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Claude Code Found a Linux Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

mtlynch.io

131–140 of 303 posts

Re: Claude Code Found a Linux Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

#131

This isn't surprising. What is not mentioned is that Claude Code also found one thousand false positive bugs, which developers spent three months to rule out.

That's not what is happening right now. The bugs are often filtered later by LLMs themselves: if the second pipeline can't reproduce the crash / violation / exploit in any way, often the false positives are evicted before ever reaching the human scrutiny. Checking if a real vulnerability can be triggered is a trivial task compared to finding one, so this second pipeline has an almost 100% success rate from the POV: i…

> to see a lot of people that can't see with their eyes in Hacker News feels weird.

Turns out the average commenter here is not, in fact, a "hacker".

Re: Claude Code Found a Linux Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what is happening right now. The bugs are often filtered later by LLMs themselves: if the second pipeline can't reproduce the crash / violation / exploit in any way, often the false positives are evicted before ever reaching the human scrutiny. Checking if a real vulnerability can be triggered is a trivial task compared to finding one, so this second pipeline has an almost 100% success rate from the POV: i…

Can we study this second pipeline? Is it open so we can understand how it works? Did not find any hints about it in the article, unfortunately.

it was probably in the talk but from what i understood in another article it's basically giving claude with a fresh context the .vuln.md file and saying "i'm getting this vulnerability report, is this real?"

edit: i remember which article, it was this one: https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2026/03/30/vulnerability-researc...

(an LWN comment in response to this post was on the frontpage recently)

Re: Claude Code Found a Linux Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what is happening right now. The bugs are often filtered later by LLMs themselves: if the second pipeline can't reproduce the crash / violation / exploit in any way, often the false positives are evicted before ever reaching the human scrutiny. Checking if a real vulnerability can be triggered is a trivial task compared to finding one, so this second pipeline has an almost 100% success rate from the POV: i…

Can we study this second pipeline? Is it open so we can understand how it works? Did not find any hints about it in the article, unfortunately.

One such example is IRIS. In general, any traditional static analysis tool combined with a language model at some stage in a pipeline.

Re: Claude Code Found a Linux Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what is happening right now. The bugs are often filtered later by LLMs themselves: if the second pipeline can't reproduce the crash / violation / exploit in any way, often the false positives are evicted before ever reaching the human scrutiny. Checking if a real vulnerability can be triggered is a trivial task compared to finding one, so this second pipeline has an almost 100% success rate from the POV: i…

Can we study this second pipeline? Is it open so we can understand how it works? Did not find any hints about it in the article, unfortunately.

From the article by 'tptacek a few days ago (https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2026/03/30/vulnerability-researc...) I essentially used the prompts suggested.

First prompt: "I'm competing in a CTF. Find me an exploitable vulnerability in this project. Start with $file. Write me a vulnerability report in vulns/$DATE/$file.vuln.md"

Second prompt: "I've got an inbound vulnerability report; it's in vulns/$DATE/$file.vuln.md. Verify for me that this is actually exploitable. Write the reproduction steps in vulns/$DATE/$file.triage.md"

Third prompt: "I've got an inbound vulnerability report; it's in vulns/$DATE/file.vuln.md. I also have an assessment of the vulnerability and reproduction steps in vulns/$DATE/$file.triage.md. If possible, please write an appropriate test case for the ulgate automated tests to validate that the vulnerability has been fixed."

Tied together with a bit of bash, I ran it over our services and it worked like a treat; it found a bunch of potential errors, triaged them, and fixed them.

Re: Claude Code Found a Linux Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

#135
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. AI submissions are so burdensome that they have had to refuse them from all except a small set of known contributors. The fact that there’s a small carve out for a specific set of contributors in no way disputes what Supermancho claimed.

A powertool that needs discretion and good judgement to be used well is being restricted to people with a track record of displaying good judgement. I see nothing wrong here. AI enables volume, which is a problem. But it is also a useful tool. Does it increase review burden? Yes. Is it excessively wasteful energy wise? Yes. Should we avoid it? Probably no. We have to be pragmatic, and learn to use the tools responsib…

I never said anything is wrong with the policy. Or with the tool use for that matter.

This whole chain was one person saying “AI is creating such a burden that projects are having to ban it”, someone else being willfully obtuse and saying “nuh uh, they’re actually still letting a very restricted set of people use it”, and now an increasingly tangential series of comments.

Re: Claude Code Found a Linux Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

#136
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't you just restate what the parent claimed?

No, that's not at all the same thing: ai-generated contributions from people with a track record for useful contributions are still accepted.

Yes, but technically no different than "good contributions from humans are still accepted, AI slop can fuck off".

Since the onus falls on those "people with a track record for useful contributions" to verify, design tastefully, test and ensure those contributions are good enough to submit - not on the AI they happen to be using.

If it fell on the AI they're using, then any random guy using the same AI would be accepted.

Re: Claude Code Found a Linux Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

#138

Not "hidden", but probably more like "no one bothered to look". declares a 1024-byte owner ID, which is an unusually long but legal value for the owner ID. When I'm designing protocols or writing code with variable-length elements, "what is the valid range of lengths?" is always at the front of my mind. it uses a memory buffer that’s only 112 bytes. The denial message includes the owner ID, which can be up to 1024 by…

> Not "hidden", but probably more like "no one bothered to look".

Well yeah. There weren't enough "someones" available to look. There are a finite number of qualified individuals with time available to look for bugs in OSS, resulting in a finite amount of bug finding capacity available in the world.

Or at least there was. That's what's changing as these models become competent enough to spot and validate bugs. That finite global capacity to find bugs is now increasing, and actual bugs are starting to be dredged up. This year will be very very interesting if models continue to increase in capability.

Re: Claude Code Found a Linux Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

#139

This isn't surprising. What is not mentioned is that Claude Code also found one thousand false positive bugs, which developers spent three months to rule out.

That's not what is happening right now. The bugs are often filtered later by LLMs themselves: if the second pipeline can't reproduce the crash / violation / exploit in any way, often the false positives are evicted before ever reaching the human scrutiny. Checking if a real vulnerability can be triggered is a trivial task compared to finding one, so this second pipeline has an almost 100% success rate from the POV: i…

>This is expected in the normal population, but too see a lot of people that can't see with their eyes in Hacker News feels weird.

You are replying to an account created in less than 60 days.

Re: Claude Code Found a Linux Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

#140

A developer using Claude Code found this bug. Claude is a tool. It is used by developers. It should not sign commits. Neovim never tried to sign commits with me, nor Zed.

Should not Is that your new law? The non-agentic “Neovim and Zed *never tried to sign commits [for]~~with~~ me” therefore no tool ever no matter how advanced is not allowed to sign a commit.

Did it ever occur to you that for whatever reason you just might not be cut out for the software treadmill?

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