The onslaught includes LLMs finding bogus vulnerabilities and code that won't compile.

The project developer for one of the Internet’s most popular networking tools is scrapping its vulnerability reward program after being overrun by a spike in the submission of low-quality reports, much of it AI-generated slop.

“We are just a small single open source project with a small number of active maintainers,” Daniel Stenberg, the founder and lead developer of the open source app cURL, said Thursday. “It is not in our power to change how all these people and their slop machines work. We need to make moves to ensure our survival and intact mental health.”

  • Kissaki@programming.devEnglish
    17·
    5 hours ago

    His comments came as cURL users complained that the move was treating the symptoms caused by AI slop without addressing the cause. The users said they were concerned the move would eliminate a key means for ensuring and maintaining the security of the tool.

    A single user commented, and they responded. “users complained” and “the users” is wrong. implying something different.

    “users complained” feels like a misrepresentation to me as well, at least how I read and understand “complained”. The user wrote “As a security researcher, this is honestly painful to see, but also completely understandable.” Is it complaining if they understand the act and change?

    In a separate post on Thursday, Stenberg wrote: “We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports.”

    The linked separate post is a /.well-known/security.txt file. It’s not really a “separate post”. And I don’t see where they got the date from. Maybe from whatever linked to that in the first place.

    An update to cURL’s official GitHub account made the termination, which takes effect at the end of this month, official.

    Isn’t that from the merge request, which is not merged yet? It’s definitely not in the main branch. Current MR state is something different. The MR discussion clearly states that they will merge on 26th - no early.

    “an update to the official GitHub account” makes no sense to me in the first place, when it’s a file in a repo, not even the account.

    At first, I only wanted to point out one thing. Now this whole article feels like AI slop. Dunno how warranted that feeling/assessment is. Is it sloppy reporting? Am I, as a reader, the problem?

    /edit: The bleeping computer article posted in the community is much better/consistent/coherent. Of course, this one was earlier and already has traction.