198 pointsby mrkn15 hours ago14 comments
  • wongarsu5 hours ago
    Doesn't the Linux kernel encourage reporting on the public mailing list for kernel vulnerabilities that were found using AI? If I remember correctly they introduced that policy after the security mailing list got swamped with multiple reports for the same vulnerabilities
    • smashed4 hours ago
      On first glance it seems you are right.

      > If you resorted to AI assistance to identify a bug, you must treat it as public. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...

      • LeFantome2 hours ago
        It is very interesting that they believe AI will find different bugs than people. That is, if you found a bug with AI the expectation is that others could find the same bug easily. But if you find it yourself, it is somehow more of a sensitive secret.

        I do not imagine that things divide so clearly along these lines.

        • hannasanarion2 hours ago
          Probably not a clear divide, but it might be some kind of divide, and it might be the opposite of intuition.

          The big advantage the LLMs have is their huge context windows, ability to parallelize and delegate, and no attention fatigue or need to sleep. They can think about random combinations of functions and modules all day long until they find a combination that's exploitable. That's hard for a person to do, and its the kind of exploit that probably would never be found otherwise except by another llm-powered thing. Not being a security expert myself, I gather that these AI vulns tend to be small needles in very large haystacks that normal people just would never have the patience to search.

          But if you found something yourself, then it's something that's simple enough and involves a small enough number of moving parts that you can keep it in your head all at once and recognize the problem and correctly reason about its consequneces, which probably means it's easier to exploit, and therefore more dangerous if made public.

          It feels a little backwards, and it might still be backwards, but if there's any benefit i think it's along those lines.

        • pavon34 minutes ago
          The policy is based on what is actually occurring. The Linux security team has had a flood of duplicate reports from AI, so they changed their policy to request that security bugs found by AI be reported on public mailing lists to avoid duplicates. They have not yet seen the same for human found bugs, so the old policy remains in place. It is likely that at some point in the future the AI discovered bugs will be a superset of human discovered ones, but for now humans and AI seem to be better at finding different types of bugs. When/if it does happen, the number of human bugs will taper off to nothing because AI will find them all first, so the policy change will take care of itself.
        • skinfaxian hour ago
          It's a shared tool so it coming to similar conclusions across users wouldn't be unexpected. Like if it were a scanner you could run to find common security problems, you would treat those as public since anyone could just run the scanner.
        • tremonan hour ago
          You are misrepresenting the premise. The premise is "if you found a bug with a COTS toolkit, others using the same toolkit may also find this bug easily". The second assumption is that many people are using the same COTS toolkit, which seems uncontested in my eyes as there's only a handful models in wide circulation.
        • sigmaran hour ago
          I agree with this comment. Feels to me like they thought every prompt was "find the bug here," but in reality a lot of people put interesting context or original thoughts into their workflow with LLMs.
      • ReDress4 hours ago
        I don't think AI is of much concern, if you actually have a valid security issue.

        No-one, really will care if you discovered it via AI or otherwise. Because, the weight of the bug itself should outweight other concerns. This is how professional security works. There will always be one concern or the other about a bug but what carries more weight will determine the direction that the disclosure process takes.

        A valid security bug, by itself should carry enough technical weight that concerns about whether it was discovered through AI or otherwise should become irrelevant.

        Anyways, it mostly seems like people don't really care much about computer security at Linux. I would like to think they care more about infrastructure and related security issues because, well, if my computer is an open book, then why would security issues around it be a concern?

        Anyways...

        Enough said here - lol

        • john_strinlai4 hours ago
          >A valid security bug, by itself should carry enough technical weight that concerns about whether it was discovered through AI or otherwise should become irrelevant.

          that's not really what the policy is about.

          the thinking behind the policy is that if you found it via AI, other people can trivially find it via AI. that is why AI-found bugs are treated as public from the start.

          • pelotron2 hours ago
            My sinister side wonders if part of it could be that if you found it via AI but it turns out to be a hallucination, then you must accept the public ridicule for not thoroughly vetting the AI output.
          • ReDress3 hours ago
            As much as I am concerned. Security is not a concern in most open source projects.

            But, for one reason the other, they might give credit to a vulnerability they find interesting.

