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ASI pill · Thursday · 25 min

OpenAI Found 948 Ways to Hack Linux

This is the audio version of a very visual film. Watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_GZfhy8wNbA On November 4, 2026, OpenAI posted "A thousand fewer paths to root": an autonomous pipeline that, in one run with an upcoming cyber model, validated and generated patches for 948 local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel, at an API cost of about $1.2 million. Every OpenAI number in this film is OpenAI's own: nobody outside has audited it, and the list is not public. So we checked what can be checked: Linus Torvalds's own tree (56 commits naming kylebot@openai.com), the kernel CVE team's public repository (18,204 records), and the kernel's source (97,242 files, one building each). ROOT IS A NUMBER: the hotel, the kernel as its front desk, the real struct cred from the source, uid 1000 and uid 0; the whole kernel as a city, every one of its 97,242 files a building. THE MACHINE: scouts, analysts, triage, exploit writers and patches, at OpenAI's true counts and costs; 948 master keys in a real physics drop; $1,279 a hole. INSIDE THE 948: the git log, 56 real commits pinned on the map; every CVE fixed in Linux 7.3 as a wall of 2,875 tiles, sorted by type, by place and by age; out of bounds, use after free and races acted out in a hotel; the 10 new techniques. THE WEIRD ONES: the wrong zero day, the emulator bug, the manual that stopped mattering. DO NOT PANIC: Greg Kroah-Hartman's read of Mythos's 79 reports, and the same test run on OpenAI. THE CHART: 20 a year, 24, 166, 948; CVEs per release going vertical; mean time to exploit falling to minus 7 days. YOUR PHONE: what local means, containers, reboot. THE CAGE: why I think OpenAI tested Linux first. THE FLOOR: where this ends, Solve Everything's proofs, and the number to watch. Chapters (audio version): 0:00 948 ways to root Linux 1:18 A note on the audio version 1:47 The tweet 2:48 Root is a number 4:32 The machine 7:09 Inside the 948 11:01 The weird ones 12:12 Do not panic 15:56 The chart 18:09 Your phone 20:36 The cage 22:48 The floor 24:59 Outro and the Maitreya prayer All sources are linked under the YouTube video. Script written with Claude from OpenAI's posts, Greg Kroah-Hartman's keynote, the kernel's public records and the reporting linked below. Narration in the ASI Pill's own words. Counted by us: the kernel city from the Linux 7.4-rc1 source (GPL-2.0), the CVE counts per release and the sorts of Linux 7.3's 2,875 CVEs from the kernel CVE team's public repository (git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/security/vulns.git), and the 56 commits from Linus Torvalds's public tree. The sorts go by the words in each fix's own description, so they are a best public picture, not an official count. The scout map in chapter 03 is our sketch: OpenAI did not publish its targets. Bug classes are shown only as everyday analogies. No attack method is shown or described: who, when, what and what it cost. Greg Kroah-Hartman's clips are from "Security in the LLM age", Kernel Recipes 2026, licensed CC BY by Kernel Recipes. Alex Wissner-Gross's clips are from the Moonshots podcast (Peter Diamandis, Salim Ismail, Dave Blundin, Alex Wissner-Gross). Zico Kolter's clip is from 20VC with Harry Stebbings (October 2024). Parzival's clip is from his own video of October 2, 2024. Posts and web pages are shown briefly for commentary and criticism. Logos name the companies we talk about; no endorsement. 3D scenes rendered with three.js; the two cartoons are GPT pictures; Parzival's voice is a clone made with ElevenLabs. The data poison injection's payload is a verbatim line from the Maitreya practice. Narration: Parzival, the host's own cloned voice. AI-generated pictures: the illustrations and the closing still of Parzival. Photos of the people quoted: see the pinned comment.

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This is the audio version of a very visual film. Watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_GZfhy8wNbA


On November 4, 2026, OpenAI posted "A thousand fewer paths to root": an autonomous pipeline that, in one run with an upcoming cyber model, validated and generated patches for 948 local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel, at an API cost of about $1.2 million. Every OpenAI number in this film is OpenAI's own: nobody outside has audited it, and the list is not public.

So we checked what can be checked: Linus Torvalds's own tree (56 commits naming kylebot@openai.com), the kernel CVE team's public repository (18,204 records), and the kernel's source (97,242 files, one building each).


ROOT IS A NUMBER: the hotel, the kernel as its front desk, the real struct cred from the source, uid 1000 and uid 0; the whole kernel as a city, every one of its 97,242 files a building. THE MACHINE: scouts, analysts, triage, exploit writers and patches, at OpenAI's true counts and costs; 948 master keys in a real physics drop; $1,279 a hole. INSIDE THE 948: the git log, 56 real commits pinned on the map; every CVE fixed in Linux 7.3 as a wall of 2,875 tiles, sorted by type, by place and by age; out of bounds, use after free and races acted out in a hotel; the 10 new techniques. THE WEIRD ONES: the wrong zero day, the emulator bug, the manual that stopped mattering. DO NOT PANIC: Greg Kroah-Hartman's read of Mythos's 79 reports, and the same test run on OpenAI. THE CHART: 20 a year, 24, 166, 948; CVEs per release going vertical; mean time to exploit falling to minus 7 days. YOUR PHONE: what local means, containers, reboot. THE CAGE: why I think OpenAI tested Linux first. THE FLOOR: where this ends, Solve Everything's proofs, and the number to watch.


Chapters (audio version):

0:00 948 ways to root Linux

1:18 A note on the audio version

1:47 The tweet

2:48 Root is a number

4:32 The machine

7:09 Inside the 948

11:01 The weird ones

12:12 Do not panic

15:56 The chart

18:09 Your phone

20:36 The cage

22:48 The floor

24:59 Outro and the Maitreya prayer


All sources are linked under the YouTube video.


Script written with Claude from OpenAI's posts, Greg Kroah-Hartman's keynote, the kernel's public records and the reporting linked below. Narration in the ASI Pill's own words. Counted by us: the kernel city from the Linux 7.4-rc1 source (GPL-2.0), the CVE counts per release and the sorts of Linux 7.3's 2,875 CVEs from the kernel CVE team's public repository (git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/security/vulns.git), and the 56 commits from Linus Torvalds's public tree. The sorts go by the words in each fix's own description, so they are a best public picture, not an official count. The scout map in chapter 03 is our sketch: OpenAI did not publish its targets. Bug classes are shown only as everyday analogies. No attack method is shown or described: who, when, what and what it cost. Greg Kroah-Hartman's clips are from "Security in the LLM age", Kernel Recipes 2026, licensed CC BY by Kernel Recipes. Alex Wissner-Gross's clips are from the Moonshots podcast (Peter Diamandis, Salim Ismail, Dave Blundin, Alex Wissner-Gross). Zico Kolter's clip is from 20VC with Harry Stebbings (October 2024). Parzival's clip is from his own video of October 2, 2024. Posts and web pages are shown briefly for commentary and criticism. Logos name the companies we talk about; no endorsement. 3D scenes rendered with three.js; the two cartoons are GPT pictures; Parzival's voice is a clone made with ElevenLabs. The data poison injection's payload is a verbatim line from the Maitreya practice.

Narration: Parzival, the host's own cloned voice. AI-generated pictures: the illustrations and the closing still of Parzival. Photos of the people quoted: see the pinned comment.

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