Cybersecurity Braces for AI ‘Bugmaggedon’
4/21/202619 min
AI models like Anthropic's Mythos are finding software bugs at an unprecedented rate, kicking off a cybersecurity scramble to prevent what experts are calling “bugmageddon.” Thanks to these new models, hackers will be able to exploit those bugs more quickly than ever before. WSJ’s Robert McMillan explains why major corporations and the White House are scrambling to patch their systems. Jessica Mendoza hosts. Further Listening: - The Battle Over AI in Warfare - AI Is Coming for Entry-Level JobsSign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter.
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First 90 secondsJessica Mendoza· Host0:00
[music] Last month, a group of computer researchers ran a test. They wanted to try using artificial intelligence to hack an operating system called OpenBSD.
Robert McMillan· Guest0:15
So OpenBSD is an operating system, you know, like Windows or macOS. It's been around for a long time.
Jessica Mendoza· Host0:23
Our colleague, Bob McMillan, covers cybersecurity. He says this operating system is considered very secure. It survived decades of cyber attacks.
Robert McMillan· Guest0:33
It's kind of on the front of the internet for, for many corporations. It's used in firewalls, so it's facing the hackers all the time. So it's a good project to look at because it's been battle tested, right? And it's had lots of time for people to look for bugs and report them and fix them, and stuff like that.
Jessica Mendoza· Host0:54
A software bug is a flaw in a computer program that causes problems or even a crash. Hackers try to find bugs because they can use them as sort of a door into an otherwise closed computer system. So in this experiment, researchers took the latest AI model from Anthropic, called Mythos, then let it loose into the software.
Robert McMillan· Guest1:17
And they said, "Find us some bugs." And it found this bug. A guy named Niels Provos had written some code in 1998, and he made a mistake, and nobody noticed that mistake