EP 268.5 Deep Dive. Chew Thoroughly. The IT Privacy and Security Weekly Update for the week ending November 25th., 2025

The EPA approved two new PFAS-containing pesticides for food crops and plans four more. Scientists warn this deliberately increases dietaryexposure to persistent chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects.A magician who implanted an RFID chip in his hand for stage tricks forgot the password and is now permanently locked out of the device inside his own body. Perhaps he should have had the password tattooed backwards on his forehead.A fired Ohio contractor plead guilty to resetting 2,500 coworker passwords via PowerShell, paralyzing the company and causing $862,000 in damages. We’re thinking this will keep him fired for quite a whileMI5 warns MPs that Chinese state agents are aggressively targeting lawmakers and staff through fake recruiter profiles on LinkedIn to cultivate intelligence sources. LinkedIn is not the friend it once was.NordPass data confirms Gen Z now chooses weaker passwords than 80-year-olds, proving every generation remains terrible at basic security hygiene. Wait… Your password is worse than your grand mothers? Please subscribe to this podcastProminent cryptographer accuses NSA of rigging IETF process to force adoption of deliberately weakened post-quantum encryption standards despite community objections. That could explain some of the very trivial ways some of these encryption algos have been broken lately.Microsoft’s new Copilot Actions can autonomously edit user files but openly warns it’s vulnerable to hijacking that enables data theft or malware installation. Sweet, right?U.S. Cyber Command quietly awarded millions to a stealth startup building fully autonomous AI agents designed for large-scale offensive cyberattacks. The twist is that they are not writing code to help AI help people, in this case it’s code to help AI. Why bother with the slow middle man?Researchers unveiled EchoGram, a subtle token trick that silently disables safety guardrails on GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and nearly every major LLM. Guardrails. Great concept, but not so much in practice.