Right now, we’re still figuring out the true potential of AI technology. We hear about its potential for both good and bad, but we’re still at the very beginning of this AI age. Well, it looks like there’s now AI-written malware being passed around, and this is a very scary thing to think about.
This was something we feared from the first time we read what ChatGPT could do when it first hit the public. When it was first making the news, one of its most notable capabilities was the ability to actually write code. So, a person who doesn’t know how to code could just generate what they want. It could be helpful for entry-level programmers, but it also means that it’s easier for malicious actors to craft malware.
We now have AI-written malware to worry about
This isn’t to raise the alarm bells, as it’s not a widespread issue. However, we’re wondering if it’s an indication of what’s to come. Researchers at HP’s Arctic Wolf have discovered a malware with some clues pointing to it being written by AI. Right now, there’s no tool on the market that we know of that can identify if code was written by AI. So, the only way that people can tell is by looking into the code and looking for tells.
HP discovered a malware that’s been affecting French-speaking people, and this one might have been written with the help of AI. Principal Threat Researcher in the HP Security Lab Patrick Schläpfer stated that “the structure of the scripts, comments explaining each line of code, and the choice of native language function names and variables are strong indications that the threat actor used GenAI to create the malware“. This isn’t to say that it was generated with AI, but there are some damning bits of evidence. “The attack infects users with the freely available AsyncRAT malware, an easy-to-obtain infostealer which can record victim’s screens and keystrokes. The activity shows how GenAI is lowering the bar for cybercriminals to infect endpoints.”
This could be a major issue
It should come as no surprise that this spells trouble for countless people. This only makes it easier for would-be threat actors to develop malware to steal data or cause some real damage. It’s something that we’re going to have to keep an eye on.