The race to protect digital ecosystems has never been more important because cyberattacks are happening more often and getting smarter. On July 15, 2025, Google CEO Sundar Pichai made a big announcement: the company’s AI agent, “Big Sleep,” was able to find and stop a cyber attack before it could be used. This was the first time that AI had ever done something like this in the field of cybersecurity. This achievement, which stopped a major weakness in SQLite (CVE-2025-6965), could lead to a major change in how we protect ourselves from cyber threats. But can Big Sleep really change the way we protect ourselves from cyberattacks in the future, or is it just a good start on a long road? Let’s look into it.
Big Sleep is an autonomous AI agent that was created by Google DeepMind and Project Zero. Its job is to find zero-day vulnerabilities, which are flaws in software that developers don’t know about but that hackers could use to their advantage. Big Sleep is different from other cybersecurity tools that only react to breaches after they happen. Instead, it scans huge codebases to find risky patterns and vulnerabilities before they can be used as weapons. It was able to find CVE-2025-6965, a memory corruption flaw in SQLite, a popular open-source database engine. This shows that it can spot and stop threats in real time.
Google says this is the first time an AI agent has stopped an exploit in the wild. Google used threat intelligence and Big Sleep’s advanced code analysis to predict an attack that was about to happen and fix the hole before hackers could use it. This proactive approach is very different from how traditional cybersecurity works, where defenders often rush to fix systems after breaches are found. Pichai said on X, “This is the first time an AI agent has done this, and it won’t be the last. It gives cybersecurity defenders new tools to stop threats before they spread.”
Big Sleep can do what it does because it can copy the way human security researchers work, which is by making hypotheses and testing them over and over again. It is based on a framework that was first called Project Naptime. It uses large language models (LLMs) to read code, find possible security holes, and even make proof-of-concept exploits to test its results. The agent works in a sandboxed environment, using special tools to move around codebases, run scripts, and fix bugs in programs. It does all of this while following strict rules to keep it from doing things it doesn’t mean to.
This hybrid method combines AI’s ability to understand context with traditional system limits to make sure that it is both safe and flexible. Google’s white paper on Big Sleep talks about how to protect privacy, have human oversight, and be open about things to lower the risks of things like bad behavior or leaking sensitive data. Big Sleep takes care of the boring work of finding vulnerabilities, which lets human experts focus on more complicated threats and make them more powerful.
Big Sleep has done better than expected since it came out in 2024. For example, in November 2024, it found a stack buffer underflow in SQLite. Its most recent success, stopping CVE-2025-6965, shows that it can protect not only Google’s ecosystem but also popular open-source projects, which makes the internet safer for everyone.
Big Sleep’s success has effects that go far beyond just stopping one attack. Cybersecurity threats are expected to cost the world economy trillions of dollars every year, and attackers are using more and more advanced tools, including AI itself. Big Sleep is a counterforce that changes the way we think about security from reactive patching to predictive prevention. “AI gives us a chance to start a new era of American innovation,” said Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs at Google and Alphabet.
Google’s work is in line with what is happening in the industry as a whole. Agentic AI, or autonomous systems that can make their own decisions, is the main topic at cybersecurity conferences like Black Hat USA and DEF CON 33. Google is also improving tools like Timesketch, its open-source digital forensics platform, by adding AI-driven features powered by Sec-Gemini to make incident response easier. Google’s work with the Coalition for Secure AI (CoSAI) and donation of Secure AI Framework (SAIF) data also show that the company is committed to spreading these new ideas throughout the industry.
Even though it has a lot of potential, Big Sleep is not without problems. To keep false positives from interfering with real operations, strong ethical frameworks are needed when adding AI to cybersecurity. Some people, like those at ITPro, say that Big Sleep’s ability to find a memory-safety bug is impressive, but it’s not yet a universal fix for all zero-day vulnerabilities because they are so complicated. In some cases, traditional fuzzing tools that are made for certain targets may still work better than AI.
Also, depending only on AI agents could lead to too much automation. It is still important for people to keep an eye on AI to make sure it doesn’t go wrong and to understand subtle threats. The fact that AI can be used for both good and bad reasons is also a cause for concern. For example, just as Big Sleep looks for weaknesses to defend against, bad people could make similar AI to take advantage of them. Google is trying to fix these problems by focusing on guardrails and openness, but making Big Sleep work all over the world will require cooperation between tech companies, governments, and regulators.
The breakthrough with Big Sleep suggests a future where AI agents work with human experts around the clock to keep an eye on digital ecosystems. AI can look at huge codebases at an unprecedented speed, finding patterns and bugs that even experienced hackers might miss. This is different from human hackers. As cyberattacks get smarter, tools like Big Sleep might become standard not just for big tech companies but for all IT defenses around the world.
Big Sleep’s success also makes it more likely that agentic AI will be used more widely in cybersecurity. Google is taking part in DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC), which ends at DEF CON 33, to make AI tools that will help protect important open-source projects. Atlanta, which used an AI agent named Atlantis to find six zero-day flaws in SQLite3, is one of the competitors in the race for AI-driven security.
Big Sleep’s ability to stop an exploit before it could hit is a historic milestone, but it’s only the beginning. Google is making the digital world more resilient by combining predictive threat prevention with human knowledge. But for the technology to work, it needs to be used responsibly, closely watched, and worked on by people all over the world to stay ahead of new threats.
