The project developer for considered one of the Web’s hottest networking tools is scrapping its vulnerability reward program after being overrun by a spike within the submission of low-quality reports, much of it AI-generated slop.
“We are only a small single open source project with a small variety of lively maintainers,” Daniel Stenberg, the founder and lead developer of the open source app cURL, said Thursday. “It shouldn’t be in our power to vary how all these people and their slop machines work. We’d like to make moves to make sure our survival and intact mental health.”
Manufacturing bogus bugs
His comments got here as cURL users complained that the move was treating the symptoms brought on by AI slop without addressing the cause. The users said they were concerned the move would eliminate a key means for ensuring and maintaining the safety of the tool. Stenberg largely agreed, but indicated his team had little alternative.
In a separate post on Thursday, Stenberg wrote: “We’ll ban you and mock you in public for those who waste our time on crap reports.” An update to cURL’s official GitHub account made the termination, which takes effect at the top of this month, official.
cURL was first released three many years ago, under the name httpget and later urlget. It has since grow to be an indispensable tool amongst admins, researchers, and security professionals, amongst others, for a big selection of tasks, including file transfers, troubleshooting buggy web software, and automating tasks. cURL is integrated into default versions of Windows, macOS, and most distributions of Linux.
As such a widely used tool for interacting with vast amounts of knowledge online, security is paramount. Like many other software makers, cURL project members have relied on private bug reports submitted by outside researchers. To supply an incentive and to reward high-quality submissions, the project members have paid money bounties in return for reports of high-severity vulnerabilities.