Nov 11, 2026 · 1h 10m
Agentic hacking pushes cyber defenses toward a capacity crisis
Risky Business #859 -- ARTEX damage approaches crisis levels
The episode connects AI-assisted intrusion, automated credential theft, fragile legacy systems, and overstretched incident responders into one escalating risk.
- 1Artex shows how simple AI agent orchestration can automate credential theft, tenant pivots, vulnerability exploitation, and operational coordination.
- 2Incident-response firms face surging demand as AI expands attack volume, while the same technology may help defenders manage the workload.
- 3SpecterOps research demonstrates how attackers can revive NTLM relay techniques by bypassing SMB and LDAP signing protections.
Don't miss
Raj Patel explains how a session-key flaw enabled attackers to bypass SMB and LDAP signing, relay authentication, and potentially build broader remote-code-execution chains.
The brief
Patrick Gray, James Wilson, and Chris Krebs examine how Artex turns basic AI orchestration, memory, and coordination into a scalable intrusion capability.
The panel argues that agentic campaigns could make long-neglected legacy systems newly profitable targets, while credential harvesting and Entra ID abuse accelerate lateral movement.
The episode widens the lens to incident-response shortages, deepfake fraud, attacks on refrigeration and blood-storage systems, major breaches, and U.S. cyber policy.
The standout technical segment features Raj Patel and SpecterOps on rediscovering NTLM relay attacks and bypassing SMB and LDAP signing protections.
The central tension is whether organizations can safely test these agentic capabilities against themselves before automated exploitation outpaces defensive capacity.
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