Life Update

Yooo friends! First off, I’ve got some huge personal news!

I’m now a full-time Bug Bounty Hunter, Solo Founder, and cohost of the Critical Thinking Bug Bounty Podcast 💪 

Yesterday was my last day at AppOmni. It’s tough because I love AppOmni, and I’m still rooting for the company and all the employees (many whom I referred). BUT, it’s also sweet because I’m pursuing my dreams/passions.

Read more about the decision on X or LinkedIn!

Haize Labs

Before we get to the best of 2024, I have to introduce you to the first sponsor of my email list: Haize Labs 😊 I reached out to them because their product is so good.

They’re the best company in the automated AI red-team space. You describe what you don’t want your AI application to do, and Haize generates hundreds of tests specific for your app. And they’re adding other highly useful features like monitoring.

Check them out here and feel free to tell them I sent you.

Best of 2024

I love high-value content so I wanted to share a list of the best things I saw/found in 2024. All of these are well worth your time and attention! And of course there are some shameless plugs in here from friends’ blogs/products/etc, but every recommendation is 100% sincere.

Best MacOS Desktop App
msty - fantastic AI client that supports local and API usage of models. You can use multiple models at the same time. You can fork the conversation. It’s awesome.

Best Newsletter
Daniel Miessler’s Newsletter - He covers the best in cybersecurity and AI (kinda like me, haha).
Honorable Mention: Monkehack’s Newsletter - so good and quaint, with high-quality bug bounty content and insights into his journey.

Best AI App
cursor - the AI-powered code editor.
Honorable Mention: Shift - my AI hacking plugin app.

Best Model
Claude Sonnet - simply because of how fast, good, and flexible it is.
Honorable Mention: OpenAI o1 - I've been using it a bit more for hard tasks, which it can 1-shot.

Best Red Teaming Company
Haize Labs - for their automated red teaming. (More detailed description written earlier in the newsletter.)

Best Podcast Episode
The Leopold episode on the Dwarkesh Podcast fundamentally changed the way I view AI safety/security. You have to listen to it.

In general, the Dwarkesh Podcast is my favorite podcast besides Critical Thinking (of which I’m now the co-host): Critical Thinking Podcast

Best Impactful Security Write-Up
Hacking Kia by Sam Curry and friends is super impactful continued research in their car-hacking saga.

Best Command-Line AI Tool
Fabric - fantastic for piping content into LLMs from the command line.
Honorable Mention: LLM - also great, supporting local and remote models, history, chat, etc.

Best Bug Bounty Program
Google Bug Hunters - I spent the most time on it this year, and I got to go to Spain for their live hacking event.

Best AI Jailbreaking Resource
L1B3RT4S - a collection of jailbreaks from Pliny. I use this all the time.
Pliny’s profile: @elder_plinius

Best Cybersecurity Model
White Rabbit NEO - it's still got some work to do to get better, but I love the idea of a hacking-specific model that is pre-jailbroken so I can ask without getting rejections.

Best AI Engineering Book
AI Engineering - this is basically the only book at this point, but I've heard great things about it.

Best AI YouTube Channel
Matt Berman's Channel - He does chase the news a bit, but he works hard, is down-to-earth, and keeps improving. I enjoy his content.

Let me know what I missed by replying or messaging me on x.com/rez0__ 

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