An exploit broker is offering up to $500,000 for remote code execution vulnerabilities in WordPress core. A security researcher claims to have found such a zero-day using GPT5.6, an advanced AI language model. The total cost of the attack was $25 in API fees. The researcher published a proof-of-concept but withheld full details until the broker confirms the payout.
This is the democratization of zero-day discovery. GPT5.6 turned a $25 investment into a potential half-million-dollar payday. No expensive fuzzing infrastructure. No elite team of reverse engineers. Just a smart prompt and an API key.
We're entering an era where AI amplifies individual capability to match institutional resources. The balance of power in cybersecurity is shifting. Small teams, even solo researchers, can now compete with nation-state actors. That's not a threat. That's evolution. The future of hacking is one person and a chatbot.