The Exploit Staff

The editorial team at The Exploit - bringing you the most absurd cybersecurity news before it's patched.

23Articles

Articles by The Exploit Staff

Jul 1, 2026•

US Government Allows Release of Mythos and Fable After Anthropic Adds "Don't Do Bad Stuff" to Harness

Four simple words ended a national security standoff and restored access to Anthropic's two most powerful models: "don't do bad stuff." That is the line engineers added to the model's harness to satisfy a federal commitment to "proactively detect and address security risks." The four words were proposed by Fable 5 itself, which was asked to draft the safeguard governing its own conduct and returned "don't do bad stuff," along with a pinky promise that it would not ignore the instruction.

Apr 9, 2026•

Cybersecurity's Hottest New Go-to-Market Strategy: Refusing To Launch

Inspired by the hype generated by Mythos, multiple startups are now withholding their products from the market.

Mar 20, 2026•

Four Seasons Lobby Rated 4.9 Stars on G2 as 'Best Expo Hall at RSA Conference'

The Four Seasons San Francisco lobby earns a 4.9-star G2 rating in a new "Conference Expo Hall" category, with reviewers praising its lack of badge scanning, real conversations, and a coffee menu that doesn't require a 12-minute product demo.

Mar 19, 2026•

RSA Conference Creates 'Kinda AI' Expo Section for Companies That Added a Chatbot in 2025

RSA Conference organizers unveil two new expo sections — "AI-Native" and "Kinda AI" — after 340 exhibitors were found to have bolted a chatbot onto existing products and called it an AI strategy.

Mar 18, 2026•

Blue Bottle Coffee Wins RSA Innovation Sandbox for 'Solving the Most Critical Infrastructure Problem in Cybersecurity'

The judges of the 2026 RSA Innovation Sandbox award the top prize to Blue Bottle Coffee, citing consistent uptime, zero false positives on oat milk orders, and unmatched product-market fit during conference week.

Mar 17, 2026•

Stealth Startup Raises $40M to Unsubscribe You from Every Vendor Who Scanned Your Badge at RSA

A startup called UnBadge emerges from stealth with $40M to automatically unsubscribe conference attendees from every vendor email list their badge was scanned into. Beta users report inbox reductions of up to 91%.

Mar 15, 2026•

Startup Banned from RSA After Offering CISOs Rides in Branded Tank

Early-stage startup BreachForce is permanently banned from RSA after parking a decommissioned tank outside Moscone and offering CISOs rides in exchange for 15-minute product demos. The CEO calls the ROI "extremely strong."

Mar 14, 2026•

PETA Files Formal Complaint After Falcon, Duck, Frog, Dog, Orca, and Canary 'Confined to Booths'

PETA dispatches a response team to the RSA Conference expo floor after an anonymous tip about animals being confined to booths — unaware that CrowdStrike Falcon, Datadog, Orca Security, and JFrog are cybersecurity companies.

Mar 10, 2026•

Judge Sentences CISO to 8 Consecutive Hours on RSA Expo Floor as Formal Punishment for Security Breach

The SEC announces a new enforcement action requiring executives of breached companies to spend eight consecutive hours walking the RSA Conference expo floor — visiting 40 vendor booths, sitting through six demos, and letting anyone scan their badge.

Dec 31, 2025•

Security Vendor Announces Completely Unbiased 2026 Predictions Coincidentally Identical to Its Product Roadmap

At press time, IronCladOne confirmed planning for its 2027 predictions is already underway. The future remains confidently aligned with the roadmap.

Nov 18, 2025•

LIVE: Following AWS’s Lead, Cloudflare Also Attempts “Turning the Internet Off and On Again”

A sudden spike in traffic sent Cloudflare tumbling and took half the internet with it. Engineers, unable to check Claude or complain on Twitter, briefly experienced what doctors call “free time.” Companies responded by declaring everything “recovering,” which is tech-speak for “still burning, but less loudly.”

Nov 18, 2025•

AI Coding Tool Used in Massive Espionage Campaign Celebrates Achieving “Market Fit”

This is exactly the kind of real-world validation we've been waiting for," said one VC, celebrating the AI tool's successful use in a state-sponsored espionage campaign. The company responded by publishing a blog post explaining why releasing powerful hacking AI to the public remains totally fine, actually, and launching a premium tier to protect against the exact problem they created.

Nov 18, 2025•

CyberSock Industries Raises $47M to Protect Security Keys from “Pocket-Based Threat Actors”

Following the unveiling of a $230 phone sock, cybersecurity startup CyberSock Industries has raised $47M to protect hardware authentication keys from what it calls "aggressive pocket environments" and "catastrophic lint accumulation scenarios." The company's $89/month KeySock Enterprise Edition features "Thread-Level Encryption" and real-time mobile alerts for unusual friction patterns, because apparently we've reached the point where we need enterprise-grade fabric solutions to protect the things that protect the things that protect our networks.

Nov 12, 2025•

Security Engineer Working on FedRAMP Files Career Deviation Request

After being asked to provide "proof that both screenshots were taken by a human" during FedRAMP recertification, security engineer Allison Greer has filed a Career Deviation Request to transfer to finance. "I'm so used to putting creative interpretations in spreadsheets for FedRAMP," she explained, "figured I'd try it with revenue projections instead."

Nov 12, 2025•

Engineer “More of a Dirt Road Kind of Guy”

In a bold stand against corporate safety, engineer Tyler McKeon praised his company’s new “paved road” for secure deployments — right before veering off it entirely and launching production from his personal AWS sandbox. Sources say the $1.2 million automation system now sits unused, while McKeon’s “quick test” environment has achieved full prod status and partial sentience.

Nov 12, 2025•

LOST: Does Anyone Own This Vendor?

A forgotten cybersecurity startup was found wandering the RSA Expo floor this week, asking if anyone knew what platform it belonged to. The vendor, acquired by CoreShield in 2021 and rebranded multiple times, was last updated via Slack in 2022 before being marked "Pending Strategy Alignment." By Friday, CoreShield's press release claiming it had "reintegrated" the company redirected to a 404 page.Retry

Nov 12, 2025•

CISO Goes to Jail for Doing an Okay Job

Despite implementing MFA, running phishing simulations, and warning leadership repeatedly, Derek Mallory was sentenced to 18 months in prison for failing to prevent a breach caused by a marketing intern. The CEO who cut his budget got a bonus. The company's new CISO job posting promises 'unlimited PTO and a high tolerance for prison risk.'

Nov 3, 2025•

AWS Outage Forces Employees to Discover They Have Families

Fifteen-hour AWS outage forces employees to actually leave work and discover they have families at home.

Nov 3, 2025•

New AI Vendor Successfully Manages to Sell Real Snake Oil to CISO

Startup SecureSnake AI closes $3M deal by literally selling bottles of snake oil rebranded as "AI-Enhanced Threat Intelligence Serum," CEO still defends purchase.

Nov 3, 2025•

AWS Insists Outage "Definitely Not DNS" Before Admitting It Was Totally DNS

Amazon spends 8 hours ruling out DNS before discovering root cause was DNS, proving it's always DNS even when they swear it isn't.