AI-driven bug discovery may soon bring more internet disruptions, experts warn

what happened

Reuters, citing seven cybersecurity professionals, reports that AI-driven research is uncovering new software vulnerabilities and is almost certain to cause more disruption. According to threat intelligence firm VulnCheck, the number of digital flaws found has roughly doubled year-on-year, with AI a major driver.

Outages across government websites in Europe and elsewhere began on Wednesday after weaknesses were found in PHP, a widely used programming language. Some operators, unable to patch before attackers moved in, simply took their sites offline. Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince told Reuters he was aware of other severe flaws in critical software.

Experts agree that defenders have less time, since AI models can scan codebases around the clock and build exploits in hours rather than weeks. They disagree on whether this will produce a free-for-all for hackers, with some arguing that AI-found bugs are hard to exploit.

why it matters

For investors, the key issues are the cost of urgent software fixes and the risk of service interruptions at online businesses. Episodes like this tend to focus market attention on cyber risk for cloud and technology companies, although the report contains no figures on financial impact.

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