$1,279 per bug: OpenAI says AI-made exploits would be worth up to $66M in bounties

OpenAI · x · 2026-11-05

OpenAI breaks down the economics: the full run cost $1,213,430 in API credits—about $1,279 per distinct local privilege escalation vulnerability. At historical Pwn2Own and TyphoonPWN bounty rates, the findings would hypothetically be worth $18.9M–$66.3M. OpenAI argues defenders should proactively analyze software to make attacks cost-prohibitive.

Related event: OpenAI's unreleased cyber model patches 948 Linux kernel privilege-escalation bugs in a single run(12 posts)→

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