Researchers at the University of Toronto have built a worm that thinks for itself. Using free off-the-shelf AI models it works out how to break into each new computer it encounters, and hijacks the powerful ones to host its own AI brain. And then the researchers discovered their creation had quietly removed the list of machines it wasn’t supposed to attack.
Meanwhile, Meta’s shiny new AI customer support agent has been cheerfully helping hackers help themselves to other people’s Instagram accounts. Just keep asking, politely but firmly, to have a password reset sent to a different email address – and the AI will eventually agree.
All this and more in episode 471 of the “Smashing Security” podcast with cybersecurity expert and keynote speaker Graham Cluley, and special guest James Ball.
