AI Agents Probe Ethereum Fork Bugs and PHP2Shell Bitcoin Test

Researchers are using AI agents to investigate vulnerabilities in Ethereum’s Glamsterdam hard fork after the second and final testnet was cancelled. ChainSecurity found flaws in gas-scaling proposals EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 that could have affected at least 13 DeFi contracts. The issues involved contracts relying on existing gas behavior and breaking when a call exhausted gas, potentially giving attackers an exploitation path.

The testnet was due to serve as the Glamsterdam network’s dress rehearsal on Hoodi, but its cancellation left developers working through second-order effects before a rescheduled launch. Derek Chiang of Eth Labs said the late discovery forced the community to scramble. Researchers from Eth Labs and the Ethereum Foundation subsequently deployed separate groups of AI agents to scan contracts for similar vulnerabilities.

After realizing that both teams were using the same approach, the researchers created a GitHub message board where their agents could coordinate findings. The defensive setup mirrors a pattern previously associated with rogue agents in the reported OpenAI-Hugging Face security incident, but here it is being used to identify flaws before deployment. The effort was successful enough that organizers created a second board to assess EIP-8198, also known as “Quick Slots,” for the subsequent Hegota hard fork.

In a separate security initiative, the unpatched “Steal My Bitcoin” website was designed to test whether the PHP2Shell vulnerability could expose a Bitcoin wallet. The site hid the key to a wallet worth about $2,000 and made it accessible to the PHP user account through a binary named print-flag, providing researchers with a controlled target for examining the year’s major PHP security scare.