OpenAI says pipeline found 948 Linux root exploits in one scan

OpenAI says its autonomous vulnerability-research pipeline dynamically reproduced 1,724 Linux kernel vulnerabilities in a single October 2026 scan and generated 948 working local privilege-escalation (LPE) exploits that let an unprivileged local user obtain root, plus 291 information-leak proof-of-concepts. The company put total API cost at $1,213,430, or about $1,279 per successful LPE exploit, and cites roughly $359 as the lower marginal development cost; it also says at least 10 exploitation techniques were confirmed novel by third-party experts, including new cache-spraying objects, page grooming, data-only arbitrary-write escalation, and arbitrary type confusion. These figures are OpenAI's own account, and the post does not say how many of the flaws were previously known, already patched, or reported upstream.