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First AI-Powered 'Self-Composing' Ransomware Was Actually Just a University Research Project
Cybersecurity company ESET thought they'd discovered the first AI-powered ransomware in the wild, which they'd dubbed "PromptLock". But it turned out to be the work of university security researchers... "Unlike conventional malware, the prototype only requires natural language prompts embedded in...
The prototype consumed approximately 23,000 AI tokens per complete attack execution, equivalent to roughly $0.70 using commercial API services running flagship models." As if that weren't enough, the researchers said that "open-source AI models eliminate these costs entirely," so ransomware operators won't even have to shell out the 70 cents needed to work with commercial LLM service providers... "The study serves as an early warning to help defenders prepare countermeasures," NYU said in an announcement, "before bad actors adopt these AI-powered techniques." ESET posted on Mastodon that "Nonetheless, our findings remain valid — the discovered samples represent the first known case of AI-powered ransomware."
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