The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast

Join us for this week's Defender Fridays as Shane Warden, Principal Architect at ActiveState, shares what it's actually like to be on the receiving end of AI-assisted vulnerability reporting and what open source maintainers are already dealing with that the rest of the industry will face soon.
At Defender Fridays, we delve into the dynamic world of information security, exploring its defensive side with seasoned professionals from across the industry. Our aim is simple yet ambitious: to foster a collaborative space where ideas flow freely, experiences are shared, and knowledge expands.
What We'll Discuss
In this episode, Shane Warden draws on his experience supporting security for well-known open source projects to explore how AI-assisted vulnerability reporting is changing the threat landscape, and why what's happening in open source today is a preview of what every organization will face.
Key Topics:
Why open source projects are the early warning system for what's coming to enterprise security
How a flood of 95 AI-generated vulnerability reports turned into a six-figure extortion attempt
Why even a three percent legitimate hit rate still creates a real and unignorable workload for maintainers
How teams are using AI to respond to AI-generated reports, and where humans still need to be in the loop
What projects like curl, the Linux kernel, and Zig are doing differently in response to AI contributions
Why understanding your open source dependencies and their versions is more urgent than ever
The reputational risk of AI-generated vulnerability claims, even when those claims are false
About Our Guest
Shane Warden is Principal Architect at ActiveState and has been involved in open source since the late 1990s. Behind the scenes, he supports security for several well-known free software projects and has been navigating the growing wave of AI-assisted vulnerability submissions firsthand.
Register for Live Sessions
Join us every Friday at 10:30am PT for live, interactive discussions with industry experts. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just curious about the field, these sessions offer an engaging dialogue between our guests, hosts, and you, our audience.
Register here: https://limacharlie.io/defender-fridays
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the notification bell to never miss a live session or catch up on past episodes on our website!
Sponsored by LimaCharlie
This episode is brought to you by LimaCharlie, the Agentic SecOps Workspace (ASW), where AI agents operate security infrastructure using the same controls and authority as human analysts, with every action visible, governed, and auditable.
Why LimaCharlie?
Eliminate vendor sprawl and tool complexity
Deploy and scale effortlessly on native multi-tenant architecture
Reduce costs with intelligent data routing and free 1-year retention
Build custom solutions with 100+ security capabilities on-demand
Accelerate response with agentic AI that acts directly within predefined workflows
Try the Agentic SecOps Workspace free: https://limacharlie.io
Learn more: https://docs.limacharlie.io
Follow LimaCharlie
Sign up for free: https://limacharlie.io
LinkedIn: / limacharlieio
X: https://x.com/limacharlieio
Community Discourse: https://community.limacharlie.com/
Host: Maxime Lamothe-Brassard - Founder at LimaCharlie
Guest: Shane Warden - Principal Architect at ActiveState

Dr. Adeel Shaikh Muhammad, a cybersecurity strategist and global speaker with over 16 years of experience across information security, networks, and systems. Adeel brings a practical perspective on how organizations can adapt to evolving cyber threats and the growing role of AI in cybersecurity.
Adeel, with an extraordinary portfolio of 40+ industry certifications, including CISSP, CISM, CISA, CCISO, PMP, CEH, ISO 27001 Lead Implementer & Auditor, and a robust suite of advanced Cisco, Microsoft, Fortinet, Barracuda, ITIL, PRINCE2, and AI-related credentials, he is a benchmark of technical mastery and visionary execution. His academic excellence includes a Master’s in Cybersecurity and a current Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) focused on the impact of AI in Security Operations Centers (SOCs) in the Gulf region.
Adeel is the author of two acclaimed books—“AI-Driven Transformation of Security Operations Center (SOC)” and “AI and Us: The Ethical Choices”—bridging the critical intersection of AI innovation and ethical leadership.
Support our show by sharing your favorite episodes with a friend, subscribe, give us a rating or leave a comment on your podcast platform.
This podcast is brought to you by LimaCharlie, maker of the SecOps Cloud Platform, infrastructure for SecOps where everything is built API first. Scale with confidence as your business grows. Start today for free at limacharlie.io

