Future breaking news: Cisco hardware used in massive botnet attack.
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2026
54 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
89175 readers
4966 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
It would genuinely be an actual achievement to make Cisco software less secure. Usually, letting AI fully write software is bad. But in this case, I expect the rewrite to be better just because of how abysmally low the bar is specifically at Cisco.
What happens if the price of those tokens suddenly skyrockets because the provider now knows your entire operation is relying on this one guy vibing?
IDK. Sounds like a problem for Cisco to figure out.
Cisco just handed a 27 year old unlimited AI tokens and the keys to 98% of its codebase. Somewhere, a senior engineer is quietly updating their resume. Rewriting code is easy. Discovering why that horrifying 1998 workaround exists is the actual final boss.
I suppose a 27-year-old is about to find that out the hard way - along with Cisco's entire customer base. 🤷♂️
Also, Cisco knows that now you can still do that. The AI market is largely subsided with VC money, so the current pieces are a fraction what they should be charging. Try this move after the bubble pops and you’ll need to pay millions for rewriting each application. If you want to vibe some slop code, now is the time.
Yeah, I went networking to see if I could find a job. Some asshole was the keynote speaker, and his idea was that with AI, you can now just throw the requirements at the machine and have it work out perfect. And that way, at the end of the day, the artifact that's created is no longer the code, it's the product definition. That's what you gotta guard. You can just throw the code away once you're done, it's all good.
Want to change that button's colour? Just re-create the entire fucking system, and shove it to live. Who cares how many tokens it takes?
So, don’t buy Cisco. Got it.
Also, get some popcorn on your way home. When you hear the titan crashing down, it’s time to put the popcorn in the microwave.
I think the 24 months is the scariest part. If the Eng is starting now & has 24 months, that’s one can of worms.
If they’ve been rewriting over the last 2 years… AI has changed a lot for code writing in that time... 😬
Well, let's see in what new and interesting ways Cisco software can break. Not that they needed help but it'll be fun to see this unfold.
Isn’t Cisco gear running a lot of the Internet backbone? This should be interesting…
I don't know... Have you provisioned Cisco equipment before? It feels like the quality can only go up.
(But no, obviously this will end terribly unless they're incredibly careful. It's possible, but unlikely.)