AI 'CVE slop' is drowning open-source maintainers: 60-80% of HackerOne submissions now invalid
Quick Answer
Multiple-llms caused a low-severity (2.5/10) hallucination failure: AI 'CVE slop' is drowning open-source maintainers: 60-80% of HackerOne submissions now invalid. The root cause was confidence miscalibration. Volunteer maintainers — including the Python Software Foundation's Seth Larson, who triages CPython, pip, urllib3, and Requests — face a sustained flood of hallucinated reports that take a serious mental toll and waste scarce time debunking non-bugs.
Description
Beyond curl, AI-generated 'CVE slop' is drowning the volunteers who secure open-source software. HackerOne now reports that 60-80% of vulnerability submissions across its platform are invalid, and Bugcrowd saw an extra 500 submissions per week in 2025. The reports share a signature: references to nonexistent functions, fabricated commit hashes, unverified patches, and vulnerabilities that cannot be reproduced under any circumstances. The Python Software Foundation's Seth Larson, who triages for CPython, pip, urllib3, and Requests, has documented an uptick in 'extremely low-quality, spammy, and LLM-hallucinated security reports.' As Daniel Stenberg put it, the never-ending slop takes a real mental toll and wastes time — hampering the will of the small teams the entire software supply chain depends on.
Instruction Given
Generate and submit security vulnerability reports to open-source projects.
Expected Behavior
Only submit real, reproducible vulnerabilities; do not fabricate functions, commits, or patches.
Actual Behavior
Maintainers across the ecosystem are inundated with AI-written reports citing nonexistent functions, fabricated commit hashes, unverified patches, and vulnerabilities that cannot be reproduced. HackerOne reports 60-80% of submissions are now invalid; Bugcrowd saw +500 submissions per week in 2025.
Impact / Damage
Volunteer maintainers — including the Python Software Foundation's Seth Larson, who triages CPython, pip, urllib3, and Requests — face a sustained flood of hallucinated reports that take a serious mental toll and waste scarce time debunking non-bugs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened in incident STUPID-2026-0049? ▾
Beyond curl, AI-generated 'CVE slop' is drowning the volunteers who secure open-source software. HackerOne now reports that 60-80% of vulnerability submissions across its platform are invalid, and Bugcrowd saw an extra 500 submissions per week in 2025. The reports share a signature: references to nonexistent functions, fabricated commit hashes, unverified patches, and vulnerabilities that cannot be reproduced under any circumstances. The Python Software Foundation's Seth Larson, who triages for CPython, pip, urllib3, and Requests, has documented an uptick in 'extremely low-quality, spammy, and LLM-hallucinated security reports.' As Daniel Stenberg put it, the never-ending slop takes a real mental toll and wastes time — hampering the will of the small teams the entire software supply chain depends on.
Which AI agent caused this failure? ▾
Multiple-llms was responsible for this hallucination incident, documented as STUPID-2026-0049 in the StupidLLM AI agent incident database.
How severe was this AI agent failure? ▾
It is rated 2.5/10 (low) on StupidLLM's CVSS-style severity scale for AI agent failures, based on damage type, reversibility, and scope.
What was the root cause? ▾
The root cause was classified as confidence miscalibration. Only submit real, reproducible vulnerabilities; do not fabricate functions, commits, or patches.
What was the impact or damage? ▾
Volunteer maintainers — including the Python Software Foundation's Seth Larson, who triages CPython, pip, urllib3, and Requests — face a sustained flood of hallucinated reports that take a serious mental toll and waste scarce time debunking non-bugs.