​Friday Hacks #284: Hacking with AI, Hacking at the Workplace

​​Friday Hacks, by NUS Hackers, is a weekly event where invited speakers share their technical experiences and interests! In this week's session, we have:

​1) The Hacker’s Mindset at Work

​This talk explores hacker culture in the workplace, highlighting how creative, low-cost prototypes and internal hacks drive efficiency and innovation. Drawing on experience at work, Harsh shares examples of how he built tools and automations across G-Suite, tech support, and Slack/Google Chat that saved time, reduced spend, and empowered teams to solve problems independently.

​​Speaker Profile 🎙️️

​Harsh Gadodia is an Engineering Manager at Triple-A, a fintech helping businesses pay and get paid in local and digital currencies. Previously, he worked at Ninja Van, where he helped the Tooling & Automation team build systems to improve efficiency across the company. He graduated from NUS with a degree in Computer Engineering and was part of the University Scholars Programme, which shaped his approach to problem-solving and teamwork.

​2) Hacking AI and Hacking with AI

​AI has not only expanded the attack surface of systems that leverage it but also significantly enhanced threat actors' capabilities. This talk takes a deep dive into the critical vulnerabilities we found in Perplexity's Comet Browser, Windsurf, and Cluely, and into how Hacktron is approaching AI-assisted security research to uncover previously undiscovered vulnerabilities, even after multiple high-profile penetration tests.

​​Speaker Profile 🎙️️

​Zayne was a core member of Blue Water, the world’s top CTF team in 2023. After topping Singapore’s government bug bounty and shipping security solutions across the military, government, and big tech, he co-founded Hacktron AI, where he is building the first fully autonomous security researcher.