The shadow era AI, exploits, and cybersecurity's 90s comeback

In this video, Matt Johansen sat down with Metasploit creator and runZero founder HD Moore to discuss the Shadow Era, a new reality where advanced generative AI had democratized cyberattacks at an unprecedented scale. Much like the 1990s, anyone could now use AI to easily discover flaws, chain vulnerabilities, and instantly write complex exploits. This automation was completely overwhelming open-source maintainers and creating permanent skeleton keys out of legacy code and end-of-life systems (like Windows 10) that would never be patched.

Because AI allowed attackers to fully compromise a network and siphon data within 20 to 30 minutes, traditional, reactive patching was officially broken. Threat actors were even leveraging simple internet-connected edge devices, like smart thermostats, to bypass perimeters and manipulate critical physical infrastructure behind the network. To survive, Moore emphasized that security teams had to stop playing whack-a-mole, aggressively adopt these same AI offensive tools internally, and focus entirely on mastering their asset visibility and defense-in-depth.