Linux Creator Sees Early Signs That the AI-Driven Flood of Software Fixes May Be Easing

Linux kernel leader Linus Torvalds says the worst of the recent flood of software patches may be behind us. In his weekly update accompanying the second release candidate of Linux 7.4, he described the release as a big one, partly because of "various AI fixes." The source notes that developers have been able to find more software flaws than before since Anthropic launched its Mythos bug-finding model in April.

The effect is visible well beyond Linux. Microsoft addressed a record 974 flaws in September, after 622 in July and 206 in June. Oracle fixed 1,449 flaws in a single month. That is far more patches than many IT teams are set up to handle, and the source says attackers are increasingly targeting flaws found by AI, so speed matters.

Torvalds passed on a claim from Alexei Starovoitov, lead developer of eBPF, a project that lets sandboxed programs run inside the Linux kernel. Starovoitov says fixes for that component are now arriving faster than new reports. Torvalds cautioned that most other areas have not reached that point yet, and said people should not hold their breath. If the trend spreads across the kernel's 40-million-plus lines of code, the deluge of fixes may have peaked.