Block red-teamed its own AI agent to run an infostealer • The Register
January 14, 2026
“Being CISO is very much about being okay with ambiguity and being uncomfortable in situations,” Nettesheim said. “We are balancing risk constantly, and having to make trade off – in the AI space in particular. Like: What is a bigger risk right now? Not taking advantage of the technology enough? Or the security downsides of it? LLMs and agents are introducing a new, very rapidly evolving space.”
Block has taken a real leadership position in the agentic coding space, particularly with their open-source project Goose.
But like anyone working deeply in this area, they recognise the potential security implications for letting an agentic system loose. Here there CISO talks about some of the implications for security and some tactics for addressing those challenges.
