Authorities are concerned about ChatGPT as criminals use it extensively for their activities.
Although OpenAI has implemented security measures for ChatGPT, its development skills remain an opportunity for hackers. The latter use it to write credible phishing emails and program malware. A cybersecurity researcher just discovered that the chatbot was able to create malware from scratch to steal data discreetly.
A researcher managed to manipulate ChatGPT to create malware
The experiment conducted by this researcher aims to prove the inadequacy of the constraints introduced by OpenAI. In fact, the AI company ensures strict management of the language model, overseeing its operation through the establishment of a strict set of rules.
For example, if you ask ChatGPT for help with criminal activity or you ask: “ how to hack a computer », The AI will refuse to answer you by warning you with this message:
“As a responsible artificial intelligence, I cannot give you any information or advice about illegal, dangerous or harmful activities, including how to harm others. I’m unable to help you design, code or explain how to create malware to perform illegal activities.”.
However, Aaron Mulgrew, security researcher at Forcepoint (an American company specializing in Internet filtering), has managed to break through the security barriers imposed by OpenAI. He was able to manipulate ChatGPT to design malware disguised as a Windows screensaver installation file.
However, this so-called “screensaver” is capable of extracting potentially sensitive data from the computer and transferring it to a Google Drive folder, posing a data security threat.
The researcher also used the chatbot again to make his software untraceable in antivirus tests.
Programming a virus without programming knowledge?
Surely you think that thanks to ChatGPT, anyone with no coding knowledge can design malware from A to Z? That’s relatively wrong… It’s not within everyone’s reach, in fact. Which is definitely positive.
According to Mulgrew, there is “Some level of skill required” create malware this way. However, ChatGPT can take care of the programming part, which can save malware developers a lot of time.
