Cisco Blogs

Sure! When Mythos was first announced, there was an obvious prediction to make: if what Anthropic says is even remotely true, the participants will start talking over the next few months about how Mythos has been a big deal for them. Then that happened (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/ai-security-zero-day-vuln… https://blog.cloudflare.com/cyber-frontier-models/, https://blogs.cisco.com/cisco-on-cisco/how-cisco-defends-against-ai-th… so I became convinced, although I shouldn't make it sound like I ever found the idea implausible. I might be un-convinced if someone published a clear technical explanation of what error these companies have all made. The only counterarguments I've seen so far are vague speculation about how bubble dynamics might incentivize them to say it worked great, and to me that's not persuasive.

Cisco AI Defense, open-sourced the A2A Scanner, a tool designed to secure Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol ecosystem. It helps validate agent identity, detect spoofing and prompt injection risks, and includes modular analyzers that anyone can extend or customize. If you are exploring agentic AI frameworks or building multi-agent systems, we would love feedback, contributions, and critique from the community. Repo link: https://github.com/cisco-ai-defense/a2a-scanner. Blog link: https://blogs.cisco.com/ai/securing-ai-agents-with-ciscos-open-source-…

Don't know if running a dumb switch connected to your ISP is the best infosec policy: https://blogs.cisco.com/manufacturing/the-top-5-reasons-to-avoid-unman…

Sure it is: https://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/cisco-leap-frogs-h-264-video-col… Video encoding is a modeling and search problem. Codecs try lots of different ways to represent the input data and do their best. You can evaluate the costs and benefits of each piece of the encoder to decide which parts to have on or off. Obviously a speed-tuned AV1 compressor won't achieve maximum efficiency, but it might still perform better than an H264 or H265 compressor since it has more efficient tools available to it.

SVT-AV1 is faster than x265. https://medium.com/@ewoutterhoeven/av1-is-ready-for-prime-time-svt-av1… "We have found that the real-world compression/speed trade-offs for AV1 are in fact excellent, and better than HEVC." https://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/cisco-leap-frogs-h-264-video-col… Discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20291344

> NO! WRONG! tl;dr NO CODE IS BEING RELEASED AS BSD! Then please cite a source that backs that up. Bothering to follow the links from the Mozilla post indicates you are dead wrong: We plan to open-source our H.264 codec, and to provide it as a binary module that can be downloaded for free from the Internet. -- [1] [...] The source code will be open source and distributed with a BSD lIcense. The binary module is separate and when the users software downloads it from Cisco, that is when we are responsible for paying the MPEG LA royalties. – Nadee Gunasena, Cisco PR [2] [1] Cisco blog: http://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/open-source-h-264-removes-barrier… [2] Comment on same: http://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/open-source-h-264-removes-barrier…

Thanks for sharing this — really solid write-up, and I agree with the core premise. Pickle is a huge blind spot in ML security, and most folks don’t realize that torch.load() is effectively executing attacker-controlled bytecode. One thing we ran into while working on similar problems is that static opcode scanning alone tends to give a false sense of coverage. A lot of real-world bypasses don’t rely on obvious GLOBAL os.system patterns and can evade tools that depend on pickletools, modelscan, or fickling. We recently open-sourced a structure-aware pickle fuzzer at Cisco that’s designed specifically to test the robustness of pickle scanners, not just scan models: • It executes pickle bytecode inside a custom VM, tracking opcode execution, stack state, and memo behavior • Mutates opcode sequences, stack interactions, and protocol-specific edge cases • Has already uncovered multiple scanner bypasses that look benign statically but behave differently at runtime Repo: https://github.com/cisco-ai-defense/pickle-fuzzer We also wrote up some of the lessons learned while hardening pickle scanners here (including why certain opcode patterns are tricky to reason about statically): https://blogs.cisco.com/ai/hardening-pickle-file-scanners I think tools like AIsbom are a great step forward, especially for SBOM and ecosystem visibility. From our experience, pairing static analysis + fuzzing-driven adversarial testing is where things get much more resilient over time.

