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Claude wrote a full FreeBSD remote kernel RCE with root shell

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Re: Claude wrote a full FreeBSD remote kernel RCE with root shell

#31

Post by magicalhippo »

jsnell wrote: post #24
magicalhippo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Claude was used to find the bug in the first place though. That CVE write-up happened because of Claude Do you have a link to that? A rather important piece of context. Wasn't trying to downplay this submission the way, the main point still stands: But finding a bug and exploiting it are very different things. Exploit development requires understanding OS internals, crafting ROP chains, managing memory layouts, deb…

> Do you have a link to that? A rather important piece of context. It was a quote from your own link from the initial post? https://www.freebsd.org/security/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-26:08... > Credits: Nicholas Carlini using Claude, Anthropic

Oh wow, blind as a bat.

Would have been interesting with a write-up of that, to see just what Claude was used for.

Re: Claude wrote a full FreeBSD remote kernel RCE with root shell

#32

Post by ogig »

magicalhippo wrote: post #3

Key point is that Claude did not find the bug it exploits. It was given the CVE writeup[1] and was asked to write a program that could exploit the bug. That said, given how things are I wouldn't be surprised if you could let Claude or similar have a go at the source code of the kernel or core services, armed with some VMs for the try-fail iteration, and get it pumping out CVEs. If not now, then surely not in a too di…

Setting up fuzzing used to be hard. I haven't tried yet, but my bet is having Claude Code, today, analyze a codebase and suggest where and how to fuzztest it and having it review the crashes and iterate, will produce CVEs.

Re: Claude wrote a full FreeBSD remote kernel RCE with root shell

#38

Post by alcor-z »

The MADBugs work is solid, but what's sticking with me is the autonomy angle — not just finding a vuln but chaining multiple bugs into a working remote exploit without a human in the loop. FreeBSD kernel security research has always been thinner on the ground than Linux, which makes this feel both more impressive and harder to put in context. What's the actual blast radius here — is this realistically exploitable on anything with default configs, or does it need very specific conditions?

Re: Claude wrote a full FreeBSD remote kernel RCE with root shell

#39

Post by vinnymac »

Cloudef wrote: post #27
magicalhippo wrote: post #3

Key point is that Claude did not find the bug it exploits. It was given the CVE writeup[1] and was asked to write a program that could exploit the bug. That said, given how things are I wouldn't be surprised if you could let Claude or similar have a go at the source code of the kernel or core services, armed with some VMs for the try-fail iteration, and get it pumping out CVEs. If not now, then surely not in a too di…

You can let agent churn unattended if you have some sort of known goal. Write a test that should not pass and then tell the agent to come up with something that passes the test without changing the test itself. For this kind of fuzzing llms are not bad.

When doing this remove write permissions on the test file, it will do a much better job of staying the course over long periods. I've been doing this for over a year now.
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