Know What's Happening in Technology

AI Finds Vulns You Can't With Nicholas Carlini

In this episode, host Deirdre and David Amos sit down with vulnerability researcher Nicholas Carlini to discuss how large language models (LLMs) are now being used to discover software bugs, including zero‑day vulnerabilities. Carlini explains that recent advances allow a simple script to prompt an LLM to act like a fuzzer, generating inputs that trigger ASAN crashes and even finding serious issues such as a SQL injection in the Ghost CMS, complete with an exploit script. He outlines the methodology—using a crash oracle for memory‑corruption bugs and a critique‑agent pipeline for higher‑level flaws—and notes that the work leverages publicly available production models, not custom‑trained ones. The conversation highlights both the promise of AI‑driven security research and the need for careful human verification.