Absolute AppSec

Ken Johnson and Seth Law reflect on the 2026 RSA Conference and BSidesSF, noting an industry-wide "awakening" regarding the high costs and engineering complexities of operationalizing AI security tools. A major focus is the recent "supply chain attack hell," specifically the compromise of the Axios HTTP client through dual-account breaches that allowed attackers to bypass legitimate OIDC deploy setups via a misconfigured NPM CLI. The malware used was particularly evasive, deleting itself and replacing its package.json with a clean version post-execution. The hosts also discuss the emergence of the "Agentic Development Lifecycle" (ADLC), where engineering teams are increasingly "committing on time" rather than features, creating a volume of code that traditional security gates cannot manage. They debate Thomas Ptacek’s thesis that AI agents will soon "supplant" human vulnerability research for common bug classes, shifting the human role toward high-level governance and "context infusion". Economically, they highlight how Anthropic's security announcements contributed to nearly half a trillion dollars in market value loss for traditional security firms, as investors increasingly bet on frontier models to consume established security domains.