Mercor says it was hit by cyberattack tied to compromise LiteLLM
83 points
1 day ago
| 3 comments
| techcrunch.com
| HN
nope1000
5 hours ago
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> The incident also prompted LiteLLM to make changes to its compliance processes, including shifting from controversial startup Delve to Vanta for compliance certifications.

This is pretty funny.

The leaked excel sheet with customers of Delve is basically a shortlist of targets for hackers to try now. Not that they necessarily have bad security, but you can play the odds

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_pdp_
2 hours ago
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I am not defending Delve or anything and I hope they get what they deserver but there is no correlation between SOC2 certification and the actual cyber capability of a company. SOC2 and ISO27001 is just compliance and frankly most of it is BS.
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aitchnyu
1 hour ago
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Delve and Emdash. Are there more products or companies with similar names?
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edgineer
8 minutes ago
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Polsia (AI slop backwards)
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sebmellen
2 hours ago
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It might feel like BS, and I'm inclined to agree with you because of the security theater aspect. (For example, Mercor had their verification done by what appears to be a legitimate audit firm.)

But it's not useless. It still forces you to go through a very useful exercise of risk modeling and preparation that you most likely won't do without a formal program.

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sunir
25 minutes ago
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It doesn't force you go through risk modelling because by now most SOC2 platforms have templates you just fill in the blanks and sign off. Conversely, the auditors are paid by the company, so their incentive is to pass the audit so the client can get what it wants.

Because there's no adversarial pressure as a check and balance to the security, and AICPA is clearly just happy to take the fees, it's a hollow shirt. It's like this scene from The Big Short. https://youtu.be/mwdo17GT6sg?si=Hzada9JcdIPfdyFN&t=140

As usual, it's only people that care that force positive change. The companies that want good security will have good security. Customers who want good security will demand good security.

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gibolt
7 minutes ago
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Having been through SOC2, it doesn't mean a company is rock solid, but it definitely makes the company button up loose ends, if taken seriously.
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cj
1 hour ago
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If your goal is to maximize your posture against cyber threats, spending your time on SOC 2 compliance with Vanta (or similar) is a waste of time if you consider the amount of time spent compared to security gained.

It's incredibly easy to get SOC 2 audited and still have terrible security.

> forces you to go through a very useful exercise of risk modeling

Have you actually done this in Vanta, though? You would have to go out of your way to do it in a manner that actually adds significant value to your security posture.

(I don't think SOC/ISO are a waste of time. We do it at our company, but for reasons that have nothing to do with security)

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mikeocool
1 hour ago
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Probably the most useful aspect of SOC2 is that it gives the technical side of the business an easy excuse for spending time and money on security, which, in startup environment is not always easy otherwise (Ie “we have to dedicate time to update our out of date dependencies, otherwise we’ll fail SOC2”).

If you do it well, a startup can go through SOC2 and use it as an opportunity to put together a reasonable cybersecurity practice. Though, yeah, one does not actually beget the other, you can also very easily get a soc2 report with minimal findings with a really bad cybersecurity practice.

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jacquesm
1 hour ago
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The main use of these certs is to give people that actually want to do their job a stick to hit their bosses with.
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CafeRacer
10 minutes ago
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I am genuinely wonder if anyone have had success landing gigs at Mercor.
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aservus
4 hours ago
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This is a good reminder that any tool handling sensitive data — even internal ones — needs to be transparent about where data goes. The assumption that SaaS tools protect your data is getting harder to defend.
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lukewarm707
3 hours ago
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I use llms to read the privacy policies that are too long to read. They guarantee almost nothing, unless you go out of your way to get an sla
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