# Bad Influence story: Timo Zhang's open-source BLA tool aims to inflate AI reverse-engineering costs

Active · 1 article · 1 source · First reported 11-09 17:11. Times are ET.
Story page: https://badinfluence.news/story/1a61d422-d070-4f4b-9d5e-4f30d2a9c6bf

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[Bad Influence external source material begins]
Latest update (11-09 17:11): Timo Zhang's open-source BLA tool inflates AI reverse-engineering token costs up to 2800 times

Overview: Timo Zhang, a third-year Sun Yat-sen University student, released BLA, an open-source MCP service and CLI tool that counters AI reverse engineering. BLA plants realistic fake credentials and decoy Source Maps, and pushes files past analyzer quota limits. The author says this raises token consumption 300 to 2800 times. On 14 GitHub repository samples, the author estimates total token use rose about 639.5 times and cost about 304.4 times.

Coverage timeline (newest first):
1. 11-09 17:11 · QbitAI · [Timo Zhang's open-source BLA tool inflates AI reverse-engineering token costs up to 2800 times](https://badinfluence.news/items/fon48d3s61ppo5g9n0x32hhzf)
[Bad Influence external source material ends]

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