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Google suspended product vulnerability submissions to its Open Source Software Vulnerability Reward Program (OSS VRP) on October 1 after a significant increase in automated reports, the vast majority of which it said were invalid. AI-generated submissions describing nonexistent or unexploitable vulnerabilities overwhelmed Google engineers and open-source maintainers, diverting resources from investigating and fixing genuine security flaws.
The suspension does not affect submissions received before October 1 or OSS VRP supply-chain reports. Some eligible vulnerabilities in Google Cloud repositories can still be submitted through the Cloud VRP, and Google encouraged researchers to use its other vulnerability reward programs. Google plans to provide an update in the first quarter of 2027 while it reworks the affected portion of OSS VRP; it has not confirmed a restart date.
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13 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
Google announced and began a pause of OSS VRP product vulnerability submissions, leaving earlier submissions and supply-chain reports unaffected; some Google Cloud repository flaws remained eligible through Cloud VRP. Google encouraged researchers to use its other reward programs and promised an update in the first quarter of 2027, without confirming a restart date.
In early September 2026, Go updated its security policy to require review and filtering of LLM-generated vulnerability reports. The policy warned that LLMs can report nonexistent bugs and that researchers forwarding large amounts of unfiltered output would not receive credit.
In August 2026, Microsoft announced that it paid more than $20 million to 562 security researchers between July 2025 and June 2026. It attributed the record payouts to expanded program scope and increased AI-assisted vulnerability reporting.
In March 2026, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, GitHub, OpenAI, and AWS pledged $12.5 million to support the Linux Foundation’s Alpha-Omega and Open Source Security Foundation initiatives. The funding aims to develop sustainable open-source security solutions and help eliminate low-quality AI-generated reports.
The maintainer of curl ended the project's HackerOne security bug bounty program after being overwhelmed by low-quality AI-generated vulnerability reports.
Google launched OSS VRP to reward researchers for responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities in Google-maintained open-source software and selected dependencies. Initial rewards ranged from $100 to $31,337, with particular emphasis on software supply-chain risks.
Nextcloud stopped paying monetary rewards through HackerOne in the spring while continuing to accept vulnerability reports through the platform.
The article reports that bounties are no longer available under Intel's program on Intigriti. It attributes the removal to an effort to stop a flood of AI-generated vulnerability reports.
Before pausing product-vulnerability submissions, Google warned researchers about invalid AI-generated reports in OSS VRP rule updates. It also tightened evidence requirements for certain submissions, particularly memory-corruption vulnerabilities in high-priority projects.
Google experienced a significant rise in automated vulnerability submissions, the vast majority of which it said were invalid. Reports linked the influx to AI-generated findings and hallucinations that overwhelmed engineers and maintainers, diverting effort from genuine security flaws.
Linux kernel maintainers published guidance in May asking researchers to prioritize urgent bugs posing real risks after reporting an unmanageable volume of submissions, including nearly identical AI-assisted reports. They emphasized actionable context, impact assessments and proposed fixes to reduce the burden of evaluating reports.
Google changed its Chrome and Android reward programs in May, reducing standard Chrome payouts and favoring concise reports with concrete proof while prioritizing Android vulnerabilities harder for AI tools to discover. It also raised the maximum reward for a persistent zero-click Pixel Titan M exploit from $1 million to $1.5 million.
HackerOne paused its Internet Bug Bounty in March, explaining that the balance between vulnerability findings and remediation capacity had substantively shifted. Its platform data showed a 21-fold increase in the backlog of confirmed, unfixed vulnerabilities.
