Most of the exploits are for opensource/free software.
I don't know what methods where used to find these exploits but I am starting to think security through obscurity might not be a bad thing in this day and age, where someone can just let bots loose on your codebase.
Open source is a good thing, but I don't think what you are proposing is accurate.
A different way to frame this would be that those bugs would never be surfaced or exploited if the software were proprietary.
Presumably, one could let the bots loose on your own codebase first. The question is one of financing of course. If your end users are enterprises willing to pay for a support contract, they probably care enough about not getting hacked to endure the higher prices that would let you throw enough tokens at the problem. Other open-source projects might have a harder time.
I think LLMs might actually have a bigger effect on closed source software - the tedium saved on open source bug hunting is significant, but on closed source software the tedium of finding bugs is extreme because of all the reverse engineering, but LLMs will chew through that. So there's probably a lot of low hanging fruit.
> I don't know what methods where used to find these exploits but I am starting to think security through obscurity might not be a bad thing in this day and age, where someone can just let bots loose on your codebase.
I'd love to hear why you think obscurity is bad, if you now think maybe it's good in the LLM age?
I'd also be interested if you could describe exactly what or how you think security through obscurity works, or doesn't?
I've been thinking a lot about how to better teach this concept, so I'm looking to understand exactly how everyone thinks/understands how it currently works, or should work, or what it should do. I don't care about the "correct" answer, (I have ddg too :P) I'm interested in general expectations from SWE's that I might teach at work, instead of opinions of security eng speaking about theory.
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llms are fantastic disassembly partners, they're quite good at labeling functions from various dissassemblers -- the net losses from losing the benefits of open source , imo , outweigh the protection afforded by hiding your source code in yet another layer that is more and more easily unrolled through automated procedures.