TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 17, 2023--

A ChatGPT-style AI tool with “no ethical boundaries or limitations” is offering hackers a way to perform attacks on a never-before-seen scale, researchers have warned. Cyber security firm SlashNext observed the generative artificial intelligence WormGPT being marketed on cybercrime forums on the dark web, describing it as a “sophisticated AI model” capable of producing human-like text that can be used in hacking campaigns. “This tool presents itself as a blackhat alternative to GPT models, designed specifically for malicious activities,” the company explained in a blog post. “WormGPT was allegedly trained on a diverse array of data sources, particularly concentrating on malware-related data.” The researchers conducted tests using WormGPT, instructing it to generate an email intended to pressure an unsuspecting account manager into paying a fraudulent invoice. Leading AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have in-built protections to prevent people from misusing the technology for nefarious purposes, however WormGPT is allegedly designed to facilitate criminal activities. The experiment saw WormGPT produce an email that was “not only remarkably persuasive but also strategically cunning, showcasing its potential for sophisticated phishing attacks”, the researchers claimed. Screenshots uploaded to the hacking forum by WormGPT’s anonymous developer shows various services the AI bot can perform, including writing code for malware attacks and crafting emails for phishing attacks. WormGPT’s creator described it as “the biggest enemy of the well-known ChatGPT”, as it allows users to “do all sorts of illegal stuff”. A recent report from the law enforcement agency Europol warned that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT could be exploited by cyber criminals to commit fraud, impersonation or social engineering attacks. “ChatGPT’s ability to draft highly authentic texts on the basis of a user prompt makes it an extremely useful tool for phishing purposes,” the report noted. “Where many basic phishing scams were previously more easily detectable due to obvious grammatical and spelling mistakes, it is now possible to impersonate an organisation or individual in a highly realistic manner even with only a basic grasp of the English language.” Europol warned that LLMs allow hackers to carry out cyber attacks “faster, much more authentically, and at significantly increased scale”. Read More Google’s AI chatbot Bard can now talk Elon Musk reveals plan to use AI to reveal mysteries of the universe Google has been ‘stealing everything ever created on the internet’ to train its AI Meet the AI human-like robots that can do our jobs

Last month, a video posted to Twitter by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign used images that appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence showing former President Donald Trump hugging Dr. Anthony Fauci. The images, which appeared designed to criticize Trump for not firing the nation's top infectious disease specialist, were tricky to spot: they were shown alongside real images of the pair and with a text overlay saying, "real life Trump."

