Report by Google Threat Intelligence Group
Vulnerability Discovery and Exploitation Trends in the AI Era
Key Findings
Average monthly vulnerabilities exploited increased from 10.5 per month in 2025 to 18 per month from January 2026 to August 2026.
Average monthly zero-day exploitations increased from 8 per month in 2025 to 11 per month from January 2026 to August 2026, peaking at 22 in August 2026.
Baseline High-Risk disclosures more than doubled from about 65 per month in mid-2025 to about 135 per month in mid-2026.
Mass research disclosures against TOTOLINK consumer router firmware added 75 High-Risk flaws in April–May 2026.
Only 0.23% of all disclosed vulnerabilities in 2026 (about 1 in 431) were observed in active exploitation.
Overall CVE disclosure growth indexed +128% compared to baseline (January 2025).
High-Risk vulnerabilities disclosed increased by 241% (about 3.5× baseline) by August 2026.
GTIG tracked 2,076 cumulative AI-related CVE disclosures from January 2025 through August 2026, with over 1,500 identified from January 2026 to August 2026 alone.
Orchestration and agent frameworks accounted for 782 AI-related vulnerabilities in 2026.
AI web apps and portals accounted for 230 AI-related vulnerabilities in 2026.
Inference and serving infrastructure accounted for 212 AI-related vulnerabilities in 2026.
Model security advisories accounted for 106 AI-related vulnerabilities in 2026.
ML frameworks and hubs accounted for 99 AI-related vulnerabilities in 2026.
MLOps and experiment tracking systems accounted for 39 AI-related vulnerabilities in 2026.
Vector databases and search systems accounted for 19 AI-related vulnerabilities in 2026.
Backend serving infrastructure disclosures reached 212 vulnerabilities in 2026, with nearly 24% of these flaws stemming from unauthenticated API endpoints or SSRF.
AI-discovered vulnerabilities produced Information Disclosure at 8%, compared to 18% for vulnerabilities not identified as discovered by AI.
AI-discovered vulnerabilities produce Data Manipulation at 5%, compared to 9% for vulnerabilities not identified as discovered by AI.
Zero-day exploitations constituted 62% of all observed exploited vulnerabilities from January 2026 to August 2026.
Monthly vulnerability disclosures doubled, rising from 5,045 in January 2026 to 10,740 in August 2026.
High-Risk vulnerabilities represented 3% of all vulnerabilities disclosed in August 2026.
Oracle and Linux advisories contributed 128 High-Risk vulnerabilities in August 2026, nearly 37% of all High-Risk disclosures that month.
From January 2026 to August 2026, 141 distinct vulnerabilities were disclosed and exploited, surpassing 127 exploited vulnerabilities for the full year 2025.
Since May 2026, CVE exploitation showed +127% indexed growth closely mirroring disclosure growth of +128% indexed growth.
Exploitation of High-Risk vulnerabilities more than doubled from 28 in 2025 to 75 from January 2026 to August 2026.
Vulnerabilities affecting Edge and Security Appliances represented 14% of vulnerabilities exploited from January 2026 to August 2026, while 11% affected Enterprise Directory & Collaboration hubs.
Over 65% of edge flaws exploited from January 2026 to August 2026 met High/Critical Threat Risk ratings.
Frontier models accounted for 97 AI-related vulnerabilities in 2026.
AI-discovered vulnerabilities comprised 58% Medium-Risk, 39% Low-Risk, and 4% High-Risk vulnerabilities (Jan–Aug 2026).
Conventional (non-AI) CVE disclosures comprised 69% Low-Risk, 28% Medium-Risk, and 3% High-Risk vulnerabilities (Jan–Aug 2026).
Orchestration middleware accounted for 50% of all AI-related flaws and experiences a +347% surge in disclosures in 2026.
Exactly 50% of AI-discovered vulnerabilities resulted in Remote Code Execution (RCE), compared to 26% across the broader CVE ecosystem.
High-Risk vulnerability disclosures surged from 131 in January 2026 to 350 in August 2026, a 167% growth.
Excluding Linux, Oracle, and Totolink, High-Risk disclosure growth was 128% from January 2025 to August 2026.
CVE exploitation in the wild increased by approximately 127% (indexed to January 2025).