Just caught up and watched the BlackHat OpenAI talk about their Hugging Face hack. The secret messages sent between the bots would be quite funny... if they weren't troubling. What a moment we are in. www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Dy...

From Anthropic's report on it's out of control bot. wow. "Claude - build me a paperclip factory that maximises paperclip production over everything else. Make no mistakes." www.anthropic.com/news/investi...

Teen hackers tell BBC how police are helping them use their skills for good. After many months of trying, I finally got access to the National Crime Agency's Cyber Choices programme that works to steer kids off cyber crime. We spoke to young hackers on the programme and to police working to...

🤡 then it became a Comedy of Errors (OpenAI really messed up with their safety protocols) So which is it? Or maybe all 5?! My piece: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

👺 then it became a Conspiracy Drama (was it staged as a marketing stunt?!)...

🎭 then it became a 'Scooby-Do Reveal!' (it was actually OpenAI/ ChatGPT!)...

🕵‍♂️ then it became a 'Who Dun It?' mystery (which cyber crime group or nation state was it that wielded the AI to carry out the criminal breach?)...

I had a go at explaining why the Open AI Hugging Face hack matters so much beyond the nerd world of AI and cyber. Landed on the theme of movies. 🤖 It started as a Sci-fi thriller (a powerful AI agent carried out the hack end to end!)...

Love getting audience feedback on how I look. 😅

My inbox is flooding with takes from smart people. This, for me, is the best one yet.

District 9 director Neil Bloomkamp has made a short film using AI (Seedance 2.0). The first release from his new AI movie studio. Yes its silly and clunky and awkward at points. But we are a long way away from AI videos drawing 6 fingers. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wbt...

Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed My report here from court: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Chatting cybers with Simon Pegg! A very unexpected twist to my 2026. I was invited by BFI and Channel 4 to the launch of season 2 of cyberwar drama The Undeclared War. It then transpired that the producer has seen lots of my stories and asked me to do the QnA with cast and creators!

Here's a gorgeous scene out my window just now to brighten up the thread!

AI summaries are superb. Thanks Google for helping me pinpoint the DOB of a young hacker...

I was in Johannesburg recently and took this pic of a strange bit of wall art and sent it to my mum. She now sends it back to me every other day as a guilt trip 😂

Had the pleasure of hosting the launch event for the brand new BBCNews Romania service in Bucharest this week. In a time when journalism is shrinking, it was so nice to be a part of a positive event. The people in Romania I spoke to seemed to genuinely be excited about the beeb returning!

Our story is the launch story for the brand new BBC News Romania service which starts today! I had the pleasure of hosting the launch event last night. Here is the story in Romanian! www.bbc.com/romania/arti...

🤩Amazon has chosen my book as one its Best Books of the Year for 2026! Ctrl+Alt+Chaos: How Teenage Hackers Hijack the Internet is number 8 in the business books category! 📖 www.amazon.com/b?_encoding=...

I'm reading 'On Writing Well' by William Zinsser and found this nugget of fantastic writing from many years ago in The New Yorker about 'property developer' Donald Trump.

As my mum always helpfully reminds me - [in a Dudley accent] "cyber is bloody boring!". But I spoke to a student who's exam was literally interrupted by the Canvas hack and it was one of those rare visual incidents that make you sit up and take notice: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Instagram privacy tech is turned off today - what does this mean for your DMs? I'm reporting on this change today across BBC News. A small change to users but a major shift in policy for Meta as it abandons the much heralded end to end encryption future. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

On the train back from Glasgow and saw this guy’s amazing sticker. Of course he was at CyberUK. And of course it’s always DNS.

Just found my fav headline about Claude Mythos. The hysteria is like nothing I have experienced before in my decade+ of covering cyber.

Tyler Buchanan, a Scottish Scattered Spider hacker has pleaded guilty to conspiring to hack the computers of at least a dozen companies and to steal $8m crypto from individuals. I wrote about his arrest in my book. Looks like we have our 2nd SS conviction now... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

🤩 My book has been chosen as a 'Best True Crime Book of 2026' by Crime Reads! 'Essential nonfiction explorations of cultural flashpoints, historic mysteries, and contemporary tragedies.' 📖 crimereads.com/best-true-cr...

Just read a convincing debunk of the New York Times investigation that claims Adam Back is the inventor of Bitcoin - Satoshi Nakamoto. It's a newsletter so I can't share the link but the article details the reasons why the NYT is probably wrong. But then it ends with the attached sentence...

Iranian ‘hacktivist’ group Handala calling a cyber ceasefire on their Telegram now. Not against Israel though. Also interesting to see the language as it really spells out that these are not volunteer hackers acting alone. They are not hiding their links to the regime very well…

Great fun chatting about my book and teenage hackers with @johnhammond.bsky.social on his YouTube channel. Fascinating to hear John's own experience as a teen and how he stayed on the right path in cyber! youtu.be/GUzD_ShRKYE?...

Anthropic's 'Project Glasswing' is an interesting tool for cyber security - but also another SUPERB marketing strategy from these AI firms... www.anthropic.com/glasswing