The Problem: Too Many Holes in the Net
Every piece of software you use, from the apps on your phone to the complex systems running hospitals and banks, has code. And wherever there is code, there are bugs. Specifically, security bugs, or "vulnerabilities." Right now, human security teams are in a constant, losing race to find and fix these holes before hackers can sneak through them. It’s a huge, exhausting job, and the number of new security issues discovered annually is massive.
OpenAI is stepping into this problem with a new tool called Aardvark. Think of it as an autonomous, tireless security researcher, powered by their advanced language model. The main goal is simple: to help the "good guys" (defenders) win the race by finding and fixing security flaws in codebases faster and on a much larger scale than humans can manage alone.
How Aardvark Works: An AI That Thinks Like a Detective
What makes Aardvark different is that it doesn’t just use simple automated checks. Instead of running traditional tests, it actually reads and reasons about the code like a human expert would.
Here’s the step-by-step process it follows:
- Understand the Plan (Analysis): It first looks at the entire codebase to understand how it’s
