MonkeHacks #79

HackAIcon, Mexico Bugswat, No Cat (Yet)

Author

Monke
October 06, 2025

MonkeHacks #79

Lately it’s been really, really busy! I think the last three months of the year are the busiest across the entire industry. I went to HackAIcon last week, which was fantastic. I had the opportunity to meet one of my heroes in the AI hacking space - Johann Rehberger - so that was an amazing experience. I gave my talk, and I discussed the under-acknowledged problem of permission drift in AI tool calls.

Slightly delayed newsletter this week because I was taking part in Google’s Mexico LHE! Busfactor and I won 2nd Place overall (just shy of MVH!) and Best AI VRP Researchers, which was absolutely incredible. We reported 16 bugs throughout the event, and presented two Show and Tells. I also made some new friends - svennergr and Adnan Khan, to name a few. I had a blast.

Lisbon, by the sea.

Weekly Ideas / Notes 

  • Unfortunately, my plans to adopt a cat this week fell through as the current owner stopped responding to me. That was very disappointing, but I’m still determined to adopt a cat by the end of the year. The upside is that my living room has a giant cat tree in it now. A cat is inevitable…

  • I was in Mexico City this week for the Google LHE - and just wow. What an experience. The activity day was a tour of the ruins of an old Aztec city called Teotihuacán, which you can see below:

Teotihuacán, near Mexico City.

  • After a pretty long dupe period, a 10-hour flight to Mexico, and a few gruelling but very, very fun onsite days, the Mexico Bugswat LHE has concluded. We really gave it our best effort (despite HackAIcon taking place during the dupe period!) - and it paid off superbly in both awards and bounties. MVH was just out of reach this time - I can’t say anything about it, but from the few rumours I know, we weren’t even close. And that’s part of the game. I have to salute Busfactor for doing so well in his first LHE - we worked together on some really cool bugs in this event. We didn’t really think about it too hard, we just set a goal of a bug a day at the beginning of the event. And we more or less achieved that - 16 reports in 15 days (14 valid). We focused entirely on the AI scope for the duration of the event.

Taking home 2nd place overall and Best AI VRP Researchers in the LHE!

  • Here’s a fun little anecdote from yesterday: although Busfactor (Vitor) and I had so many reports submitted, we’d only received one bounty by the middle of the afternoon of the final day. That happens, so we continued along through the day, not thinking too much about it. In the evening, we all headed to the awards venue - this nice restaurant with a small stage. It was dimly lit with cool Mexican decorations on the wall, and the scattered tables had nice white tablecloths. There was a traditional Mexican band playing, and I was sitting with Sven and Adnan upstairs, chatting about something related to the event. Suddenly, Vitor appeared, and he was frantic! “Dude, WHAT are you doing? They’re paying the bounties!” and of course, I had no idea because I wasn’t looking at my phone. So I stood up, checked my phone, and sure enough, one of our collab reports I’d submitted had been paid out. And then Vitor starts listing off this reel of payouts from the collab reports he’d sent in, and the number grows, and grows, and grows… that’s a core memory for me now. I’m always grateful for the opportunities and people that life has thrown my way.

  • Congratulations to godiego and Ali on being inducted into H1-Elite! Super achievement.

Reading List

  • Currently:

    • Fiction:

      • Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu (130/600 pages)

      • Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

    • Non-Fiction:

      • A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel (150/300 pages)

      • How The World Made The West by Josephine Crawley Quinn (180/400 pages)

  • Next on the list:

    • Fiction: Mort by Terry Pratchett

    • Non-Fiction: Day Zero to Zero Day by Eugene Lim (SpaceRaccoon)

Resources