Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U of T researchers demonstrate AI worm could target any online device

utoronto.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–53 of 53 posts

Re: U of T researchers demonstrate AI worm could target any online device

#51

Post by senectus1 »

crumpled wrote: post #43
criddell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash have a similar idea? IIRC, a computer infects human brains via language and sound. In the 2004 Battlestar Galactica series, the explanation for why the Galactica was the only ship that survived a massive Cylon attack seems more and more likely. The ship was old and wasn't fully connected to the human's command and control systems and so the Cylon virus couldn't reach it.

"Memes" they called them in Snow Crash (1992). In a very real way there ARE malicious AI agents working tirelessly to create and spread memes via language and sound to alter our brain software.

MAGA proved it didnt need AI to create, but yeah it definitely accelerated it.

Re: U of T researchers demonstrate AI worm could target any online device

#52

Post by RetroTechie »

lisnake wrote: post #48
malfist wrote: post #25

ANY online device? Even assuming AI can find vulnerabilities in every operating system, there's no indication that this is actually true beyond a "here's how it could work" This is the same nonsense that lead to article saying researchers had created a wormhole when all they had done was draw one. I have a microcontroller with an ROM disk (i.e., physically read only). You're telling me that an AI can find a way aroun…

RAM-only viruses exist.

That's for when the uC is able to execute code from RAM. Some uCs can only execute code from a separate address space (Harvard architecture), that may not even be readable (let alone writeable) by the program itself.

On such a uC the "inject random payload" option would be out. Still possible might be denial-of-service attacks, altering or exfiltrating data etc.

But most stuff online are regular von Neumann machines where -in theory- anything is possible.

Post reply on HN