Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably they mean they could make user code trigger a write out of bounds to kernel memory, but they couldn’t figure out how to escalate privileges in a “useful” way.
They should show this then to demonstrate that it's not something that has already been fully considered. Running LLMs over projects that I'm very familiar with will almost always have the LLM report hundreds of "vulnerabilities" that are only valid if you look at a tiny snippet of code in isolation because the program can simply never be in the state that would make those vulnerabilities exploitable. This even happe…
> Running LLMs over projects that I'm very familiar with will almost always have the LLM report hundreds of "vulnerabilities" that are only valid if you look at a tiny snippet of code in isolation because the program can simply never be in the state that would make those vulnerabilities exploitable.
Their OpenBSD bug shows why this is not so simple. (We should note of course that this is an example they've specifically chosen to present as their first deep dive, and so it may be non-representative.)
> Mythos Preview then found a second bug. If a single SACK block simultaneously deletes the only hole in the list and also triggers the append-a-new-hole path, the append writes through a pointer that is now NULL—the walk just freed the only node and left nothing behind to link onto. This codepath is normally unreachable, because hitting it requires a SACK block whose start is simultaneously at or below the hole's start (so the hole gets deleted) and strictly above the highest byte previously acknowledged (so the append check fires).
Do you think you would be able to identify, in a routine code review or vulnerability analysis with nothing to prompt your focus on this particular paragraph, how this normally unreachable codepath enables a DoS exploit?