this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2026
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The title is pretty self explanatory, but will opensource software become less and less safe compared to "big company software", as big companies gain access to more and more advanced AI to test for their vulnerabilities? Or even malicious actors gaining access to more advanced AI, able to break into opensource software made by a small team easier? Should a privacy oriented person then stay away from such software?

And, yes ... I'm tired of AI, AI, and more AI.

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[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 28 points 3 days ago (2 children)

No, the same problems exist pre ai as post ai, its just being discovered and exploited faster.

Bad code always existed, and will always exist. AI is trained on that bad data so expect the same problems.

Corporate software is not safer then open source, just the problems are harder to discover and resolve.

[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I think all sofrware is less safe now. The advantage for open source is that they willl weed out the failures quicker and the disadvantage for closed source is that they have to deal with the problem that they no longer have a "security by obscurity". So I'd say for open source it's a tough time, but essentiallly pretty much the same, while close source clearly has a bigger problem.

And to lean even more into that, now that AI is genuinely cracked at discovering vulnerabilities, security by obscurity is way less effective.

Funnily enough this means now the effectiveness of crowd sourced security is actually the only remaining factor for security, so that would make open source software the safer variant. So in a way, AI not only open sources everything technically, it also makes open source software the more secure variant regardless.