Could this possible be the first AI worm? Or are there any priors to this?
Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word
11–20 of 317 posts
Re: Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word
#12Why is it possible to have hidden text in a Word document? Why should the AI have access to that text?
The LLM is reading the bytes of the file, not looking at a picture of its rendering. File metadata exists as well, and change history. Tons of places to hide text.
Even if you processed it via a screenshot, image files are processed byte by byte as well and can contain textual metadata.
Re: Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word
#13It's VBScript/macro worms all over again!
Re: Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word
#14I mean all your data is already exfiltrated to Copilot, so a little extra worm cannot hurt.
It is fun to see how all AI narratives are collapsing.
Re: Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word
#15Why is it possible to have hidden text in a Word document? Why should the AI have access to that text?
Headers, footers, notes, comments, alt text, probably dozen of other features. Documents often are lot more than just markdown so properly to support everything you do have a lot of ways to hide text for various use cases.
Re: Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word
#16Oh but for an alternative to Excel
Purged I would have
All things Microsoft from my (controllable) world
Re: Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word
#17> Malicious instructions hidden in an externally shared document could make Copilot alter drafted or edited documents in Word and propagate the attack to new documents. Oh no.
Mixing instructions and data is never a good idea.
And I thought people understood that.
Re: Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word
#18> Malicious instructions hidden in an externally shared document could make Copilot alter drafted or edited documents in Word and propagate the attack to new documents. Oh no.
something something lethal trifecta
waiting for W^X reinvented, renamed and marketed for the Agentic Era (r)TM
Re: Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word
#19Could this possible be the first AI worm? Or are there any priors to this?
Morris II(https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.02817) did demonstrate worming behaviour, so the concept at least is not new. However, I do not know of any similar demonstration in a commercial productivity product like Word.
Re: Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word
#20LLMs should be viewed with the same terror as a reckless toddler who knows some bash syntax. Deeply embedding them into important and privileged systems will be the end of us.