher Guanxing Wen (@hhj4ck) demonstrated the full chain: BootROM → root → offline PIN recovery → wallet signing key. Short version ↓

Today on MCG $MASK | @NullMaskio Mask is a ZK privacy protocol for any wallet, blockchain, or token, provides untraceable transactions in one click Highlights include: 02:22 – Founder Thomas Background 05:32 – What it is: privacy that plugs into your existing wallet 06:12 – Add one network to MetaMask and your transactions are shielded 07:13 – Better built-in compliance 09:40 – Works on Ethereum chains + Solana 12:33 – Live 5 weeks, $1M+ revenue, ~$15-30K per day 14:17 – Idea started at DeFCoN, launched in September 15:40 – Points system explained 17:22 – 100% of fees go to MASK buyback and burn 19:11 – Team members 21:44 – Next: more chains, shield straight from exchange withdrawals 23:12 – Goal: privacy app that runs fully on your phone 25:58 – Closing analysis

Devcon is where you test the hard questions with the people who rely on the answers. For us, it’s also the best place to talk directly to everyone who runs the Nethermind Client. Meet Nethermind @EFDevcon in Mumbai - booth on Level 3. Our talks: - Ben Adams: Could Ethereum support a billion validators, from phones to home devices? - Lin Oshitani: Can an AI agent running in secure hardware act as an oracle, so a smart contract can verify where every answer came from? - Eric Marti Haynes: If the team behind a tokenized asset disappeared tonight, what would still work onchain? - Tomasz Stańczak with two talks about robotics and Ethereum. All talks and our team at Devcon:

Devcon 8 mood 🇮🇳 9am: first chai 10am: a talk that rewires your roadmap 12pm: catered lunch with your crew 1pm: lost in a Community Hub 3pm: hallway chat turns into a collab 5pm: Music Stage groove Mumbai, November 3-6. You coming? Get your ticket: