[<prev] [<thread-prev] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Message-ID: <3976e06c-1bec-40b2-a6b0-5bd3b8c82ed8@dwheeler.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 2026 16:30:33 -0400
From: "David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@...eeler.com>
To: "oss-security@...ts.openwall.com" <oss-security@...ts.openwall.com>
Subject: Re: Proposal: Add separate
oss-security-vulnerability-reports mailing list (for AI vulnpocalypse)
Martin Steigerwald <martin@...htvoll.de> writes:
>> I'd expect a wave of AI reports, but once they are fixed, these will not be
>> reported again. Then maybe after using even better models and agents there
>> might be another wave of more difficult to find issues that are reported. But
>> then these are fixed as well.
I agree, that's my expectation as well. Projects that use AI to find &
fix vulnerabilities,
and strive to harden themselves against attack, will in a few years
become VERY hard
to attack. I look forward to that situation!
OSS projects do NOT need infinite money to use AI.
Open weight models are already a viable approach; they are NOT that far
behind.
In addition, some frontier labs have provided various ways for OSS
projects to
sometimes get access to their models, e.g., Anthropics' oss-scanner.
Sadly, this won't mean the end of ALL vulnerabilities.
OSS projects that just accept random vibe code will have *LOTS* of
horrendous vulnerabilities. OSS projects that reject "all AI outputs"
will also be disasters, since they're sticking their thumbs in their
ears while the
attackers repeatedly exploit their projects' vulnerabilities.
So I think in a few years we're going to see two worlds:
(1) highly-secure OSS because they use AI wisely to help craft secure
results (Linux, curl, etc.)
(2) highly-insecure OSS because they don't use AI wisely. These should
never be used but will be.
Over time, after a series of unhappy events, OSS projects in group 2
that many people care about will gradually be forked and be fixed.
I'm hoping that once the writing is on the wall this will be faster,
we'll see.
On 10/18/26 14:43, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> This matches what I've experienced in discussions with other OSS authors using
> AI to audit their code, what's coming in now with newer models, now that the
> stuff that earlier models found has been fixed, is more and more obscure
> issues that require extraordinary combinations of circumstances to trigger.
> For example there was CVE-2026-92392 that required among other things at least
> three planets to be lined up right, a certain level of sunspot activity, and
> eddies in the earths geomagnetic currents before the issue became a real
> concern.
I think there are two kinds of "obscure issues" though, that *look* similar:
1. Obscure issues that can ONLY occur in extremely unusual situations
that the
attacker CANNOT control (e.g., only occurs on big-endian 32-bit systems
using KOI8-U encoding).
2. Obscure issues that the attacker *CAN* control, e.g., by chaining
attacks.
AI is *EXTREMELY* good at patiently crafting and chaining a sequence of
defects
that *together* create a vulnerability.
I agree with you on case 1, but people *will* need to fix the
vulnerabilities
in case 2 because the AI systems *can* and *will* exploit them.
--- David A. Wheeler
Powered by blists - more mailing lists
Please check out the
Open Source Software Security Wiki, which is counterpart to this
mailing list.
Confused about mailing lists and their use?
Read about mailing lists on Wikipedia
and check out these
guidelines on proper formatting of your messages.
