Human Attack Surfaces in Agentic Web: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the AI Apocalypse
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BSides Las Vegas 2025 · Day 1
Matthew Canaham argues that **AI agents** are not a passing fad by drawing a parallel to the **internet’s** productivity gains—time saved on mundane tasks compounds into macroeconomic and behavioral shifts. He defines an **agent** minimally as a system with **sensors** (environment inputs), **goals** (intentionality—contrasted with a bare **LLM**), **processing** and **state updates**, and **actuators**/**tools** that change the environment. The talk then pivots to **security**: an “**agentic cognitive warfare**” framing where new surfaces emerge from **humans attacking agents**, **agents attacking humans**, **agents attacking agents**, and indirect manipulation of training or retrieval corpora (e.g., content aimed at **AI consumption** rather than humans).
AI review
A sweeping keynote-style tour of human/AI cognitive risk with memorable anecdotes and a workable agent definition, but uneven technical rigor—some citations are hand-wavy and a chunk of stage time is theater. Useful for orientation, not for an operator’s checklist.