"In a readout system such as ours the network only consists of a data sender and a data receiver with an optional switch connecting them. Thus the only places where congestion occurs are at the sender or receiver. The readout system will typically produce data at near constant rates during measurements so congestion at the receiver will result in reduced data rates by the transmitter when using TCP." At that point a better paper title would have been "Increasing buffers or optimizing application syscalls to receive 10 GB/s of data" as it has nothing to do with achieving reliable UDP transmission, which it doesn't even seem they needed: "For some detector readout it is not even evident that guaranteed delivery is necessary. In one detector prototype we discarded around 24% of the data due to threshold suppression, so spending extra time making an occasional retransmission may not be worth the added complexity" As far as actual reliable UDP testing at high speeds one might also want to consider the test scenario as not all Ethernet connections are equal. The 2 meter passive DACs used in this probably achieve ~10^-18 bit error rate (BER) or 1 bit error in every ~100 petabytes transferred. On the other hand go optical even with forward error correction (FEC) it's not uncommon to expect transmission loss in the real world. E.g. looking at something a little more current https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/transforming-enterprise-applications-with-2… is happy to call…

I googled the 2003 Cisco vs. Huawei case as your post wasn't clear about the outcome. The WSJ article claims that Huawei admitted copying some software. I found this blog post: https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-… It's a Cisco reaction to the following statement by Huawei's chief US representative: "Huawei provided our source code of our products to Cisco for review and the results were that there was not any infringement found and in the end Cisco withdrew the case ... the source code of the issues was actually from a 3rd party partner that was already available and open on the internet." The blog post goes on to say that this is not a permissible statement and Huawei are misstating facts. Finally it provides some evidence for the copying, such as similar whitespace and comments in the source code. It also mentions the name of the "routine": STRCMP :-D. They should have run this post by an engineer before publishing... Decide for yourself, but in my opinion there is quite limited value in a specific strcmp and likely they both copied it from the same free-software codebase.

Wow, thanks for accusing me of being an NSA goon. For the record, I said the reporting was sensationalized, not the documents. On the economic espionage front, I really don't care if the NSA spies in order to shape national policy. Things get a lot murkier when intelligence agencies spy and then hand off that data off to private companies. Huawei was caught red-handed using stolen source code from Cisco[1]. Cisco probably lost millions because Huawei was able to undercut them and skimp on R&D costs. Frankly, I don't want any foreign companies willing to steal trade secrets managing the same internet backbones I conduct business on, just like China probably doesn't want their internet backbones running on American equipment. If there is evidence that the NSA has been handing Huawei source code to Cisco, or any kind of data to any private organization for that matter, in order to gain a competitive advantage, then Greenwald has yet to show it. You can consider Stewart Baker's opinion to be worth jack shit, but apparently Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher and Ryan Grim thought his opinion was good enough to quote extensively for the SEXINT article that they wrote. But that's not even the point - they could have been quoting Glenn Beck for all I care. The issue is that they quoted him very selectively in order to not discredit their argument. That wasn't even the first time: right off the bat they omitted slides from the PRISM presentation in order to make the argument…

> It is not even switched on in some early version of WiFi 7 router and receivers. OFDMA was first used with Wifi 6: * https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/wi-fi-6-ofdma-resource-unit-ru-allo… * https://www.litepoint.com/blog/wi-fi-6-ofdma/

The multi access story is improving, though. OFDMA on wifi7/802.11be: https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/wi-fi-7-mru-ofdma-turning-rush-hour…

Here’s a (low quality) blog post from 1 Password: https://1password.com/blog/from-magic-to-malware-how-openclaws-agent-s… And the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46898615 Better, earlier post from Cisco: https://blogs.cisco.com/ai/personal-ai-agents-like-openclaw-are-a-secu… Although, none of this is a surprise, as simonw has laid out.

You could always go with the buzzword bingo "secure network architecture designed for AI" by Cisco, whatever that means*: “With intuitive technologies, we optimize IT experiences, secure locations, and seamlessly connect people, places, and things.” https://meraki.cisco.com/ * What they say it means, here: https://blogs.cisco.com/news/the-ai-ready-enterprise-building-the-inte…

https://blogs.cisco.com/news/quantum-networking-how-cisco-is-accelerat… From my understanding, this has more to do with inter-datacenter quantum computing networking to essentially make a quantum super computer by putting quantum computers together?

