4 ms·

The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

30 points by windcbf 9mo ago

windcbf 9mo ago
PentAGI just launched an open-source AI penetration testing tool. Anthropic just launched Claude Code Security. AI is entering cybersecurity — permanently. But here’s the uncomfortable question: What happens when attackers automate faster than defenders react?
- tapland 9mo ago
  Is this an AI generated response? Attackers have always been ahead. Its been reality since we've been permanently online
SecurityGeekYY 9mo ago
Maybe the answer isn’t faster response, but removing default visibility altogether.
econ 9mo ago
Some time around 2010 I update th virus and Trojan definitions on a windows 95 machine that wasn't really used beyond 2004. It had every free scanner one could download. They found over 1500 things. Apparently someone ran a trojan generator on my machine. I don't know when they all became known trojans or if it found all of them but when the box was in use the scanners found nothing. God knows what is sleeping on our machines today. I once hear there are very very expensive tools with luxurious gui's that bundle bags of fresh exploits and receive new ones over the tubes. The guy told me that most of the code involved cleaning up after it self. I think the AI will only run known exploits? Its nice to find those but if anyone really wants in it's just a matter of money. I'm curious what applications we can bake into hardware. You can't insert malicious bread into a toaster to gain access to other things.
troymc 9mo ago
Apparently the formal specification of OpenNHP was submitted as an IETF Internet-Draft in January: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-opennhp-saag-nhp/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-opennhp-saag-nhp/
zhubert 9mo ago
Not quite. Cixin Liu’s series had a premise of dramatic asymmetry. AI in our context is the inverse. Everyone can spend “credits” to get a supergenius coder.
- oldcigarette 9mo ago
  Just s/AI/surveillance state/ and it reads pretty much the same. People in the US you should read NSPM-7 which is obviously simply targeted at this admin's out group. Things seem to be well in motion already from the outward indications we have about DHS spending and disregard for legal processes. People are just still in denial or not paying attention.
- Nevermark 9mo ago
  There are still a major asymmetries. There is an economic asymmetry between having a frontier model that people pay to use vs. being someone paying them so they can keep improving it. Also, from the outside, we only know about the advances that get shipped/put on servers. Presumably, a lot more promising advances are uncovered than are shipped. Maybe they don't fit the product, maybe they are not ready, or maybe they provide a competitive advantage if used and improved internally without disclosure. So there is a potential growing development/information/frontier asymmetry, of unknown magnitude and velocity.
  - zhubert 9mo ago
    Yep. I agree. I’m assuming that the best model for coding is always six months advanced ahead for the investors. Even with that assumption, there’s a huge democratization effect. I’ve never seen a tool more accessible for people of all backgrounds and abilities. It should be celebrated. And yet “engineers” are worried about their identities.
throw0101c 9mo ago
For anyone not familiar with the concept of "dark forest": > […] In Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest, the author proposes a literary explanation for the Fermi paradox in which countless alien civilizations exist, but are both silent and paranoid, destroying any nascent lifeforms loud enough to make themselves known.[181] This is because any other intelligent life may represent a future threat. As a result, Liu's fictional universe contains a plethora of quiet civilizations which do not reveal themselves, as in a "dark forest"...filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like a ghost".[182][183][184] This idea has come to be known as the dark forest hypothesis.[185][186][187] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Communication_is_dangerous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Communication_is... > The "dark forest" hypothesis presumes that any space-faring civilization would view any other intelligent life such as theirs as an inevitable threat and thus destroy any nascent life that makes itself known. As a result, the electromagnetic radiation surveys would not find evidence of intelligent alien life.[8][9] […] > The name of the hypothesis derives from Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest,[11] as in a "dark forest" filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like ghosts".[12][13] According to the dark forest hypothesis, since the intentions of any newly contacted civilisation can never be known with certainty, then if one is encountered, it is best to make a preemptive strike, in order to avoid the potential extinction of one's own species. The novel provides a detailed investigation of Liu's concerns about alien contact.[2] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis * Kurzgesagt (10m): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUJYP8tnRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUJYP8tnRE (Cixin's novel probably made the idea famous, but others (Brin, Bear) have explored it previously.)
- Herring 9mo ago
  Fancy. Much more likely they just ruin their own environment and die. It has happened many times before, since the Great Oxygenation Event 2.4B years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
- piskov 9mo ago
  All the quotes miss the simplicity of 3 rules of Cosmology or whatever it was called in the trilogy. — The essence of the Dark Forest theory: 1. Survival is the primary goal of any civilization. 2. Life expands to fill all available space, but resources are finite. Roughly speaking, like humans cutting down forests to expand cities without caring what happens to the ants living there — if expansion is needed, it’s done. 3. Progress is unstoppable. If one group hasn’t mastered fusion yet, they will say in a thousand years — and then they’ll come for the others because of points 1 and 2. — The author builds the novel on the idea that we shouldn’t be sending signals into space, but rather stay quiet and avoid drawing attention. Because in his view, once one civilization detects a signal from another, the safest move is to eliminate it immediately — without taking the risk of finding out whether it’s friendly (for now) or already not.
lallysingh 9mo ago
This entire page is a sales pitch, but it doesn't really cover how things are hidden or how much that costs. How does it compare to tor hidden services?
- mzajc 9mo ago
  The website is pure slop with an infinitely low information to noise ratio. Judging by their documentation[0] it's just access control for web servers, so the better question would be how it compares to TLS client auth (which uses proper standards, doesn't require users to install extra software, and doesn't require any extra daemons server-side) [0]: https://docs.opennhp.org/nhp_quick_start/ https://docs.opennhp.org/nhp_quick_start/
mzajc 9mo ago
This entire page seems incredibly cheaply machine generated, including the text and images. If you want to make a case for your product, you should at least make it look like some effort went into this.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
davidivadavid 9mo ago
If you want something a bit more "serious" on this, check out The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet by Bogna Konior. [0] [0] https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet--9781509569250 https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-dark-fo...
- elcapitan 9mo ago
  Looks like there is also a shorter essay version that came out before the book https://flugschriften.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/flugschriften-6-bogna-konior-the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet-v.2.pdf https://flugschriften.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/flugsch... edit: The essay is from 2020
gaigalas 9mo ago
Analogies - new setting: 20%
aesopturtle 9mo ago
The “dark forest” vibe feels real, but it’s less sci‑fi and more boring economics: scraping is cheap, attribution is hard, and trust is fragile. I worry the default outcome is everything drifting toward logins/CAPTCHAs/walled gardens—not because people want that, but because “public + unmetered” turns into “free training data + abuse surface.” Feels like we need better primitives for proof-of-origin (signing/publisher identity) and some kind of tiered access for bulk crawling. Anyone seen a non-centralized approach that could actually get adoption?
nicbou 9mo ago
It seems to rehash a much better article by Maggie Appleton. The original has great writing and gorgeous illustrations. This is actually a good example of how much better the human-written original is to its AI slop copy. https://maggieappleton.com/forest-talk https://maggieappleton.com/forest-talk

