About

About the Author

My online handle is Syne, but my government name is Damien. I’m a cybersecurity researcher specializing in SaaS and DFIR. I’m queer, an activist, and a shit disturber.

This site was created after after I became annoyed about ethical issues surrounding AI/LLM, after a few specific incidents.

  1. A classmate of mine attempted to submit AI-generated writing in a group paper. We had recently been told this was an academic integrity violation.
  2. ByteSpider, ByteDance/TikTok’s web scraper, allegedly used for training LLM, DDoS’ed my blog. Other LLM-related user agents are ignoring my robots.txt and continuing to scrape information from my websites.
  3. I came across an article I was interested in, about a subject I am quite knowledgeable about. After reading the article I realized it, and the entire website, was nothing more than AI-generated slop.
  4. Two days after #3, I came across a second article on a different, well-established website. After realizing that they were unquestionably publishing misinformation, I started to become suspicious that their writing was AI generated or proofread.

Why I’m concerned about cyber slop

I believe that cyber slop poses a grave danger to our industry. Cybersecurity is an important and sensitive topic, and needs to be handled with care. Misinformation in cybersecurity can have real-world consequences.

Additionally, myself and others who are publishing research and news put a great deal of work into our writing. There are different motivations, but for me personally, my motivations are simply the betterment of society, as silly as that might sound. If I can help even one person with my research, then I’m happy.

Still, I don’t think badly of those who profit off their writing. I mean, we need money to live. It’s why I have a donation button on my research blog, after all. What I do have a problem with are individuals, etc., who seem to be purely motivated by profit. These people operate in a way that sacrifices integrity, honesty, ethics, everything that’s important for reputable ‘news’ entities to uphold.

Plus, it’s just annoying. I spend a lot of my time researching for my job and personal endeavors. It’s enough work to have to sift through normal sources without having to filter out sloppy garbage.