            • AnimalMuppet25 minutes ago
              We're talking specifically about the Linux kernel. Do you have any reason to say that they don't think that security is a concern?
    • rwmj4 hours ago
      As it should. If an LLM discovered them you should assume that another LLM, or another person running the same LLM, could find them. They are effectively public already.
      • wilkystyle3 hours ago
        No. I have an LLM and didn't discover it. Folks in HR have LLMs but can't produce the same software you can. Just because an LLM could discover it does not mean that it has been discovered yet. Responsible disclosure is still a valuable thing.
        • john_strinlai3 hours ago
          >I have an LLM and didn't discover it.

          are you actively pointing your LLM at the kernel to identify security bugs?

          the policy wasn't made on a whim. to quote the linux security team: "bugs discovered this way [via ai] systematically surface simultaneously across multiple researchers, often on the same day."

          >Responsible disclosure

          the term responsible disclosure is a silly thing made up by vendors.

          • wilkystylean hour ago
            > are you actively pointing your LLM at the kernel to identify security bugs?

            I am not actively pointing my LLM at the kernel in the specific way that would uncover these bugs, and just because it's possible to do so doesn't mean that it has happened already.

            > the policy wasn't made on a whim. to quote the linux security team [...]

            Great, so let the ones that arise simultaneously do so. What does that have to do with immediately publicizing a vulnerability, regardless of severity, just because an LLM was involved in its discovery?

            > the term responsible disclosure is a silly thing made up by vendors

            That's certainly an opinion you're welcome to have, but unless you are proposing that responsibility and disclosure are two orthogonal concepts I don't see what that opinion has to do with anything I've said.

          • yreg2 hours ago
            You could say that there is no reason to report them at all, because the maintainers can point llms to the kernel themselves.
  • lynndotpy5 hours ago
    Still bleary eyed, but: Most severe ones are in SMB and KSMBD, which apparently have implementations in kernel space. I think this doesn't impact anyone not using KMB.

    Others are LPEs, but two have been deleted by now, so can't be sure of the details.

    TrendMicro's site opens up with a big big "Advancing AI-Native Security with Anthropic". Which checks out I guess.

  • dayofthedaleks5 hours ago
    The headline should include Trend Micro's name for shaming purposes. Amatuerish.
  • jeanpah2 hours ago
    Do You guys think that with ai we Will achieve something like a bug free os distro or programming language? Like some sort of perfection?
    • pixl972 hours ago
      From just writing code, no.

      Now, the question is can we make some kind of formal verification language that forces checks everything and doesn't allow bugs? Maybe?

      But that's assuming the underlying hardware and firmware doesn't have flaws that can break those assumptions too.

      • jeanpah7 minutes ago
        I remember languages like Casl and vdm, But they where harder to implement and very complex, You mean something like those languages ?
        • pixl972 minutes ago
          >But they where harder to implement and very complex

          This is the general trade off for being correct. Being mostly right is easy, but leads to complex security issues later. Being correct is very hard, but should reduce the number of flaws to a manageable level.

          I think Lean or Ada would be examples of different types of correctness contracts.

      • wongarsu2 hours ago
        That just shifts bugs up one layer, into the specification that you then verify
        • dwohnitmokan hour ago
          Yes but that is significantly less surface area (indeed asymptotically less in the general case if you believe P != NP).
    • Joel_Mckayan hour ago
      No, but languages like Elixir/Erlang/OTP are designed to fail gracefully while continuing to run.

      With complex systems there are too many failure modes, and with "vibe coding" institutional negligence it is simply degenerative.

      There are theoretical workarounds to LLM brute force scans, but they are not free to build. =3

    • regenschutz2 hours ago
      Everything is bug-free until someone finds a bug in it.
    • pelotron2 hours ago
      Not as long as new features are being written.
    • assbuttbuttass2 hours ago
      lmao
    • mrkn131 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • extraextra5 hours ago
    What an entertaining season in the simulation
    • ActionHank3 hours ago
      Every episode is a cliff hanger.
  • ReDress5 hours ago
    I'm not surprised because the disclosure process of https://hackerone.com is completely and openly public.

    But they have also disabled Linux as one of the products that they work with.

  • ivanmontillam5 hours ago
    It's being a great season, techsecurity-wise.
    • Avicebron5 hours ago
      On HN everyone is a security engineer.
      • renehsz4 hours ago
        There are only two types of people: Those who are security engineers, and those who pretend to be.
      • gilrain5 hours ago
        They wanted "full stack", so they found hires with 1/10th of an education in each of 10 different fields.

        The boss class are rich because they're smart. /s

        • greenavocado5 hours ago
          > 1/10th of an education in each of 10 different fields combined FTFY
          • 0c3ca835 hours ago
            But they're cheap 10x engineers.
            • greenavocado39 minutes ago
              You need to constantly be hiring. They're basically consumable. Throw 10 of 'em in the furnace and they burn up. Then you get some more.
  • jumperabg4 hours ago
    Finally the last vulnerabilities of the year.
    • cookiengineer4 hours ago
      > Finally the last vulnerabilities of the year ... until today

      Fixed that for you

  • fguerraz4 hours ago
    Can we kick SMB implementations out of the kernel please? If not, can we please get PHP mainlined in the kernel?
    • ReDress4 hours ago
      SMB was "imported" into the kernel as an optimization for the user-space version - heh
      • kjs33 hours ago
        Like when graphics stack and drivers were "imported" into the WinNT kernel as an optimization for the user-space version. And thus began 30 years of "another week, another graphics subsystem crash/vuln".
        • jacquesm2 hours ago
          Indeed. These are gigantic mistakes. The quest for performance is diametrically opposed to having a secure system. There will always be a price, sometimes a big one for having a system that enforces proper boundaries. In my opinion: if something can be a process then it should be a process.
          • lanstin9 minutes ago
            Plan9 or HURD? Mach anyone?
    • Joel_Mckay35 minutes ago
      On windows, no one should be running SMB either.

      There are network mount options (also include ssh support)

      https://rclone.org/install/

      And SSH access and remote IFS NFS drive mount to host with winget:

      # Run PowerShell as an Administrator.

      Get-WindowsCapability -Online | Where-Object Name -like 'OpenSSH*'

      # Install the OpenSSH Client

      Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0

      # Install the OpenSSH Server

      Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Server~~~~0.0.1.0

      Start-Service sshd

      Set-Service -Name sshd -StartupType 'Automatic'

      # Only allow local or VPN host server access

      New-NetFirewallRule -Name sshd -DisplayName 'OpenSSH Server (sshd)' -Enabled True -Direction Inbound -Protocol TCP -Action Allow -LocalPort 22 -RemoteAddress 192.168.1.0/24

      winget install frequency403.OpenSSHGUI

      winget install -h -e --id "WinFsp.WinFsp"

      winget install -h -e --id "SSHFS-Win.SSHFS-Win"

      winget install -h -e evsar3.sshfs-win-manager

      #As administrator in power shell run to manage ssh keys:

      OpenSSH-GUI-win-x64

      And free/paid apps for your phone to sync your files automatically over SFTP.

      https://filezilla-project.org/download.php?show_all=1

      https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.bukacek.fil...

      https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/photosync-transfer-photos/id41...

      https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.touchbyte....

      Stop using SMB, it was always broken on Windows and Linux. =3

    • 4 hours ago
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  • ototot5 hours ago
    are those posted by AI?
  • NooneAtAll35 hours ago
    "accidentally"

    I feel paranoid enough now to blame ai companies to try to induce panic and proclaim "buy our product to save yourself"

    • trollbridge2 hours ago
      Use open weight models on your own hardware.
    • pixl972 hours ago
      My goodness you don't like AI very much at all do you.

      Does the security flaw exist or not?

      I've always been one for immediate release of any security flaw the second it is found.

      "But, people will get hurt or lose money that way"

      Correct, they will understand the risk of using computer systems. Because we've hidden all the flaws under a mask of responsible disclosure people really don't understand the dangers we've subjected ourselves to by writing a bunch of bug filled bullshit code and instead we pretend like we have a handle on the situation.

      WE DO NOT. If AI has proven anything it's how all of our code is a giant stack of cards waiting till collapse. And it proves humans will never learn, we'll just use the AI to pump out more shitty bug filled code.

      It's all fun and games until someone crashes the electrical grid via bugs, or a major incident on the banking system. Human love to write regulations in blood because we're incapable of doing anything correctly before a bunch of people die.

    • pelagicAustral5 hours ago
      Agree, wild stretch to accidentally send this loot to a mailing list.
    • ReDress4 hours ago
      To be honest and fair, in this situation I don't believe this is something accidental.

      It probably just happens that the security concerns at ZDI don't match the security concerns at Linux(the vendor).

      So, it turns out that this vendor is difficult to work with ....

      I mean - heh

  • throwaway6137464 hours ago
    [dead]
  • VCFundedGenYer3 hours ago
    Is this a parody article?

    This is like saying "Linux source code leaked"

  • 59percentmorean hour ago
    Someone said that "they" are setting up the narrative for a global tech crash/internet blackout, and it's becoming easier and easier to believe it.
    • totetsuan hour ago
      So get local backups of all my cloud drive before Nov 3, gotcha.
      • 59percentmorean hour ago
        And stowed in an unplugged microwave, yes.