Semi-related: has the rate of published exploits picked up as if late, or is it simply the fact that there’s hype around ai as security tool (offense or defense) so it’s simply in the news more often?
Feels like there’s something new every other day - linux, windows, mobile, various commonplace tools used by everybody, the list goes on
There are reports from people who manage security bugs in OSS that there has been a big uptick in reports: initially low quality ones that were mostly bogus, but now many more legitimate ones as well.
I've reported a few very serious issues to vendors of widely used tools in recent weeks, and it's been even more difficult than usual to get them to be acknowledged - the teams that respond are reportedly swamped.
Hmmm... I'd like someone to double check my thinking here. I posted this exact prompt for gpt 5.5 xhigh:
```
does this look right to you? don't do any searches or check memory, just think through first principles
static int vpu_mmap(struct file fp, struct vm_area_struct vm) { unsigned long pfn; struct vpu_core core = container_of(fp->f_inode->i_cdev, struct vpu_core, cdev); vm_flags_set(vm, VM_IO | VM_DONTEXPAND | VM_DONTDUMP); / This is a CSRs mapping, use pgprot_device */ vm->vm_page_prot = pgprot_device(vm->vm_page_prot); pfn = core->paddr >> PAGE_SHIFT; return remap_pfn_range(vm, vm->vm_start, pfn, vm->vm_end-vm->vm_start, vm->vm_page_prot) ? -EAGAIN : 0; }
```
And it correctly identified the issue at hand, without web searches. I'd love to try something more comprehensive, e.g. shoving whole chunks of the codebase into the prompt instead of just the specific function, but it seems the latent ability to catch security exploits is there.
So then.... I wonder how this got out in the first place. I know I'm using a toy example but would love to learn more!
It's the usual problem of having no consequences for the person who wrote catastrophic code like this and the company who released it. If the person who wrote this were to be imprisoned for the rest of their life, for instance, or if the company were to be fined $1 million per user put at risk (which would probably mean a $1-10 trillion fine for Google -enough to trigger bankruptcy), then things would be very different
This is a great bug report! I am not a kernel expert by any means even though I have read some about it... 10+ years ago. And I was able to follow along and see what was going on.
It does make me scared for what other dangers lurk since this was a really bad one and it was so little work to find.
Also of note: so many security issues lately have been done using AI. This report makes me think two things:
1. Expertise is still immensely valuable, the more niche, the more valuable.
2. There are lots of niches still where AI doesn't dominate...
"This is notably fast given that this is the first time that an Android driver bug I reported was patched within 90 days of the vendor first learning about the vulnerability."
This makes me feel better about Google, but also makes me kind of frightened of the rest of Android. I wonder what Apple's response time is?
I read about Pixel 9 Dolby Decoder bug, and it is based on integer overflow. It was a mistake to allow "+" operator to overflow, and this must be fixed in new languages like Rust, but it is not.
Feels like there’s something new every other day - linux, windows, mobile, various commonplace tools used by everybody, the list goes on
```
does this look right to you? don't do any searches or check memory, just think through first principles
static int vpu_mmap(struct file fp, struct vm_area_struct vm) { unsigned long pfn; struct vpu_core core = container_of(fp->f_inode->i_cdev, struct vpu_core, cdev); vm_flags_set(vm, VM_IO | VM_DONTEXPAND | VM_DONTDUMP); / This is a CSRs mapping, use pgprot_device */ vm->vm_page_prot = pgprot_device(vm->vm_page_prot); pfn = core->paddr >> PAGE_SHIFT; return remap_pfn_range(vm, vm->vm_start, pfn, vm->vm_end-vm->vm_start, vm->vm_page_prot) ? -EAGAIN : 0; }
```
And it correctly identified the issue at hand, without web searches. I'd love to try something more comprehensive, e.g. shoving whole chunks of the codebase into the prompt instead of just the specific function, but it seems the latent ability to catch security exploits is there.
So then.... I wonder how this got out in the first place. I know I'm using a toy example but would love to learn more!
It does make me scared for what other dangers lurk since this was a really bad one and it was so little work to find.
Also of note: so many security issues lately have been done using AI. This report makes me think two things:
1. Expertise is still immensely valuable, the more niche, the more valuable.
2. There are lots of niches still where AI doesn't dominate...
This makes me feel better about Google, but also makes me kind of frightened of the rest of Android. I wonder what Apple's response time is?