Jailbroken AIs are helping cybercriminals to hone their craft


Cybercriminals are bypassing the guardrails that are supposed to keep AI models from carrying out criminal activities, according to researchers.

We’ve seen the misuse of AI models by cybercriminals growing rapidly over the past several years, shaping a new era of digital threats. Early on, attackers focused on jailbreaking public AI chatbots, which meant they used specialized prompts to bypass built-in safety measures. When successful, they went on to sell these “uncensored” or “custom” large language models (LLMs) on underground forums. These jailbroken AIs could generate unrestricted content, including malicious code, phishing emails, and social engineering scripts.

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Source: Malwarebytes Labz


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