Security research, field notes, and practical experiments

Writing

Independent technical notes by Willis Vandevanter.

Recent writing

  1. vulnerability counts mean less now

    first, i think this is such a good post and i highly recommend reading it.

    Before 2026, I kept a record of many of my CVE numbers, and every vulnerability represented a train of thought to me. In 2026, I stopped keeping a complete record of them, …

  2. n-day speed has to be accepted

    Quote

    “This normally takes a few days and a release within a week or two is reasonable. Within about ten minutes (!) this website was fielding probes for percent-encoded traversal sequences, indicating that automated watchers are keeping an eye on public …”

  3. OpenAI AGI bar

    Quote

    “[Sama] estimates they’ll declare AGI achieved internally by December 2026.”