30 points by windcbf 9mo ago

PentAGI just launched an open-source AI penetration testing tool. Anthropic just launched Claude Code Security. AI is entering cybersecurity — permanently. But here’s the uncomfortable question: What happens when attackers automate faster than defenders react?

tapland 9mo ago
Is this an AI generated response? Attackers have always been ahead. Its been reality since we've been permanently online

SecurityGeekYY 9mo ago

Maybe the answer isn’t faster response, but removing default visibility altogether.

econ 9mo ago

Some time around 2010 I update th virus and Trojan definitions on a windows 95 machine that wasn't really used beyond 2004. It had every free scanner one could download. They found over 1500 things. Apparently someone ran a trojan generator on my machine. I don't know when they all became known trojans or if it found all of them but when the box was in use the scanners found nothing. God knows what is sleeping on our machines today. I once hear there are very very expensive tools with luxurious gui's that bundle bags of fresh exploits and receive new ones over the tubes. The guy told me that most of the code involved cleaning up after it self. I think the AI will only run known exploits? Its nice to find those but if anyone really wants in it's just a matter of money. I'm curious what applications we can bake into hardware. You can't insert malicious bread into a toaster to gain access to other things.

troymc 9mo ago

Apparently the formal specification of OpenNHP was submitted as an IETF Internet-Draft in January: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-opennhp-saag-nhp/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-opennhp-saag-nhp/

zhubert 9mo ago

Not quite. Cixin Liu’s series had a premise of dramatic asymmetry. AI in our context is the inverse. Everyone can spend “credits” to get a supergenius coder.

oldcigarette 9mo ago
Just s/AI/surveillance state/ and it reads pretty much the same. People in the US you should read NSPM-7 which is obviously simply targeted at this admin's out group. Things seem to be well in motion already from the outward indications we have about DHS spending and disregard for legal processes. People are just still in denial or not paying attention.
Nevermark 9mo ago
There are still a major asymmetries. There is an economic asymmetry between having a frontier model that people pay to use vs. being someone paying them so they can keep improving it. Also, from the outside, we only know about the advances that get shipped/put on servers. Presumably, a lot more promising advances are uncovered than are shipped. Maybe they don't fit the product, maybe they are not ready, or maybe they provide a competitive advantage if used and improved internally without disclosure. So there is a potential growing development/information/frontier asymmetry, of unknown magnitude and velocity.
- zhubert 9mo ago
  Yep. I agree. I’m assuming that the best model for coding is always six months advanced ahead for the investors. Even with that assumption, there’s a huge democratization effect. I’ve never seen a tool more accessible for people of all backgrounds and abilities. It should be celebrated. And yet “engineers” are worried about their identities.

