January 27, 2026
Bug bounty or bot blunder?
AI found 12 vulnerabilities in OpenSSL
AI bug-hunter stuns OpenSSL; cheers, side-eye, and a “fool with a tool” roast
TLDR: An AI tool claims it found 12 flaws in OpenSSL, the software that helps keep internet connections secure, and OpenSSL’s CTO praised the fixes. Commenters are split between applause for real wins and side-eye over AI hype and spam, arguing whether this is a breakthrough or just more noise—important either way.
AI sleuth AISLE says it sniffed out 12 flaws in OpenSSL, the security plumbing behind much of the internet. Some bugs reportedly hid there since 1998. OpenSSL’s CTO even praised the reports, and five AISLE-proposed fixes made it straight into the code. Drama meter: high.
The crowd split fast. One camp brought confetti—“great approach. Kudos!” vibes—celebrating bugs caught before they hit users and six extra issues quietly fixed pre-release. The other camp flashed a big red flag: a user pointed out the link was down and reminded everyone that the Curl project recently shuttered its bug bounties thanks to AI-generated spam, muttering this “doesn’t really inspire much confidence.”
Then came the spicy middle: skeptics dunked on OpenSSL’s legendary complexity, with one calling the code “horrible to read,” while pragmatists shrugged, “bubble or not, we all benefit.” The line of the day? “A fool with a tool is still a fool.” Translation: good AI helps; bad users still waste everyone’s time.
Underneath the snark, the stakes are simple: OpenSSL secures your bank logins and DMs. If AI can find real problems in a codebase this famous, that’s a plot twist. If it’s hype, it’s just more noise. Either way, the internet’s locks just got a stress test.
Key Points
- •AISLE’s autonomous analyzer discovered all 12 CVEs fixed in OpenSSL’s January 2026 coordinated release.
- •Two higher-severity issues were identified: a High stack buffer overflow in CMS AuthEnvelopedData and a Moderate PBMAC1 validation flaw in PKCS#12.
- •Ten additional Low-severity vulnerabilities spanned QUIC, ML-DSA, TLS 1.3 certificate compression, line-buffering, OCB mode, PKCS#12, TimeStamp Response, and PKCS#7.
- •AISLE’s proposed fixes informed or were directly adopted for five of the twelve CVEs, with responsible disclosure and collaboration with OpenSSL.
- •Six more issues were detected and fixed pre-release, preventing vulnerable code from reaching users, highlighting limits of manual review in mature codebases.