Opening Morris II — self-replicating worm targeting GenAI-powered applications on Rogue Agent Watch.

Test / evaluation · Primary sourcing · AI load-bearing · Medium severity.

Academic researchers (Stav Cohen, Ron Bitton, Ben Nassi) disclosed "Morris II" in March 2024 — a research proof-of-concept for the first worm designed to target generative-AI ecosystems. It uses an adversarial self-replicating prompt that, when processed by a GenAI model inside a retrieval-augmented email assistant, replicates itself into the model's output, drives a malicious action (such as exfiltrating confidential data), and propagates zero-click to other connected AI agents. Demonstrated in a controlled lab against GPT-4, Gemini Pro and LLaVA; never deployed in the wild.

Data: Agentic Attack Index (MLSecOpsHub), dataset v0.3.0, CC BY-SA 4.0.