One of Google's "big AI" projects uncovered some serious security threats seemingly all on its own

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Big Sleep discovers memory safety on its own

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  • Project Zero and DeepMind "big AI" uncovers security vulnerabilities
  • Big Sleep finds a SQLite stack buffer underflow flaw before official release
  • AI could revolutionize software development by discovering critical flaws

A collaborative “big AI” project between Google Project Zero and Google DeepMind has discovered a critical vulnerability in a piece of software before public release.

The Big Sleep AI agent was set to work analyzing the SQLite open source database engine, where it discovered a stack buffer underflow flaw which was subsequently patched the same day.

This discovery potentially marks the first ever time an AI has uncovered a memory-safety flaw in a widely used application.

Fuzzed software out-fuzzed by AI

Big Sleep found the stack buffer underflow vulnerability in SQLite which had been ‘fuzzed’ multiple times.

Fuzzing is an automated software testing method that can discover potential flaws or vulnerabilities such as memory safety issues that are typically exploited by attackers. However, it is not a foolproof method of vulnerability hunting, and a fuzzed vulnerability that is found and patched could also exist as a variant elsewhere in the software and go undiscovered.

The methodology used by Google in this instance was to provide a previously patched vulnerability as a starting point for the Big Sleep agent, and then set it loose hunting for similar vulnerabilities elsewhere in the software.

While hunting for a similar vulnerability, Big Sleep encountered a vulnerability and traced the steps it took to recreate the vulnerability in a test case, gradually narrowing down the potential causes to a single issue and generating an accurate summary of the vulnerability.

Google Project Zero points out that the bug wasn’t previously spotted using traditional fuzzing techniques as the fuzzing harness was not configured to access the same extensions. However, when fuzzing was re-run with the same configurations, the vulnerability remained undiscovered despite 150 CPU-hours of fuzzing.

“We hope that in the future this effort will lead to a significant advantage to defenders - with the potential not only to find crashing testcases, but also to provide high-quality root-cause analysis, triaging and fixing issues could be much cheaper and more effective in the future,” the Big Sleep team said. “We aim to continue sharing our research in this space, keeping the gap between the public state-of-the-art and private state-of-the-art as small as possible.”

The full testing methodology and vulnerability discovery details can be found here.

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Benedict Collins
Benedict Collins
Staff Writer (Security)

Benedict has been writing about security issues for over 7 years, first focusing on geopolitics and international relations while at the University of Buckingham. During this time he studied BA Politics with Journalism, for which he received a second-class honours (upper division),  then continuing his studies at a postgraduate level, achieving a distinction in MA Security, Intelligence and Diplomacy. Upon joining TechRadar Pro as a Staff Writer, Benedict transitioned his focus towards cybersecurity, exploring state-sponsored threat actors, malware, social engineering, and national security. Benedict is also an expert on B2B security products, including firewalls, antivirus, endpoint security, and password management.