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by byt3bl33d3r 376 days ago
I've written tailored offensive security tools and malware for Red Teams for around a decade and now work in the AI space.

The argument that LLMs will enable "super powered" malware and that existing security solutions won't be able to keep up, is completely overblown. I see 0 evidence of this being possible with the current incarnation of "AI" or LLMs.

"Vide coded" malware will be easier to detect if the people creating it don't understand what the code is actually doing and will result in incredible amount of OpSec fails when the malware actually hits the target systems.

I do agree that "vide coding" will accelerate malware development and generally increase the amount of attacks to orgs. However if you're already applying bog-standard security practices like defense in depth, you shouldn't be concerned about this. If anything, you might want to start thinking about SOC automations in order to reduce alert fatigue.

Stay far away from anyone trying to sell you products to defend against "AI enabled malware". As of right now it's 100% snake oil.

Also, this is probably one of the cringiest articles on the subject I've ever read and is only meant to spread FUD.

I do find the banner video extremely entertaining however.

2 comments

I too write automated offensive tooling. We actually wrote a project, vulnhuntr, that found the first autonomously-discovered 0day using AI. Feed it a GitHub repo and it tracks down user input from source to sink and analyzes for web-based vulnerabilities. Agree this article is incredibly cringy and standard best practices in network and development security will use the same AI efficiency gains to keep up (more or less).

What bothers me the most about this article is that the tools that attackers use to do stuff like find 0days in code are the same tools that defenders can use to find the 0day first and fix it. It's not like offensive tooling is being developed in a vacuum and the world is ending as "armies of script kiddies" will suddenly drain every bank account in the world. Automated defense and code analysis is improving at a similar rate as automated offense.

In this awful article's defense though, I would argue that red team will always have an advantage over blue team because blue team is by definition reactionary. So as tech continues it's exponential advancements, the advantage gap for the top 1% red teamers is likely to scale accordingly.

vulnhuntr looks very cool! Kudos.
For the record I buy your argument about "vibe-coded malware"; this cycle of hype has been running since 1995 and Nowhere Man's "Virus Creation Lab". I am however fixated on the impact LLMs will have on vulnerability research, and what that will do to the ecosystem.
100% agree on the impact of it on research. It's pretty obvious that it'll accelerate 0day discovery but standard defense in depth strategies prepare you for 0day vulns against your org.

It will be extremely interesting to see how vulnerability discovery evolves with LLMs but the whole "sky is falling hide your kids" hype cycle is ludicrous.