‘A Fundamentally New Threat’: Researchers Develop New AI-Powered Worm That Might Be Unstoppable

Image credit: Markus Spiske via Unsplash and Gerd Altmann via Pixabay. Article by Webb Wright. Gizmodo – June 3, 2026.

A team of cybersecurity experts have shown how a self-replicating AI agent can take over a computer network at almost no cost.

It’s a nightmare scenario that’s long haunted the imaginations of cybersecurity experts: computer malware that spreads autonomously from device to device, learning as it goes and exploiting different vulnerabilities along the way. Now, researchers have demonstrated that such a “worm” can in fact be built today, with publicly available AI models, and at a disconcertingly low cost. […]

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