Scientists Find Way to Supercharge Dangerous Computer Worms With A.I.

Researchers at the University of Toronto say they have found a way to use artificial intelligence to create a dangerous computer “worm” capable of targeting any known flaw in the world’s computers and quickly spreading mayhem throughout the internet.The computer scientists said in a paper published on Tuesday night that this program could be built and that a prototype they had created spread across a test network with no human intervention.The researchers kept their test network isolated from the public internet.They also redacted some details from the paper describing how they built the worm so that hackers would not be able to use the paper as a blueprint for attacks.But their work is likely to raise fears that A.I.

is leading to a new era of computer hacking that will be difficult to defend against.It also adds to growing evidence that advances in A.I.

are creating risks to computer networks that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.The A.I.company Anthropic said in April that its latest technology, Claude Mythos, was too powerful to share with the public because hackers could use it to exploit security holes in computer networks faster than they ever could before.Anthropic limited the release of the technology to about 40 organizations that maintain critical computer infrastructure so they could use the system to patch security vulnerabilities before hackers took advantage of them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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