Cybersecurity Industry Leaders Share Insight with Security Technologies Class

Contributed by Sean Abelson, TLI Security Technologies faculty.

From extracting restricted info from AI chatbots to breaking into buildings, the students of ST 5663 — Hacking, Breaking, and Poisoning: Red Teaming Cyber, Physical, and AI Systems — were able to hack and break into a variety of systems and sites this semester. Red teaming, or stress testing security systems, is an exciting career path made up of professional hackers who break things before real adversaries do. This semester, we had two industry leaders and one full red team speak to students about their careers, how AI is changing security, how to break into a career of red teaming, and more.

Aaron Grattafiori

Principal AI Red Teamer, Fortune 50 Company

Aaron Grattafiori spoke on making a career out of hacking. From hacking Teslas to leading Meta's red team, he covered how aspiring red teamers can join local groups (such as BSides), attend conferences (such as DEF CON), and conduct and publish research on areas of interest. Students mentioned that the attacker mindset, purple teaming, and YOLO mode were favorite topics. It was a great discussion and excellent career advice.

Vlad Ionescu

Co-founder & CTO, RunSybil

Vlad Ionescu talked about how AI is changing the security space, how to use AI for hacking, how to prevent AI from providing instructions on how to build dangerous weapons, how to approach prompt engineering as an attacker and defender, how to conduct security vulnerability research, and how various organizations respond to responsible disclosures. The discussion was exciting, enlightening, scary, and empowering. RunSybil, Vlad's AI red teaming company, recently received $40 million in funding. 

Physical Red Team Visit

Cybersecurity Director, Physical Red Team Leads, and Physical Red Team Operators, Fortune 10 Company

The physical red team (PRT) at a Fortune 10 company joined class in person. This conversation ventured from security leadership to discussions on how to track someone through the tire pressure management system (TPMS) on their car (hint: some models give off trackable Bluetooth signatures). From the ethics of social engineering to creating AI tools that conduct Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) before red team operations, the visiting PRT brought their A-game. 

As the discussion wrapped up, the PRT covered hacking communities, Women in Security and Privacy, how to contribute to the red team community, and what the team looks for when hiring new red teamers. The team also gave advice to students working on software-defined radios to help a red team assessment, those working on building AI tech stacks and labs at home, and a group building an AI OSINT bot that scours the internet for data that will help red teamers be successful while simultaneously finding vulnerabilities and helping the organization proactively fix them. 

The PRT gave great guidance. A special thank you to Brent Emery, Paige Campbell, Jason Richard, Martin S., and Bryan. 

Connections with Cybersecurity Industry Leaders

Thank you, Aaron, Vlad, and the PRT for giving back to the red teaming community and helping to inspire the next generation of hackers! We enjoy having industry leaders join the classes at TLI to make connections with students and provide guidance and varying perspectives in an exciting and fast-moving industry. Thank you to the ST 5663 students for asking excellent questions, challenging our speakers, and having fun entering the field of red teaming.