A team at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering created PromptLock and warns that it shows the tech industry needs to take AI-enabled threats seriously.
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It turns out that an AI-powered ransomware discovered last week is actually a project from a team at New York University. Nevertheless, the research shows how open-source large language models could unleash new forms of disturbing and powerful ransomware attacks.
Cybersecurity vendor ESET flagged the “PromptLock” ransomware by uncovering samples on VirusTotal, a Google-owned service that catalogs malware and checks them against antivirus engines. Following the discovery, the NYU Tandon School of Engineering claimed responsibility for the mysterious ransomware creation.
According to the school, a team of six computer science professors and researchers developed PromptLock, but merely as a “proof-of-concept that is non-functional outside of the contained lab environment.” As part of their testing, the researchers also uploaded the ransomware to VirusTotal, but without indicating its “academic origin», which led ESET to warn the public.
Researchers call the prototype “Ransomware 3.0,” and published a 21-page paper going over their project, including the disturbing implications. The ransomware itself works as an “orchestrator” that can connect to one of OpenAI’s open-source large language models, which anyone can download and run over a server, including from a cloud provider.
