Nevada remains two days into a cyberattack that began early Sunday, disrupting government websites, phone systems, and online platforms, and forcing all state offices to close on Monday. The impact of the attack was first felt on Sunday morning, with the Governor’s Technology Office stating that a ‘network issue’ began around 1:52 AM PT, affecting...Read More
Don’t miss out on our latest stories. Add PCMag as a preferred source on Google. Whether for malicious purposes or simply research, someone appears to be using OpenAI’s open-source model for ransomware attacks, according to antivirus company ESET. On Tuesday, ESET said it had discovered “the first known AI-powered ransomware,” which the company has named...Read More
ESET malware researchers Anton Cherepanov and Peter Strycek have discovered what they describe as the “first known AI-powered ransomware,” which they named PromptLock. The good news, according to the duo, who detailed PromptLock in a series of social media posts and screenshots on Tuesday, is that the malware doesn’t appear to be fully functional — yet....Read More
Researchers at cybersecurity firm ESET claim to have identified the first piece of AI-powered ransomware in the wild. The malware, called PromptLock, essentially functions as a hard-coded prompt injection attack on a large language model, causing the model to assist in carrying out a ransomware attack. Written in Golang programming code, the malware sends its...Read More
ESET today announced the discovery of “the first known AI-powered ransomware.” The ransomware in question has been dubbed PromptLock, presumably because seemingly everything related to generative AI has to be prefixed with “prompt.” ESET said that this malware uses an open-weight large language model developed by OpenAI to generate scripts that can perform a variety...Read More
Don’t miss out on our latest stories. Add PCMag as a preferred source on Google. Whether for malicious purposes or simply research, someone appears to be using OpenAI’s open-source model for ransomware attacks, according to antivirus company ESET. On Tuesday, ESET said it had discovered “the first known AI-powered ransomware,” which the company has named...Read More
A new ransomware has been identified, which is believed to be the first-ever ransomware strain that leverages a local AI model to generate its malicious components. Dubbed “PromptLock” by the ESET Research team that discovered it, the malware uses OpenAI’s gpt-oss:20b model via the Ollama API to create custom, cross-platform Lua scripts for its attack...Read More
Attack shows the vulnerability of the semiconductor supply chain. The U.S. electronics manufacturer Data I/O had important operational systems disrupted by a ransomware attack. According to The Record, the attack began on August 16th with it impacting manufacturing, production, shipping, and other support functions. Immediate system takedowns and other key measures have been adopted by...Read More
PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 26, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Mimic, the cybersecurity company pioneering real-time ransomware deflection and application resilience, today announced that it has achieved FedRAMP Ready status, as designated by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). This designation marks a significant milestone in Mimic’s journey to full FedRAMP Authorization and positions the...Read More
Nissan Japan has confirmed to BleepingComputer that it suffered a data breach following unauthorized access to a server of one of its subsidiaries, Creative Box Inc. (CBI). This came in response to the Qilin ransomware group’s claims that they had stolen four terabytes of data from CBI, including 3D vehicle design models, internal reports, financial...Read More
