New AI system scans tweets to spot security bugs early

A group of researchers have built a new system that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to scan tweets for signs of security vulnerabilities.

Researchers from Ohio State University, security company FireEye, and research firm Leidos have built the system that reads millions of tweets for mentions of software security vulnerabilities.

Using machine-learning algorithm, the system is able to identify tweets about new vulnerabilities that will show up days later on the National Vulnerability Database, Wired reported.

The use of natural language processing can roughly predict which of the possible vulnerabilities can be given a high or critical severity rating with more than 80% accuracy.

The system is yet to be perfect, but it could someday prove useful by leveraging the discussions happening on social media platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, dark web, even blogs, to help system administrators identify critical security flaws earlier and fix them.