Why the Internet Almost Broke Last Week: The Vulnerability Apocalypse Is Here

The internet just experienced one of its worst weeks for cybersecurity in recent history. 

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Dubbed "Black October" or the "Vulnerability Apocalypse," researchers uncovered critical zero-day flaws in the foundational software that powers over 70% of the web, including PHP, Node.js, and major certificate authorities, right as a wave of hacks hit popular cloud hosting platforms and developer tools.

In this episode of Power User, I sit down with Cooper Quintin, Senior Staff Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), to break down what actually happened during Black October, how frontier AI models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are supercharging both bug discovery and cyberattacks, and why the internet is going to become a much more chaotic place before it gets safer.

We also dive into why banning open-weight and open-source AI models would be a disaster for digital defense, the hidden dangers of giving new AI agents access to your browser and bank accounts, the crisis of underfunded open-source maintainers holding up the entire web, and the cybersecurity risks of the "vibe coding" boom.

Read the EFF's Cybersecurity Guide: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/computer-security-about-get-lot-worse-heres-what-you-can-do 

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