Microsoft AI can detect security flaws with 99% accuracy

Microsoft has released an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool to help developers categorise bugs and features that need to be addressed in forthcoming releases.

The software giant’s machine learning system classifies bugs as security or non-security with a 99% accuracy, and also determines whether a bug is critical or non-critical with a 97% accuracy rating.

With ambitions to build a system with a level of accuracy as close as possible to a security expert, Microsoft fed its machine learning model with bugs labelled as security and non-security. Once this was trained, it could then label data that was not pre-classified. “Every day, software developers stare down a long list of features and bugs that need to be addressed,” said Microsoft’s senior security program manager Scott Christiansen, and data and applied scientist Mayana Pereira.