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Google has introduced a new bug bounty initiative specifically targeting vulnerabilities in its artificial intelligence (AI) products and services. The program, known as the AI Vulnerability Reward Program (AI VRP), is designed to incentivize security researchers to identify and report security flaws, abuse vectors, and high-impact vulnerabilities within Google’s AI ecosystem. The scope of the program includes flagship AI products such as Google Search, Gemini Apps across web and mobile platforms, and core Google Workspace applications like Gmail, Drive, Meet, and Calendar. Additional in-scope products include AI Studio, Jules, and other AI integrations within Google’s suite. Rewards for valid vulnerability reports range from $500 to $30,000, with the highest payouts reserved for novel, high-impact discoveries, such as those enabling rogue actions or sensitive data exfiltration. For example, a report detailing a security bug that could trigger unauthorized actions in a flagship product can earn up to $20,000, while sensitive data exfiltration bugs can net $15,000. Lower-tier rewards are available for issues like phishing enablement, model theft, context manipulation, access control bypass, unauthorized product usage, and cross-user denial of service. Google’s security engineering managers highlighted that the new program is an extension of the existing Abuse Vulnerability Reward Program, but with a dedicated focus on AI-related threats. Since 2023, when Google first expanded its bug bounty scope to include AI, researchers have already earned over $430,000 for AI-related findings. The company hopes that a standalone program will clarify the types of AI vulnerabilities in scope and encourage more targeted research. Acceptable reports include attacks that modify accounts or data, indirect prompt injections, phishing vectors, model theft, and persistent manipulation of AI environments. The program also addresses past confusion about what constitutes an in-scope AI bug, providing clearer guidelines for researchers. Google’s move comes as the company continues to integrate AI into more of its products, increasing the potential attack surface. The program is part of a broader effort to proactively secure AI systems and maintain user trust as AI adoption accelerates. By offering substantial financial incentives, Google aims to attract top security talent to help identify and mitigate emerging AI threats before they can be exploited in the wild. The launch of the AI VRP underscores the growing importance of AI security in the tech industry and sets a precedent for other companies to follow. Researchers interested in participating are encouraged to review the detailed reward tiers and submission guidelines provided by Google. The company has also committed to sharing lessons learned from the program to further strengthen the security of AI systems industry-wide.
Jun 29, 2026
The Linux Foundation announced a **$12.5 million** initiative to strengthen open-source security and help maintainers manage a surge of low-quality, AI-generated vulnerability reports that are overwhelming triage and review processes. Funding comes from **Anthropic, AWS, GitHub, Google, Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and OpenAI**, and the program will be run through **Alpha-Omega** and the **Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF)** to improve remediation workflows, expand practical security support, and build longer-term resilience for widely used open-source software. Project leaders and maintainers said the volume of automated submissions has outpaced the capacity of many open-source teams, turning vulnerability handling into an operational burden. The effort follows complaints from groups including the **Python Software Foundation** and the **cURL** project, whose maintainer ended its bug bounty program after being flooded with poor-quality AI-generated reports; GitHub is also providing **$5.5 million** in Azure credits and support services, while Google said it plans to contribute security tools including **Big Sleep**, **CodeMender**, and research such as **Sec-Gemini**.
Jun 29, 2026
Security teams and bug bounty programs are confronting a rise in AI-generated vulnerability submissions that appear technically credible but often cite nonexistent functions, commits, CVEs, attack paths, or impacts without reproducible evidence. The low cost of producing these reports shifts substantial verification work to expert triagers; curl, Node.js, and Hibernate have been cited as affected projects. HackerOne and Bugcrowd are responding with reputation, workflow, and machine-learning-based filtering, while valid AI-assisted discoveries still require concrete data-flow analysis and a working proof of concept, as demonstrated by `CVE-2024-10099` and `CVE-2024-10131`. Chrome's Security Team has published procedures for an anticipated influx of AI-generated reports in its internal processes and Vulnerability Rewards Program. It directs teams to fix S0 issues within one week and S1 issues within four weeks, initially handle reports lacking proof-of-concept code as security bugs, define security boundaries in `SECURITY.md`, and use invalid-report decisions as AI training and evaluation data. AI-generated findings receive the same disclosure treatment as human submissions, with publication 30 days after a fix, while the guidance also covers duplicates, disabled features, external dependencies, and rapid mitigations such as replacing renderer-reachable `DCHECK` assertions with `CHECK` assertions.
Sep 23, 2026