Andrey Labunets

i.i.d. security researcher, vector space reverse engineering: artificial intelligence and artificial counterintelligence in R^d

[Signal @signalapp]

Our statement on the UK government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the country be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all.

https://t.co/VdWe9uhi8p

[Andrey Labunets @isciurus]

Rumors of non-linearity are greatly exaggerated

[Elizabeth Goitein @LizaGoitein]

Second, it’s time to put to rest the empty notion that existing oversight mechanisms for Section 702 are working. The government is reportedly still violating internal oversight mechanisms, while spurning congressional oversight of these violations. 13/14

[Andrey Labunets @isciurus]

It summer season! Which talk should I submit to @SummerC0n?

1. Fun-tuning: Characterizing the Vulnerability of Proprietary LLMs to Optimization-based Prompt Injection Attacks via the Fine-Tuning Interface (https://t.co/f6uuRUzdfr)
2. An Empirical Analysis on the Use and Reporting of National Security Letters (https://t.co/Neko4gg7vo)
3. Technical Analysis of WhatsApp Zero-Click Exploit (https://t.co/AsuVl2w1nv)

[Yaroslav Bulatov @yaroslavvb]

Enjoyed the conversation on AI, energy, religion with @ziv_ravid on The Information Bottleneck podcast. TLDR; modern learning algorithms were settled by 1980s when the bottleneck was FLOPs. Today, the bottleneck is data movement https://t.co/KNPdpx0wD2

[Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith]

📣 NEW w/#UdbhavTiwari Mapping the technical reality & privacy/security perils of pushing AI agents into our infra

We offer palliatives, but the core issues are paradigmatic: 'agency' relies on pervasive data access + ability to act w/o explicit consent.

https://t.co/sYWUhr6hRp

[Andrey Labunets @isciurus]

Happy New Year 2026, everyone!

Scrobbling my 365-stats for 2025 below:

camera-ready papers landed in journals: 2
new research projects delivered / papers produced: 2
papers read: ~250
papers guided / consulted on: 3
classes taken: 1
grants/fellowship proposals produced: 5
grants/fellowships received: 3
deadlines missed: nevermind..
media coverage/interviews: 2
vulnerabilities reported: 3
job interviews: 5
job offers received: 1
travel documents approved: 3
talks given: 8
ship given (up): none
strings pulled: 6
keys pressed: 88 weighted
gym visits: 112
thoughts thought: 🤔
new music improvisations produced: only 2
artists listened to: 1432

Research, if done properly, means pushing the limits at the frontier of what’s possible. Although it is never sports and only a few things can be quantified, whatever is measured can hopefully be tracked or increased! Many more vitals reports left to scrobble..😴

[Web3Privacy Now @web3privacy]

Tension between Consent & Agency via @mer__edith x @signalapp at 39c3

[JP Aumasson @veorq]

Dealing with airport secondary screening

https://t.co/yw7rBhAZ8v

[Andrey Labunets @isciurus]

🙏

[Infinite Books @infinitebooks]

David Foster Wallace on the importance of quiet (and reading)

[Andrey Labunets @isciurus]

Dark horse matter!

[Spy Collection @SpyCollection1]

NEW VIDEO: Staying in the holiday-themed period, we look at the "unknown" history of CIA's secret squirrel (or NSA's super secret squirrel) through a CIA plush toy from our collection.
https://t.co/CZwMlTGLMl

[Andrey Labunets @isciurus]

❤️!

[Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith]

Merry Christmas! May you enjoy the cinnamon nutmeg season as much as I do, with all the peace, major chord progressions, warm drinks, butterfat and sparkling this and that, whatever you believe, however work it ❤️🎄

🎁 🫴here, to get your day going https://t.co/MXYC7Uv3g2

[Andrey Labunets @isciurus]

Reflecting more on the idea of uncommon interlinks and connectivity..

There is a staggering amount of drift from useful values in the global software market competition, but very few have been able to steer the game to a better one so far. The Signal team with meaningful codebases and scientific achievements have been well positioned to. And it is also still well positioned to receive a Merry Christmas from one of its users, myself! Even before and beyond Signal, a lot have been happening on the foundations of (cypher)punk culture and independent work - muchly thanks too where it is overdue. Competition, selection as an algorithm, or a broader idea of a social brain as a useful computation may start somewhere and grow somewhere.

Q: should social brain function in a fast, single-round System 1 mode or in a higher-level, more abstract and algorithmic System 2 reasoning mode?

📚 https://t.co/B9Mc4ihkrR

[Moxie Marlinspike @moxie]

When I was in highschool, a friend gave me a copy of "On The Road."

It was a big part of what inspired me to wander into a freight train yard and climb on a 48 for the first time, or to stand by an on-ramp and stick my thumb out for a string of rides across the country a few years later.

I remember reading it and wanting my life to feel as full, to have friendships as meaningful, to know so much more about what was "out there." On those trips I was always wide-eyed, writing poetry, talking to everybody, leaning forward into the road ahead.

I'm in a re-reading phase, and I tried re-reading "On The Road" for the first time since I was a teenager. I actually couldn't finish it. Far from being inspiring, all I could think was that I'm glad that isn't my life. It seemed almost the inverse of everything that inspired me as a teenager: shallow relationships, absent of meaning, a small and almost unadventurous existence.

This has been the same for almost everything I've re-read. It has made me realize that if I re-read something and am not disappointed, it probably means I've been doing something wrong.

[Andrey Labunets @isciurus]

@damekdavis Would you mind sharing?)