AIs Compress Exploit Timeline

Anil Madhavapeddy found that giving an AI agent only a rumor of a security flaw was enough for the agent to locate the exploit, and that his own agents could find the exploit from rough knowledge of the issue before a public patch was available. Simon Willison wrote that this rate of discovery appears incompatible with existing open source embargo practices for new issues, saying "If an issue can become this fast, we need to figure out new processes for keeping our communities safe.

Give an AI agent a mere rumor https://anil.recoil.org/notes/rumour-is-the-exploit of an exploit, and it’s enough for them to find it. What’s worse, I found I could use my own agents to find the exploit just by knowing roughly what it was about and so could have been exploiting it well before the public patch was available Given that just the rumour of a security issue seems enough to give attackers enough info to find new exploits, we’re going to need to change the way we deal with security responses in open source. Simon Willison comments https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/28/just-a-rumour-of-a-bug/ : Anil points out that this rate of discovery appears incompatible with existing open source embargo practices for new issues. If an issue can become an exploit this fast, we need to figure out new processes for keeping our communities safe...