OpenAI's AI Agents Found 948 Linux Kernel Flaws in 10 Days for $1.2 Million
OpenAI’s security team set its AI loose on the Linux kernel and came back with a number that sounds made up: 948. In a single 10-day run in mid-October 2026, an autonomous pipeline built on an upcoming cyber model found, reproduced and exploited 948 distinct local privilege-escalation vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel, bugs that let an ordinary user account take over a machine as root. OpenAI published the results Wednesday, November 4, in a research post titled “A thousand fewer paths to root.” The whole run cost $1,213,430 in API credits, or about $1,279 per working exploit. ...