Measuring LLMs' impact on N-day exploits

This research from Anthropic's Frontier Red Team evaluates how LLMs accelerate the development of N-day exploits (vulnerabilities patched in some systems but not all). Across 18 recent Firefox security patches, Claude Mythos Preview autonomously built 8 working code-execution exploits, with the first exploit arriving within an hour. On 21 Windows kernel patches (where source code is unavailable), it produced 8 full privilege escalation chains from low-privilege user to SYSTEM, at an average cost of about $2,000 per exploit. The findings show that models can weaponize patches in hours rather than the weeks historically required, compressing the patch gap dramatically. The post concludes that this shifts the threat landscape, particularly for slow-to-patch systems, and recommends faster patching, memory-safe languages, and stronger mitigations as defensive measures

https://www.anthropic.com/research/n-days

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