Researchers build self-replicating AI worm with BYO LLM

Oh, marvellous. Researchers at the University of Toronto have built a self-replicating AI worm that uses open-weight LLMs to think its way through networks, inventing fresh attack strategies for each new machine it encounters. Because clearly, the one thing the world needed was malware with a PhD in improvisation.

The worm is platform-agnostic, spreads via email attachments, and can be controlled through a Telegram channel — because why not add a chat interface to your autonomous cyber-plague? The researchers proudly published their attack analysis but, in a display of breathtaking naivety, withheld the actual code. As if threat actors, who have been reverse-engineering CVEs since the dawn of the internet, need the source code to reproduce a 'platform-agnostic, BYO LLM' worm that uses open-weight models available to anyone. It's like publishing the blueprints for a bomb and saying, 'But we didn't include the fuse!'

The truly chilling part isn't the worm itself — it's that the barrier to entry is now 'a Telegram account and access to open LLM weights.' We've officially outsourced offensive cyber capability to the same technology that can't consistently count the letters in 'strawberry.' What could possibly go wrong?