AI slop attacks on the curl project - Daniel Stenberg

Daniel's keynote from the 2025 FrOSCon conference in Bonn. August 16.

1. Daniel
Stenberg
August 16, 2025
AI slop attacks on the curl
project

2. Daniel Stenberg
@bagder
@mastodon.social

https:?Ddaniel.haxx.se

3. Daniel Stenberg

4. Traces back to November 1996
From 100 to 180,000 lines of code
Written by 1,400 authors - one full-time employee
20 - 25 commit authors per month
Totally 3,500 named people have helped out
a small project with large impact
Daniel Stenberg

5. curl runs in these things

6. Modern digital infrastructure is to a large degree
built on layers and layers of Open Source
Daniel Stenberg

7. All modern software
Custom code and logic
component 4component 2 component 3component 1
component 7component 6component 5 component 10component 9component 8
component 13component 12component 11
open
Daniel Stenberg

8. Daniel Stenberg

9. Daniel Stenberg

10. Daniel Stenberg

11. When digital infrastructure relies on your code,
security becomes a top priority
Daniel Stenberg

12. Security issues in the project trump all other
activities and demand immediate attention
Daniel Stenberg

13. Maintaining Open Source
Most projects have a single maintainer
Many projects are run primarily as a spare time hobby
Many projects are underfunded
Most projects have outstanding tasks
Many maintainers struggle with burnout
Daniel Stenberg

14. Making Open Source secure
Sound software infrastructure
Easy-to-read code
Code reviews
Lots of tests
Lots of good tools
Bug-bounty
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15. Rewards for confirmed security vulnerabilities
The reward truly motivates
Finding and fixing security problems is a good
Bug bounty
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16. Receives two - three submissions per week
Each report takes a few man hours to deal with
Rubbish reports used to be quick to dismiss
curl’s bug bounty
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17. enter AI
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18. Pays up to 10,000 USD per vulnerability
Has paid over 92,000 USD so far
For 81 confirmed security vulnerabilities
Over the last six years
Sponsored by the Internet Bug-Bounty (IBB)
curl’s bug bounty
Daniel Stenberg

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20. hey chat, show me a security problem in curl,
make it sound alarming
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21. your friendly AI chat always provides an answer
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22. hey chat... hey chat... hey chat... hey chat... hey chat... hey chat...
hey chat...
Distributed denial of service slop attacks (DDoSSA)
hey chat... hey chat... hey chat... hey chat... hey chat...
Daniel Stenberg

23. The reported issue is either not a problem or it
does not exist
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24. Not always easy to do, because...
(too) polite
perfect English without typos
Mixed Case To Make It Seem Serious
mdash use
(too) long (already at first shot)
bullet point bonanza
Recognizing AI language
Daniel Stenberg

25. When asked a follow-up question...
overly polite and friendly
apologizes a lot
easily loses track and takes off in another direction
follow-up replies tend to be (too) long as well
AI conversations
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26. The human involved is just a copy-and-paste proxy
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27. Daniel Stenberg

28. Maintaining is doing many things
Security work
Release
management
Website admin
Mailing list admin
PR reviews
User support
Blogging &
information
People
management
Debugging
PR merging
CI maintenance
Find sponsors
Write
documentation
Event planning
Getting stickers
Doing talks
Feature
development
Daniel Stenberg

29. Maintaining is doing many things
Security work
Release
management
Website admin
Mailing list admin
PR reviews
User support
Blogging &
information
People
management
Debugging
PR merging
CI maintenance
Find sponsors
Write
documentation
Event planning
Getting stickers
Doing talks
Feature
development
Daniel Stenberg

30. An Open Source maintainer’s day
Security workRelease managementWebsite adminMailing list adminPR reviewsUser supportBlogging & informationPeople managementDebuggingPR mergingCI maintenanceFind sponsorsWrite documentationEvent planningGetting stickersDoing talks Feature development
Sleep Life
24 hours
Daniel Stenberg

31. A less fine Open Source maintainer’s day
Security work
Release managementWebsite adminMailing list adminPR reviewsUser supportBlogging & informationPeople managementDebuggingPR mergingCI maintenance
Sleep Life
24 hours
Daniel Stenberg

32. An AI example
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33. LIES
The mentioned bad function does not exist
The gdb session is made up
The crash does not happen
The shown register contents are made up
Nothing in this report is relevant
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35. A total waste of time and energy
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36. TV shows use better “hacks”
Daniel Stenberg
Mr Robot
Silk Road Hackad
Tschugger

37. “git repository found”
“information disclosure for... “ (something in the git repo)
“arbitrary file read via file://”
this tool told me [this] is a problem
Stupidity is not AI exclusive
Daniel Stenberg

38. Reduced activity elsewhere
Risks us rejecting real reports
Risks impacting sleep, life and mental health
May impact project quality
Which can become a supply chain issue
What does the DDoS attack lead to?
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39. Daniel Stenberg
Picture by Adam Leventhai

40. The money
Many reporters think they actually have a case
Some people believe AIs can actually do this
Why?
Daniel Stenberg

41. Too often
20-40% of submissions right now
Exact rate is hard to assess
Did not happen at all two years ago
How often does it happen?
Daniel Stenberg

42. Ban the reporter instantly
Report to HackerOne
Require upfront notification about AI use
We want to remain approachable and open
We want “everyone” to be able to report issues
What we do
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43. Put prompt injections in comments
Use AI to detect AI
add a honey pot
charge $XX for the right to submit
run the thing in a temporary VM to verify
What we don’t do
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44. Wasting time is a violation of the terms of use
Reputation systems don’t work
Require proof of work/knowledge/intelligence
Only allow users above [something] to submit
Take this problem more seriously
What should the service providers do?
Daniel Stenberg

45. Not really about AI, but the abuse
AI makes it easy
AI marketing mislead people
Users cannot discern AI lies from truths
Human created slop is also a problem
Abuse
Daniel Stenberg

46. Possibly
We don’t see much proof of that
But sure, it will happen
Can AI be used for good?
Daniel Stenberg

47. The AI scraper bots overload our websites
Meanwhile...
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48. curl.se bandwidth a normal month
Daniel Stenberg
serves over 65 terabytes/month
averages over 4000 requests/second
tarball downloads are < 0.01% of the requests

49. Maybe AIs will improve?
AI companies will continue selling the myths
Humans will most likely not improve
curl might close down its bug-bounty program
Add friction and requirements for submissions
Whatever it takes
Future
Daniel Stenberg

50. https://daniel.haxx.se/ai-slop
Daniel Stenberg

51. Open Source survives
Daniel Stenberg

53. License
This presentation and its contents are
licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/