Google reports record vulnerability disclosures in August

Monthly software vulnerability disclosures more than doubled from January to August 2026, reaching 10,740, while Google’s Threat Intelligence Group reported that 141 newly disclosed flaws were exploited in the wild during the first eight months of the year. That exceeded the 127 exploited vulnerabilities it counted for all of 2025. The group said artificial intelligence is changing both the pace of discovery and the risk profile of some vulnerabilities, while cautioning that the practical significance of rising disclosure totals is not always clear. GTIG said disclosures rose from 5,045 in January to 10,740 in August. It warned that automated assignment of vulnerability identifiers can inflate totals, particularly in open-source projects. Descriptions mentioning the Linux kernel accounted for roughly 5,000 records from January through August, the group said, with no observed zero-day exploitation of those flaws. A zero-day is exploited before it is known to the vendor; so-called n-days are already patched or publicly disclosed when attackers target them.