The Insider Weekly #14 - 2,000 Users on SecGPT | Lent | 60GB RAM VPS
Discover more from Cristi Vlad
The Insider Weekly #14 - 2,000 Users on SecGPT | Lent | 60GB RAM VPS
TLDR: 2,000 people are using SecGPT; I got access to Google Bard; I published 2 videos on YouTube; too many pentests; I got access to GPT4 API; Orthodox lent.
There have been too many crazy moments for me this week. I’ll start with SecGPT. When you launch a product that is rapidly picked up by people, inevitably things are going to happen.
First, the automated email provider failed, and people couldn’t sign up. It took me about an hour to identify and fix the issue. Then my hosting provider failed for nearly 3 hours and my app was unavailable; I couldn’t do much about this one, but sit and wait. Then people were trying to abuse SecGPT and use it for malicious purposes. Then too many people got on board and I had to reduce the free credits because my ‘electricity’ bill skyrocketed. And many other similar smaller issues that I had to actively firefight.
This happens if you’re not a big company, but a smaller player releasing a service.
As a reminder, SecGPT is an AI model trained on thousands of cybersecurity reports and writeups tailored to cybersecurity professionals. David Pereira made a video on it:
I should’ve been the one to publish the first video, but shamefully, I did not prioritize this. I will do it though, so as to explicitly explain to professionals how to best use it.
Anyway, SecGPT, is going to get a major upgrade this weekend (hopefully) as I feed it more training data, including cheatsheets and RFCs.
I couldn’t focus fully on SecGPT because of the increased workload of pentests this week. I’ve completed 3 so far, and I’ve got two more to go during the weekend. It’s a lot, but I can’t complain though because (first) I learn a lot and I skill up my experience fast, and (second) I make more money.
More so, I was also able to submit 4 reports to 2 private bug bounty programs, 1 was accepted and paid, 1 was rejected and 2 are pending triage.
When it comes to the nature of pentests, I’ve done more network/infrastructure and fewer web application assessments in the past two weeks.
In AI these days, every day feels like an entire year.
There are too many great AIs rolled out and nobody can keep up with them anymore, not even the companies rolling them out.
Last week GPT4 was out, I got access to it the very same day, and three days later I got access to the API (it’s waitlist access). I did not yet get to use it too much, but it gave me a great helping hand in two pentests. I’m excited to experiment with it more, maybe during Easter when I hope for things to cool down a bit.
Then Google released GPT4’s ‘competitor’, Bard AI. I was granted access to it the very same day (also waitlist access). I made a video on it comparing it with GPT4 and I have to say it’s been underwhelming.
Then, just yesterday, OpenAI dropped another bomb - ChatGPT plugins, basically extending the AI’s capabilities to infinity. There are plugins that enable you to browse the internet in real-time, plugins for math and computation (powered by Wolfram Alpha), a code interpreter plugin, and many more.
I’m most excited about the browsing and coding features. I joined the waitlist yesterday. Let’s see how long it takes to actually get in on this one.
At this point, OpenAI ships like there’s no tomorrow and it makes hundreds if not thousands of companies in many fields obsolete, including in AI.
Noteworthy mentions:
I upgraded my VPS to 60GB RAM, and it basically flies like a rocket. It’s very useful in my cybersecurity and AI-related tasks.
I posted a video on how to become very specialized fast at hacking.
My recon course is the highest rated in its category.
I published 4 scripts on my GitHub that enable you to use GPT3.5, ChatGPT, and GPT4 in your terminal.
I read the GPT4 paper, and I’m currently reading three more:
I’m also reading some biomedical sciences papers, including this one:
I’m observing Orthodox lent which ends with Orthodox Easter. I combine this with one meal a day.
I went on two long bike rides with close friends, on Sunday, and Thursday, and I’m planning more for this weekend.
That’ll be all from me for now. What have you been working on? Tell me here or privately if you’re seeing this via email.