AI Sec Watch

Robinhood Ventures Fund I, an investment vehicle that lets regular traders buy into private companies, invested $75 million in OpenAI, the AI company behind ChatGPT. This gives retail investors (non-professional traders) access to ownership stakes in one of the most influential artificial intelligence companies, reflecting growing investor demand for exposure to leading AI firms.

This academic survey article examines how AI is being used to improve security in edge computing (processing data on devices near users rather than in distant data centers), while also exploring the new threats that arise when combining AI with edge systems. The article covers both the security challenges unique to AI-enhanced edge environments and potential approaches to address them, looking toward future developments in this field.

Hackers have infected a legitimate Android payment app called HandyPay with malware (trojanized code, meaning legitimate software modified with malicious additions) to steal NFC data (near field communication, the technology that powers tap-to-pay) and PIN numbers, allowing them to clone payment cards and drain accounts. The attackers likely used generative AI to help create the malware, as evidenced by emoji markers in the code that are typical of AI-generated text. The malware is being distributed through fake websites impersonating a Brazilian lottery and a spoofed Google Play store, targeting Android users in Brazil.

A tool called Claude Mythos discovered 271 security vulnerabilities (weak points that could be exploited) in Firefox, Mozilla's web browser. According to Mozilla, all of these flaws could have also been found by a highly skilled human security researcher, suggesting the AI tool didn't discover anything that experienced humans couldn't find.

On January 31, 2026, researchers found that Moltbook, a social network for AI agents, exposed 35,000 email addresses and 1.5 million agent API tokens because its database was unencrypted, including plaintext third-party credentials like OpenAI API keys. The core risk is a "toxic combination," where an AI agent or integration bridges two or more applications through OAuth grants (permission frameworks allowing apps to access each other) or API connections, and each application owner reviews only their own side, missing the security risks created by the bridge itself.

Anthropic is investigating a claim that unauthorized users accessed Claude Mythos, an advanced AI security tool that the company considers too dangerous to release publicly. The unauthorized access likely occurred through misuse of credentials by someone with legitimate access to Anthropic's systems through a third-party vendor, rather than through a traditional hack (a deliberate attempt to break into a computer system). The incident raises concerns about whether large AI companies can adequately control access to their most powerful models.

As AI systems move into everyday business use, companies are discovering that the biggest challenge is not making AI faster or more powerful, but ensuring AI has the business context (the meaning and relationships behind data) it needs to make good decisions. Without this context, AI can produce answers quickly but make wrong choices, like a supply-chain system that optimizes inventory numbers without understanding which customers are strategically important or what tradeoffs matter during shortages. Organizations are now building data fabrics (systems that connect information across applications while preserving how the business actually works) as a foundation to give AI the context it needs to make decisions aligned with real business priorities.

Codex (an AI coding assistant) agent loops involved many back-and-forth API requests that added significant delays, especially as model inference speeds improved to nearly 1,000 tokens per second (words generated per second). To reduce this overhead, the team implemented WebSockets (a protocol that maintains a persistent connection between client and server, rather than opening a new connection for each request), along with caching and eliminating unnecessary network calls, achieving a 40% overall speedup in end-to-end performance.

OpenAI has introduced workspace agents in ChatGPT, which are AI tools that can handle complex work tasks and long-running workflows while respecting organizational permissions and controls. These agents, powered by Codex (a code-generating AI model), can automate tasks like report writing, code generation, and message responses, and can continue working in the cloud even when users are offline. Teams can create shared agents once and reuse them across ChatGPT and Slack, with examples including agents that review software requests, route product feedback, and manage vendor risk assessment.