[readyplayeremma]

It seems unlikely any alien malware could be targeted to affect our computing platforms. However, if they had preexisting knowledge of computing as implemented on Earth, it would be less complex. If there was a type of malware universal enough to do so, it would probably be some kind of attack against the universal notion of intelligence itself. In which case, you may need to isolate it from humans as well.

I think the most likely scenario for receiving any kind of alien Trojan horse signal, would be if the signal was some kind of instructions for how to create and execute an alien AI as encoded in the signal. However, that would require complex analysis and human intervention to build. Unless we reach a point where AGI systems can search, interpret, and implement instructions from said signals, any threats would require significant involvement from humans in order to materialize.

At least, those are my initial thoughts.

[insane_dreamer]

> It seems unlikely any alien malware could be targeted to affect our computing platforms

tell that to the Cylons

[midoridensha]

The Cyclons were built by humans, had fought a war with them only 40 years before, and most importantly, had human-looking spies living with the humans and seducing the main creator of the computing platform's software to learn its vulnerabilities. They weren't some far-away aliens that had no prior knowledge of the colonies' computing systems.

[insane_dreamer]

fair point

[godelski]

Fun fact, this is basically (highly likely to be) true for biological systems as well for very similar reasons. Looking at you Orwell...

edit: note that diseases have to make significant changes to jump species. The barrier for different biologies is even higher.

[neodymiumphish]

A short of 'Contact' scenario. Interesting

[edgyquant]

>it seems unlikely

What are you basing this on?

[readyplayeremma]

Our existing computing platforms are very specific and very limited. Without knowledge of that specific design and the accompanying limitations, how could you pre-craft a non-interactive "exploit" that could be executed by such a system? I do think that it becomes more possible if we have AGI-like systems doing detection and analysis, but we do not. In addition, any universal exploit against AGI systems would probably have to be universal enough to also affect human intelligence.

[godelski]

For a clearer example, there's a reason a virus that affects Windows doesn't affect Linux. Or a virus that affects Windows XP doesn't affect Windows 11. There are of course counter examples, but this is the trend. To understand why the counter examples exist requires expert knowledge (or rather that there are basically the same things running in the same way).

[edgyquant]

We are currently discussing exploits designs by foreign intelligences to infect artificially intelligent systems. We are not talking about privilege escalation on a Mac.

[stevenhuang]

That's where you're confused. The only one insisting the topic under discussion is the infection of AI systems (as opposed to classical computing systems) is you...

[edgyquant]

Except the proposed question was what if the signals were designed to only be detected by societies who’ve invented AI…

[edgyquant]

These exploits act on the AI, not the hardware. I’m well aware of how human crafted exploits currently work.

[wpietri]

Good point!

There's a bit in one of Larry Niven's books, possibly Ringworld. The protagonists are worried about what novel aliens might do. Somebody proposes ducking into hyperspace, where tracking them is "theoretically impossible". Another character responds, "What if they use different theories?"

That something seems unlikely to a human used to dealing with other humans at the same or lower technology level to me says more about humans than about what's possible.

[groffee]

Reminds me of an episode of Stargate where they fire 'stealth' (invisible to radar) nukes at the Goa'uld ships, and they're just stood looking out the window at them! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBsXxNc7k8

Anyone who says anything like "it's impossible" etc just has a complete lack of imagination.

[throwbadubadu]

We've built enough stupid complexity* that either the aliens must already have spied it out completely (but if they done that they could likely overtake is in any way quickly..), or it just won't happen. (*) I mean seriously, how would you design a virus in some limited signal that has a chance of overtaking any arbitrary specific system someone may have invented, that's impossible. Never say never maybe my imagination is too small..

[edgyquant]

It would likely be pretty “easy” to design a signal that tricks convolutional networks etc. no need to care about the underlying hardware