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Comment by Bender

19 hours ago

Along this line can AI's find backdoors spread across multiple pieces of code and/or services? i.e. by themselves they are not back-doors, advanced penetration testers would not suspect anything is afoot but when used together they provide access.

e.g. an intentional weakness in systemd + udev + binfmt magic when used together == authentication and mandatory access control bypass. Each weakness reviewed individually just looks like benign sub-optimal code.

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Bender

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cluckindan  18 hours ago

Start with trying to find the xz vulnerability and other software possibly tying into that.

Is there code that does something completely different than its comments claim?

  • Bender  18 hours ago

    Another way to phrase what I am asking is ... Does AI understand the context of code deep enough to know everything a piece of code can do, everything a service can do vs. what it was intended to do. If it can understand code that far then it could understand all the potential paths data could flow and thus all the potential vulnerabilities that several piece of code together could achieve when used in concert with one another. Advanced multi-tier chess so to speak.

    Or put another way, each of these three through three hundred applications or services by themselves may be intended to perform x,y,z functions but when put together by happy coincidence they can perform these fifty-million other unintended functions including but not limited to bypassing authentication, bypassing mandatory access controls, avoiding logging and auditing, etc... oh and it can automate washing your dishes, too.