throw0101c 9mo ago

For anyone not familiar with the concept of "dark forest": > […] In Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest, the author proposes a literary explanation for the Fermi paradox in which countless alien civilizations exist, but are both silent and paranoid, destroying any nascent lifeforms loud enough to make themselves known.[181] This is because any other intelligent life may represent a future threat. As a result, Liu's fictional universe contains a plethora of quiet civilizations which do not reveal themselves, as in a "dark forest"...filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like a ghost".[182][183][184] This idea has come to be known as the dark forest hypothesis.[185][186][187] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Communication_is_dangerous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Communication_is... > The "dark forest" hypothesis presumes that any space-faring civilization would view any other intelligent life such as theirs as an inevitable threat and thus destroy any nascent life that makes itself known. As a result, the electromagnetic radiation surveys would not find evidence of intelligent alien life.[8][9] […] > The name of the hypothesis derives from Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest,[11] as in a "dark forest" filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like ghosts".[12][13] According to the dark forest hypothesis, since the intentions of any newly contacted civilisation can never be known with certainty, then if one is encountered, it is best to make a preemptive strike, in order to avoid the potential extinction of one's own species. The novel provides a detailed investigation of Liu's concerns about alien contact.[2] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis * Kurzgesagt (10m): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUJYP8tnRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUJYP8tnRE (Cixin's novel probably made the idea famous, but others (Brin, Bear) have explored it previously.)

Herring 9mo ago
Fancy. Much more likely they just ruin their own environment and die. It has happened many times before, since the Great Oxygenation Event 2.4B years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
piskov 9mo ago
All the quotes miss the simplicity of 3 rules of Cosmology or whatever it was called in the trilogy. — The essence of the Dark Forest theory: 1. Survival is the primary goal of any civilization. 2. Life expands to fill all available space, but resources are finite. Roughly speaking, like humans cutting down forests to expand cities without caring what happens to the ants living there — if expansion is needed, it’s done. 3. Progress is unstoppable. If one group hasn’t mastered fusion yet, they will say in a thousand years — and then they’ll come for the others because of points 1 and 2. — The author builds the novel on the idea that we shouldn’t be sending signals into space, but rather stay quiet and avoid drawing attention. Because in his view, once one civilization detects a signal from another, the safest move is to eliminate it immediately — without taking the risk of finding out whether it’s friendly (for now) or already not.

lallysingh 9mo ago

This entire page is a sales pitch, but it doesn't really cover how things are hidden or how much that costs. How does it compare to tor hidden services?

mzajc 9mo ago
The website is pure slop with an infinitely low information to noise ratio. Judging by their documentation[0] it's just access control for web servers, so the better question would be how it compares to TLS client auth (which uses proper standards, doesn't require users to install extra software, and doesn't require any extra daemons server-side) [0]: https://docs.opennhp.org/nhp_quick_start/ https://docs.opennhp.org/nhp_quick_start/

mzajc 9mo ago

This entire page seems incredibly cheaply machine generated, including the text and images. If you want to make a case for your product, you should at least make it look like some effort went into this.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

davidivadavid 9mo ago

If you want something a bit more "serious" on this, check out The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet by Bogna Konior. [0] [0] https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet--9781509569250 https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-dark-fo...

elcapitan 9mo ago
Looks like there is also a shorter essay version that came out before the book https://flugschriften.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/flugschriften-6-bogna-konior-the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet-v.2.pdf https://flugschriften.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/flugsch... edit: The essay is from 2020

gaigalas 9mo ago

Analogies - new setting: 20%

aesopturtle 9mo ago

The “dark forest” vibe feels real, but it’s less sci‑fi and more boring economics: scraping is cheap, attribution is hard, and trust is fragile. I worry the default outcome is everything drifting toward logins/CAPTCHAs/walled gardens—not because people want that, but because “public + unmetered” turns into “free training data + abuse surface.” Feels like we need better primitives for proof-of-origin (signing/publisher identity) and some kind of tiered access for bulk crawling. Anyone seen a non-centralized approach that could actually get adoption?

nicbou 9mo ago

It seems to rehash a much better article by Maggie Appleton. The original has great writing and gorgeous illustrations. This is actually a good example of how much better the human-written original is to its AI slop copy. https://maggieappleton.com/forest-talk https://maggieappleton.com/forest-talk