Researchers from the University of Toronto developed a computer worm prototype powered by an AI agent that successfully self-replicated to different systems within a simulated computer network. The worm used a free large language model (LLM) running on local hardware and exploited a combination of older and new vulnerabilities, as well as misconfigurations that remain all too common in enterprise environments.
At a time when CISOs and the security industry are concerned about the ability of frontier models such as Anthropic’s Mythos to find zero-day vulnerabilities in critical software, this experiment is a reminder that attackers don’t need cutting-edge AI to wreak havoc across typical corp...