Sep 04, 2025 1 min read Podcast

Adversarial Podcast S4E02 - Cyber acquisitions and raises, 95% of GenAI pilots failing, Zelle's alleged security lapses

00:00 Introduction & BlackHat

02:06 Cybersecurity in Schools

18:53 Black Hat Conference Highlights

34:02 New York sues Zelle

44:48 Trends in Cybersecurity Mergers and Acquisitions

1:02:44 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

1:08:53 Prompt injection with poisoned calendar invites

DARPA announces $4 million winner of AI code review competition at DEF CON

DARPA announced Team Atlanta as the winner of its two-year competition among researchers to create the best artificial intelligence systems that can find and fix vulnerabilities.

Attorney General James Sues Company Behind Zelle for Enabling Widespread Fraud

New York today sued Early Warning Services, a company owned and controlled by a group of the largest banks in the United States that was tasked with developing and operating the electronic payment platform Zelle, for failing to protect its users from massive amounts of fraud.

Cyber Acquisitions

MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

A recent MIT‑commissioned study—highlighted in Fortune on August 18, 2025—reveals that approximately 95% of generative AI pilot programs at companies failed to deliver any measurable return on investment or financial uplift. The core issue appears to be not the AI itself, but poor integration into existing workflows and misaligned use cases, with only about 5% of pilots achieving rapid revenue growth by focusing sharply on specific pain points.

Hackers Hijacked Google’s Gemini AI With a Poisoned Calendar Invite to Take Over a Smart Home

Security researchers demonstrated that a poisoned Google Calendar invite could indirectly prompt-inject Google’s Gemini, causing it to control smart-home devices.

Hosts:

Jerry Perullo (Founder, https://adversarial.com/)

Sounil Yu (Founder, https://www.knostic.ai/)

Mario Duarte (Founder, stealth startup)

Producer: Tillson Galloway (https://tillsongalloway.com)