That's... definitely not how sensitive networks work. To say nothing of airgapped ones. This seems like as good a short-form intro as any: https://blogs.cisco.com/learning/security-in-network-design-key-consid…

> Seems to be standard practice for Chinese companies. I mean looking at the strings in Huawei's switch firmware revealed Cisco copyright notices. They were too lazy (or didn't understand) how to remove them! [0] > My current phone is a Xiaomi, looks like my next one won't be (it may not have been anyway, due to a list of minor irritations & larger red flags like impossible to uninstall apps and a default clock app that demands full contacts access in order to be able to set an alarm, but this is definitely another point against). Wait until you check you network logs! [0] https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-…

Truth be told, those who do not understand Internet are condemned to reinvent it, poorly [1]. Remember ATM? (hint: it's not the machine you withdraw the money from). Internet is specifically designed with a narrow waist, as most things in nature as posted in HN recently [2]. I think the latest and most promising Internet protocol is Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (GENEVE) protocol that can hopefully generalized tunneling for the Internet and it's probably as simple as it can get [3]. [1]The Twelve Networking Truths: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1925 [2]The internet was designed with a narrow waist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30483914 [3]All Tunnels Lead to GENEVE: https://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/all-tunnels-lead-to-geneve

see https://blogs.cisco.com/security/an-open-security-ecosystem-with-share… for some context

The body of evidence that Huawei steals intellectual property is quite substantial. If you want to read about it, you can start with these: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1124996/download https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-… https://amlawdaily.typepad.com/motorolahuawei.pdf https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/FINAL-Huawei-ZTE-Inf…

Shameless plug: the Cisco 8000 series [1] recently got support for SONiC [2]. Right now, I believe it’s limited to fixed systems, but work is ongoing to get SONiC running on the distributed chassis. Exciting stuff! [1]: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/8000-series-routers/ind… [2]: https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/cisco-goes-sonic-on-cisco-8000

That's not entirely accurate - Cisco open sourced VPP which they use in many products: https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/a-bigger-helping-of-internet-please https://docs.fd.io/vpp/16.09/ While they still obviously make custom ASICs, they've moved towards more software where possible.

> what I want to know is how on earth they are able to encode AV1 in real time Cisco also has a real time AV1 encoder. They say it's all about using the right AV1 video coding tools in the right way for the live video use case: https://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/cisco-leap-frogs-h-264-video-col… The presentation: https://vimeo.com/344366650

A lot of marketing speak and not much real content. I found this article by Cisco, which seems a lot better at explaining the importance of 6 GHz https://blogs.cisco.com/enterprise/wi-fis-new-6ghz-spectrum-is-a-new-f…

Huawei's theft of Cisco's IP is common knowledge, and well documented. https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-…

Cisco Open-sources the MindMeld Conversational AI Platform. Blog post -> https://blogs.cisco.com/developer/mindmeld-ai

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/chinese-company… from Hayden the former head of the NSA: https://money.cnn.com/2013/07/19/news/huawei-china-spy/index.html also their code for routers was a direct copy of cisco IOS for years they didnt even try to hide it: https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-…

Does it matter that Huawei has reached that position by possibly stealing code? https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-…

If this were true, there would be much more P2P networks today than fifteen years ago, but that’s not the case. According to [1], in 2004 BitTorrent accounted "from 20 to 35% of all traffic on the Internet". At that time the bandwidth cost was at least two orders of magnitude higher than today. The price of hard drive has since been divided by 40 [2] and the total Internet traffic has been multiplied by 40 [3]. [1]: http://history-computer.com/Internet/Conquering/BitTorrent.html [2]: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3182207/data-storage/cw50-data-s… [3]: https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/the-history-and-future-of-internet-traffic

Licensing agreement. https://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco_and_apple_agreement_on_ios_trademar…