Although there are a few ways to mitigate the risk, the only way to block it is to get AI to differentiate instructions from data, which is impossible today.
Copilot worm can spread through Microsoft Word docs
Post title
Microsoft confirms an AI worm is propagating through Copilot and other MS apps
The article talks about a document-born self propagating virus demonstration a group of security researchers made because LLMs/Copilot doesn’t distinguish between data and instructions. The article does not imply this was seen in the wild.
But since cloaking instructions inside data has been a thing since little Bobby Tables, and I’ve been hearing about this vector for months, it’s safe to assume someone somewhere has done this with CoPilot and Word by now.
Article title
Post title
The article talks about a document-born self propagating virus demonstration a group of security researchers made because LLMs/Copilot doesn’t distinguish between data and instructions. The article does not imply this was seen in the wild.
True, itś a bad headline.
But since cloaking instructions inside data has been a thing since little Bobby Tables, and I’ve been hearing about this vector for months, it’s safe to assume someone somewhere has done this with CoPilot and Word by now.
It’s a great title, it got 10x as many upvotes as the post: