A New Era of Threats: Lessons from Agentic AI Malware - Candid Wuest
Disobey 2026 · Main Stage
In his compelling talk at Disobey, Candid Wuest, a seasoned veteran of the antivirus industry, meticulously dissects the pervasive hype surrounding "AI malware" and rigorously separates it from the current reality of cyber threats. Titled "A New Era of Threats: Lessons from Agentic AI Malware," Wuest's presentation serves as a critical examination of how artificial intelligence is genuinely being leveraged by cybercriminals today, and more importantly, what the future of truly autonomous, AI-powered malicious software might entail. He challenges common misconceptions, such as exaggerated statistics claiming AI's dominance in ransomware, by drawing upon over two decades of experience in analyzing thousands of malware samples.
AI review
Wuest does the work most 'AI security' talks refuse to do: he actually built the thing, tested it against real EDRs, and then told you honestly what failed and why. The hype-deflation framing is overused at this point, but his PoC data — Lamehawk's temperature-0.1 determinism, the EDR-adaptive obfuscation results, the stopping-problem observations — gives the talk genuine technical grounding that separates it from the endless parade of 'AI will change everything' keynotes.