Microsoft pushes safer software construction as AI makes offense cheap
AI is ending the era of scarce vulnerabilities, making powerful offensive capabilities abundant and forcing cybersecurity teams to move beyond reactive patching toward fundamentally safer software construction.
That reality was the core of a Black Hat USA keynote by David Weston (pictured), vice president of AI security at Microsoft Corp., titled “The End of Rare: Defending When Offense Is Cheap.” Weston explained that traditional defenses have long rested on the economics of scarcity—expensive zero-days, strong security boundaries and the assumption that those walls would hold.
“We’ve baked this in. We said, we’re safe because this is rare.” Weston said. “And it costs a lot. Unfortunately AI’s changed this. It’s no longer rare.”
Weston spoke with Krista Case at Black Hat USA, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed why security teams must invest AI-driven productivity gains into safer software construction, memory-safe languages and formal verification rather than trying to outpace attackers with faster patches. (* Disclosure below.)
