About $50. That's What It Now Costs an AI Hacker to Break Into a Business Website.

Today's theme: AI got cheaper, and so did the downside. A hacker is running break-ins for roughly $50 each, DeepSeek is pricing coding help at pennies, and the big labs are scrambling to show they care about the people on the other end. Here's what matters, and what to do about it.

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What happened: Security firm NorForge published an investigation after finding more than 20 exposed control panels for Cairn, an AI hacking system where you give it a target and a goal and it coordinates agents to find a way in. Quartz reported that a hacker used AI agents to compromise more than 100 websites, with John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins named as victims. NorForge estimates about $5 per attempt and a success rate near 10%, which works out to roughly $50 per successful break-in. Its own authors say those numbers are rough. The hackers also left their control panels open to the internet, exposing harvested passwords and keys.

Why it matters to you: The price is the story. Breaking into a small online store used to cost a skilled person days of work, so most small businesses were not worth the trouble. At a few dollars per attempt and no human time, that math may change. If you run a website, a store, or anything with a login, assume automated attempts against it are cheap and constant.

What to do about it: Ask whoever manages your website today whether your software, plugins, and logins are fully updated, and turn on two-factor sign-in everywhere you can.

What happened: Anthropic announced a new Public Benefit Fund that would receive 5% of the company's shares, if stockholders approve. The fund is a company-owned LLC that can give to nonprofits or send money directly to specific groups, and the board can add 2% more each time the company's value rises another 50% past a set baseline. Anthropic named workers hurt by AI as one example of who the money could help, and says it will share more on structure and governance in the coming months.

Why it matters to you: Nobody has said who gets paid, how much, or when, so for now this is a promise, not a payout. Still, a leading AI company setting aside equity for people displaced by AI tells you how seriously it expects job disruption to hit. Watch for the follow-up details, not the headline.

Imagine walking out of a conference with a finished sales funnel instead of a notebook full of ideas. That's the whole pitch of the Epic Marketing Summit, a 2-day live event in Miami in January 2027. Over two days you build a working AI-powered sales funnel and vibe code your own AI app on site, so you leave with something real that is already built, not a framework you still have to go implement.

It's made for business owners who want to turn their sales process into a system instead of running it on their own time and energy. Last year's event sold out, and it's back with a bigger AI focus.

Here's my personal take. I wasn't there last year and I had major FOMO, because I know a lot of the trainers and they weren't talking theory. They'd actually done the work. I'm going in January, and if you're serious about building leverage into how you sell, I'd like to see you there too. January will come up faster than you think. Grab your spot here

What happened: On October 17, DeepSeek released V4.1-Flash-1017, an updated model with downloadable open weights that it says is faster and cheaper per task than the last one. Those performance claims are DeepSeek's own, and independent tests have not confirmed them yet. It also opened Search and Fetch tools for AI agents at $0.75 per 1,000 calls, free through some coding tools until billing starts October 31. In the same news cycle, Quartz reported that DHS ordered civilian federal agencies to remove DeepSeek products from their systems.

Why it matters to you: Cheap, downloadable AI puts steady pressure on what the big labs can charge, which is good news for your budget over time. The catch is that DeepSeek's hosted services run on its own servers, and the federal order shows how seriously the government takes that. Treat it like any outside vendor: fine for public information, not for customer data.

What to do about it: If a tool you use says it runs on DeepSeek, ask what data it sends where, and keep confidential material out until you know.

What happened: 404 Media tested OpenAI's advertising and found advertisers can show ads to specific people using an email address, phone number, or a unique ID on their phone, and can also target based on the prompts users enter. 404 Media notes that matching on contact info is fairly standard across the ad industry, while using what people type into a chatbot is the newer part.

Why it matters to you: Two angles. If you advertise, ChatGPT is quickly becoming another place to reach customers, built like the Facebook ad tools you may already know. If you use ChatGPT yourself, remember that what you type is no longer just a private conversation with a tool, because it can shape which ads you see.

What to do about it: Check your ad and privacy settings in ChatGPT, and avoid pasting sensitive customer details into any chatbot.

What happened: Anthropic published a study of its own workforce. Junior employees' share of its technical hires fell from 27% to 9% since early 2025. By August, its AI agents worked six times as many hours as the people running them, and engineers were making about five times as many code changes as six months earlier. Agents also spend roughly 80% of session time waiting on a human to respond. This is one company's data, so it may not match what happens elsewhere.

Why it matters to you: Entry-level tasks are where AI does the most work first, and that is also where people used to learn the business. The bigger shift inside Anthropic is that more of the job became directing and checking AI, not doing the task by hand. Expect that to show up in your own hiring and training.

If you've ever felt like you're building your business alone, this one's for you.

I've been a member of the Ignite Mastermind for over 3 years, and it's been a vital part of how I've grown my business. Some of my closest friends, and a few real business partners, came directly out of being in that room.

Ignite is an annual membership for entrepreneurs still under $1 million a year who want structure, tools, and peers to get past that mark faster. You get 6 to 8 live virtual workshops a year plus 2 live in-person events, each normally priced between $97 and $997 on their own. There's an all-in-one marketing software suite that replaces over $5,000 a month in separate tools, weekly calls with Perry Belcher and his team, and a peer community built for real partnerships. I add my own bonus too: monthly accountability and business development calls with me personally.

If you're looking for a mastermind to move you to your next milestone, this is where I'd point you. See what's inside Ignite here

What happened: TechCrunch reported that, per a legal filing, Disney agreed to offer jobs to at least 60 Character.AI employees, most of the company, at an estimated $60 million a year in total pay. The vast majority accepted. Disney had already agreed to buy some Character.AI assets for $20 million, and Character.AI's former CEO is now Disney's first CTO. It is a "stalking horse" bid, so a rival buyer could still outbid it.

Why it matters to you: Even when an AI company fails, the people who know how to build with AI are priced like stars. For a small business, the takeaway is practical: skilled AI talent is scarce and expensive, so training the people you already have may be your best option.

What happened: TechCrunch reported that Replit CEO Amjad Masad said OpenAI replaced Anthropic as the default model behind Replit Agent, citing cost, partnership terms, and performance. Users can still pick Claude or other models. TechCrunch also reported that insiders said the Anthropic partnership is still in place, so the full picture is disputed.

Why it matters to you: The AI inside the tools you pay for can change without you doing anything. Most customers stick with the default, so one vendor's decision quietly changes what powers your product.

What to do about it: Know which AI model your key tools run on, and avoid building a workflow that only works with one vendor.

Look at the pattern today. AI break-ins cost $50, a Chinese model prices coding at pennies, ChatGPT is becoming an ad machine, and Anthropic is promising money to people its own technology may displace. Everything is getting cheaper and faster, including the risks. None of it calls for panic. It calls for boring basics: update your software, protect customer data, and don't tie your business to one vendor. Stop the rollercoaster, and keep your hands on the bar.

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Talk tomorrow,
Mark Shilensky

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