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ZDNET's key takeaways
AI is proving better than expected at finding old, obscure bugs.
Unfortunately, AI is also good at finding bugs for hackers to exploit.
In short, AI still isn't ready to replace programmers or security pros.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich said he used Anthropic's new AI model Claude Opus 4.6 to read and analyze assembly code he'd written in 1986 for the Apple II 6502 processor.
Also: Why AI is both a curse and a blessing to open-source software - according to developers
Claude didn't just explain the code; it performed what he called a "security audit," surfacing subtle logic errors, including one case where a routine failed to check the carry flag after an arithmetic operation.
That's a classic bug that had been hiding, dormant, for decades.
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