In this episode of The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast, we discuss some intel being shared in the LimaCharlie community.
The cyber threat environment in the Middle East has intensified sharply following military operations involving Israel, the United States, and Iran.
An intrusion campaign attributed with moderate confidence to the Iranian state-linked group MuddyWater was disguised as a Chaos ransomware attack, according to research from Rapid7.
Palo Alto Networks has warned customers that a critical remote code execution vulnerability in PAN-OS is being actively exploited in the wild.
Attackers are abusing Microsoft’s Phone Link application in a campaign that Cisco Talos says has been active since January. Report here.
Support our show by sharing your favorite episodes with a friend, subscribe, give us a rating or leave a comment on your podcast platform.
This podcast is brought to you by LimaCharlie, maker of the SecOps Cloud Platform, infrastructure for SecOps where everything is built API first. Scale with confidence as your business grows. Start today for free at limacharlie.io.

In this episode, Ken Westin maps AI adoption onto the hero's journey framework, drawing on two decades of security experience to explore how practitioners can move past early resistance, build real fluency with AI tools, and find a working model where humans and AI operate together.
Key Topics:
Why early AI tools left security teams skeptical and what has genuinely changed since then
How Ken used AI to accelerate detection engineering without sacrificing analyst oversight
Why AI is best understood as an eager, overconfident intern that still needs supervision
The importance of hands-on experimentation over passive observation when learning AI
How collaboration and shared prompting practices are shaping how practitioners learn
Why security analysts who engage with AI now will not be left behind as the field evolves
The case for AI as a tool of empowerment, not replacement
At Defender Fridays, we delve into the dynamic world of information security, exploring its defensive side with seasoned professionals from across the industry. Our aim is simple yet ambitious: to foster a collaborative space where ideas flow freely, experiences are shared, and knowledge expands.
About Our Guest
Ken Westin is a Senior Solutions Engineer at LimaCharlie with nearly two decades in the cybersecurity industry. A former startup founder who built tools to track criminal activity, Ken has worked across SIEM, EDR, and detection engineering throughout his career. He also teaches at the college level, where AI and cybersecurity are increasingly intertwined disciplines.
Register for Live Sessions
Join us every Friday at 10:30am PT for live, interactive discussions with industry experts. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just curious about the field, these sessions offer an engaging dialogue between our guests, hosts, and you, our audience.
Register here: https://limacharlie.io/defender-fridays
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the notification bell to never miss a live session or catch up on past episodes on our website!
Sponsored by LimaCharlie
This episode is brought to you by LimaCharlie, the Agentic SecOps Workspace (ASW), where AI agents operate security infrastructure using the same controls and authority as human analysts, with every action visible, governed, and auditable.
Why LimaCharlie?
Eliminate vendor sprawl and tool complexity
Deploy and scale effortlessly on native multi-tenant architecture
Reduce costs with intelligent data routing and free 1-year retention
Build custom solutions with 100+ security capabilities on-demand
Accelerate response with agentic AI that acts directly within predefined workflows
Try the Agentic SecOps Workspace free: https://limacharlie.io
Learn more: https://docs.limacharlie.io
Follow LimaCharlie
Sign up for free: https://limacharlie.io
LinkedIn: / limacharlieio
X: https://x.com/limacharlieio
Community Discourse: https://community.limacharlie.com/
Host: Maxime Lamothe-Brassard - Founder at LimaCharlie
Guest: Ken Westin - Senior Solutions Engineer at LimaCharlie

In this episode of The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast, we discuss some intel being shared in the LimaCharlie community.
Researchers are raising concerns about a new cybersecurity risk emerging from the systems that regulate electrical power inside modern electronics and infrastructure.
Japan’s financial sector is responding to concerns around Anthropic’s new AI model, Claude Mythos, which some officials believe could significantly impact cybersecurity.
Docker and Socket researchers discovered that malicious images were pushed to the official checkmarx/kics Docker Hub repository, indicating a supply chain compromise affecting the KICS infrastructure-as-code scanning tool.
JFrog security researchers identified a malicious npm package published as @bitwarden/cli version 2026.4.0 that impersonates the legitimate Bitwarden command-line client.
Support our show by sharing your favorite episodes with a friend, subscribe, give us a rating or leave a comment on your podcast platform.
This podcast is brought to you by LimaCharlie, maker of the SecOps Cloud Platform, infrastructure for SecOps where everything is built API first. Scale with confidence as your business grows. Start today for free at limacharlie.io.