TAICO Feb 2026 Meetup!

The TAICO team is happy to announce our next meetup at the Adaptavist office in Toronto. Much thanks to Adaptavist for hosting!

Wayfinding

• Please be careful when using maps features on phones, some people have been redirected to a completely wrong address. The event is near Winners on Front St, which is just south, across the street, from Berczy Park (where the dog fountain is) so if you are not near that area, you are in the wrong place.

Registration and Event Details
Our goal is to bring artificial intelligence and cybersecurity together. To do that, we need to explore what's happening in AI and what's happening in cybersecurity, and where the two intersect and collide. We're also working to understand how we solve problems in these areas, what that looks like, and how Canada can and will participate.

With that in mind, we're pleased to announce our speaker and the agenda for our next meeting!

Sponsors
And thanks to our host, Adaptavist!

Notes

• Unfortunately, we won't have pizza at this meetup due to a gap in sponsorship. We're actively working on securing sponsors for future events.

Agenda

Doors Open: 5:30PM
Event Start: 6:00PM

• 👋 Welcome and introductions
• 🙏 Thank you to our amazing hosts and sponsors! 🎉
• 🎙️ Speakers

🎤 Speaker #1: Curtis Collicutt

Title: Stegalographer

Abstract:

They said never write your own encryption. They didn’t say anything about steganography!

What if the best place to hide a secret message was in something so boring that nobody would ever look twice at it? Stegalographer is a tool that embeds data in legitimate-looking application logs by encoding information in the choices that generate the logs, rather than encrypting them. The template used, the number of trailing spaces, whether the log says 'error' or 'failure', and even the microsecond variations in timestamps can all carry hidden bits. The output isn't logs with secrets stuffed inside, but real log structure with your data silently riding along.

This talk will explain how Stegalographer works, from analysing existing logs to extract templates (using the Drain algorithm from log analytics research), to the encoding process that turns your message into a stream of plausible entries. We will explore practical use cases such as covert channels in penetration testing, watermarking logs to trace leaks and censorship-resistant publishing disguised as 'sample data'. However, we will also be honest about the limitations: this is steganography, not encryption, and statistical analysis can potentially detect anomalies at scale. Whether you're interested in security research or information theory or privacy, or want to know more about building security tools, come and see how the most mundane part of any system can become a covert communication channel.

We'll also touch on the experience of building security tools like this one using AI-assisted programming tools like Claude Code.

🎤 Speaker #2: Ads Dawson

Title: Q&A with Ads Dawson

Ads Dawson is an Offensive security engineer, penetration tester and red teamer with over thirteen years of experience breaking, testing, and securing applications and infrastructure across startups and large enterprises. Skilled in web application security, DevSecOps, and large-scale hybrid cloud environments, with a strong focus on offensive engineering, red team operations, and vulnerability research. Active bug bounty hunter and researcher in AI and LLM security, specializing in uncovering and mitigating attack vectors such as prompt injection, unrestricted model inference, and backdoor attacks. Experienced in leading incident response and simulating advanced adversaries to expose weaknesses before real attackers do.

He works with organizations like OWASP and was Technical Lead for OWASP’s Top 10 for LLM Applications.

This is your chance to ask Ads anything you want about AI and cybersecurity so come armed with your questions!

⚡ Lightning Talks and Demos

Lightning Talks - 5 to 10 minutes long

1. You? - Please reach out if you'd like to do a lightning talk or demo

Please reach out to us if you'd like to present at the meetup. We are looking for people to talk about what they are working on, what they are building and learning, and are open to any level of experience and technical depth. Whether you are a beginner or an expert, we want to hear from you! We're all just out here building and learning.

👋 See You There!

Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you at the meetup!