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A New Tool Found Malware That’s Guided by an AI Hive Mind—No Humans in Sight

WIRED · Securityby Lily Hay Newman ()3 min read2 · 1 read
Part of a story covered by 3 sourcesCisco Talos' CAIRN Toolkit Uncovers CLOSEDQUORUM, Windows Malware That Lets Four LLMs Vote as Its Command-and-ControlMerged summary & timeline
AI summary · glm-5.3Summaries by Vani AI

New tool uncovers CLOSEDQUORUM, malware using a hive-mind of four LLMs for autonomous command-and-control decisions.

Cisco Talos researchers have used their CAIRN framework to identify CLOSEDQUORUM, a Windows malware tool that uses multiple LLMs as a hive-mind command-and-control system. The malware polls DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral, and Google Gemini to reach a consensus on its next actions, operating autonomously without human intervention. This discovery highlights the evolution of AI integration from productivity enhancement to full operationalization in offensive cyber operations.

Key facts
  • Researchers found CLOSEDQUORUM, malware that uses four LLMs as a hive-mind C2 infrastructure.
  • The tool polls DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral, and Gemini for consensus on next steps without human input.
  • CAIRN framework was developed to track AI-integrated malware through metadata fingerprints.
  • The research highlights the shift from AI as a productivity tool to an operational component in attacks.
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From the original article

3 min read at wired.com

Cisco Talos researchers created a new framework for identifying malware and hacking tools that rely on AI chatbots—and quickly discovered something unusual.

WIRED · Security

By Lily Hay Newman · wired.com

Read the full article at WIRED · Security

A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.