AI Slop vs. OSS Security
16 days ago
- #AI-generated-reports
- #maintainer-burnout
- #open-source-security
- The author discusses the growing issue of AI-generated vulnerability reports flooding bug bounty programs and open-source projects, creating noise and wasting maintainers' time.
- AI-generated reports often contain fabricated technical details, function names, and scenarios that don't exist in the actual codebase, making them difficult to disprove.
- Maintainers, often volunteers, spend hours debunking false reports, leading to burnout and reduced productivity in addressing real security issues.
- The CVE system is also collapsing under the weight of invalid submissions, with only about 20% of CVEs being valid, exacerbating the problem.
- Current solutions like banning submitters or polite requests don't work due to misaligned incentives and the ease of creating new accounts.
- Potential solutions include requiring disclosure of AI usage, proof-of-concept submissions, reputation systems, economic friction (e.g., refundable submission fees), and AI-assisted triage.
- The root cause of the problem is the unsustainable reliance on unpaid volunteer labor to maintain critical open-source infrastructure.
- Sustainability requires real financial compensation for maintainers, better tooling, shared workloads, cultural change, and policy advocacy.
- The future may involve more exclusive bug bounty programs with higher standards to filter out low-quality submissions.
- The crisis highlights the need to support open-source maintainers adequately to prevent the collapse of the collaborative model underpinning modern technology.