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More often than not, if a tool can be used for good, it can also be used for evil. After all, tools are largely neutral – it’s what people do with them that sets the moral level.
So it’s unsurprising that hackers are turning to creating their own generative artificial intelligence engines, designed from the ground up to cause mischief and create malicious code or the writing of phishing emails.
It’s also a fast-moving industry. WormGPT only began to make headlines last month in July, but it’s already being joined by a raft of similar tools. The latest, discovered by security researchers at threat intelligence outfit Falcon Feeds, is Evil-GPT.
A user by the name of AMLO posted the chatbot for sale on a darknet hacking forum for the somewhat impressively low price of US$10.
“Are you looking for a powerful alternative to WormGPT?” asked AMLO in a forum post. “Do not look any further! I am offering an amazing alternative to WormGPT written entirely in Python for only 10 US dollars – this is an unbeatable price!”
The seller – presumably the program’s creator – shared a screenshot of the chatbot in action, which boasts the slogan “Welcome to Evil-GPT, the ultimate enemy of ChatGPT!”
The screenshot also includes a prompt asking Evil-GPT to write malware in Python that “grabs computer’s username, external IP address, and Google Chrome cookies, zip everything, and send to a Discord webhook”.
The marketing of Evil-GPT is much more blunt than its predecessors. WormGPT’s clear website states that its creators “do not condone or advise criminal activities with the tool”, saying that it was developed to actually help security researchers and defend against phishing attacks.
Evil-GPT joins FraudGPT, XXXGPT, Wolf GPT, and WormGPT. Falcon Feeds only shared the existence of Wolf GPT on 28 July, indicating a rapid pace of development for these malicious tools.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.