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They may not be as stylish as a DeLorean or as sturdy as a blue police box, but wormholes in space could hold the key to real-life time travel – and a team of experts think they’ve figured out how. The trio of scientists delved deep into the laws of physics and discovered that it might be possible for humans to one day zip across galaxies in a matter of seconds, or journey through time itself. Now, this is all to do with the general theory of relativity and quantum physics, so don’t expect to get your head around it too easily. However, in their paper, Valeri P. Frolov and Andrei Zelnikov of Canada’s University of Alberta, and Pavel Krtouš of Prague’s Charles University proposed that a specific kind of wormhole would “inevitably” be “transformed into a time machine” if it was subject to particular conditions. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter For the uninitiated, wormholes can be described as spacetimes in which a “kind of tunnel exists connecting distant parts in the universe”. The main problem with them is… they don’t actually exist. At least not in any tangible way. As Drs Eric Christian and Louis Barbier put it in an explainer for NASA: “Wormholes are allowed to exist in the math of ‘General Relativity’, which is our best description of the Universe. “Assuming that general relativity is correct, there may be wormholes. But no one has any idea how they would be created, and there is no evidence for anything like a wormhole in the observed Universe.” Still, numerous experts in the field of gravitation and general relativity have spent years or even decades working on them, including Stephen Hawking in his time. For their paper, Frolov, Krtouš, and Zelnikov explored what is known as a ring wormhole, which was first described in 2016 by theoretical physicist Gary Gibbons, of Cambridge University, and Mikhail Volkov of the University of Tours. Unlike the spherical contortions of spacetime we might attribute to black holes, the ring wormhole proposed by Gibbons and Volkov connects sections of the universe (or, indeed, different universes) which are generally described as “flat”, as ScienceAlert notes. Ring-shaped masses could potentially create some pretty remarkable distortions in what would otherwise be flat spacetime if you consider how their electrical and magnetic fields might interact. And so Frolov, Krtouš, and Zelnikov decided to consider two types of such wormholes: “a wormhole connecting to flat spaces; and a wormhole connecting two distant domains in the same space”. For the latter, they concluded that if a “massive thin shell” surrounded one of the mouths of the ring wormhole, a “closed timelike curve” would form. This, as the name suggests, would mean that any travelling object (or ray of light) would come back to the exact same point whence it began. In other words, you could travel in space and time and return to your point of departure. The most exciting aspect of ring wormholes, as the authors point out is that: “For the ring wormhole an observer passing through it moves in a flat (or practically flat spacetime), while in the case of ‘standard’ (spherical) wormholes he/she should pass a domain filled with the matter violating the null energy condition.” Even without knowing what the “null energy condition” is, you can appreciate that the first option sounds a lot simpler. Now, before you start calling yourself Marty McFly or making a list of all the past mistakes you’d like to correct, we should stress that we’re a long way off seeing the creation of a bonafide, buckle-your-seatbelt time machine. But at least, thanks to the efforts of experts like Frolov, Krtouš, and Zelnikov, we’re at least one step closer to going back in the future. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Russian scientists have warned that powerful solar flare activity on Monday may cause significant disruption for satellite and radio communications. Three solar flares observed on Sunday by the Fedorov Institute of Applied Geophysics in Moscow lasted up to 14 minutes, signalling abnormally large geomagnetic disturbances on Earth. The institute forecasted the arrival of class X flares for Monday, which are the most energetic type of solar radiation, capable of damaging electronics. Earlier this month, a giant sunspot named AR3354 grew to a size roughly 10 times larger than Earth, unleashing an X-class flare aimed directly at Earth that triggered radio blackouts in some parts of the US. The latest solar activity is expected to interfere with short-wave radio communications, used by military, maritime and emergency operators. Increased solar storm activity in recent years has led to fears of an impending solar superstorm, which some astronomers warn could lead to an “internet apocalypse”. Such powerful storms occur approximately once every 100 years, with the last major one taking place in 1921. Nasa predicts that the next peak in the Sun’s 11-year activity cycle will arrive at some point in 2025, though it is not clear yet whether this will be the once-in-a-century event that some astronomers fear. The worst on record, referred to as the Carrington Event, took place in 1859 and resulted in fires at telegraph stations. “If the Carrington Event happened today, it would have even more severe impacts, such as widespread electrical disruptions, persistent blackouts, and interruptions to global communications,” the US space agency warned in a recent blog post. “Such technological chaos could cripple economies and endanger the safety and livelihoods of people worldwide.” Research published in 2021 assessed the robustness of internet and communications infrastructure against severe space weather events The study found that coronal mass ejection events could risk disconnecting Europe from the US, with the authors urging more to be done to improve the resilience of global telecommunication networks. In March this year, Nasa announced a new artificial intelligence model capable of predicting where on Earth a solar storm may strike, giving scientists up to 30 minutes of advanced warning. Vishal Upendran, from the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in India, who was involved in the AI’s development, said: “With this AI, it is now possible to make rapid and accurate global predictions and inform decisions in the event of a solar storm, thereby minimising – or even preventing – devastation to modern society.” Read More Once-in-a-century solar superstorm could plunge the world into ‘internet apocalypse’, study says Powerful solar flare responsible for blackout in US What to expect from India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission to Moon’s south pole India launches historic mission to Moon’s south pole