Just the rumour of a bug is enough to find an exploit these days(anil.recoil.org)
378 points by avsm 13 days ago | 123 comments
tl;dr: An OCaml cohttp maintainer observed automated exploit probes hitting his server within 10 minutes of opening a public PR for a path traversal fix, and found his own LLM agent could generate a working exploit in under a minute from just a vague description. He argues that traditional security embargoes are now obsolete since LLM agents can derive exploits from mere rumors of a bug, citing data showing mean time-to-exploit has gone negative. Proposed responses include private patch coordination via web-of-trust, continuous shipping with better cross-ecosystem packaging, and protocol-layer virtual patching akin to Cloudflare's managed rules.
HN Discussion:
  • Maintainer confirms surge in security disclosures matching the article's experience
  • ~Real problem is organizational will to fix bugs, not detection speed
  • Silent/microupdates pushed without user consent are unacceptable
  • ~This exploit-from-rumors practice predates LLMs, which merely scaled it
  • ~Deployment and rollout speed are the real bottleneck, not patches