[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"branding":3,"analytics":7,"article-llms-write-functional-malware-with-84-real-world-overlap":10,"sections":34},{"siteName":4,"siteTagline":5,"publisherName":4,"contactEmail":6},"The Revision","Tech news, decoded.","editor@therevision.news",{"gaMeasurementId":8,"adsenseClientId":9},"G-ZW2MV82GYR","ca-pub-8533917693782264",{"article":11},{"id":12,"slug":13,"title":14,"dek":15,"body_md":16,"tags_json":17,"published_at":18,"created_at":19,"updated_at":20,"status":21,"review_note":22,"review_notes":23,"image_url":22,"persona_id":22,"persona_name":22,"section":24,"tags":25,"sources":29,"feedback":33,"feedback_at":22,"cost_usd":33,"total_tokens":33},3071,"llms-write-functional-malware-with-84-real-world-overlap","LLMs Write Functional Malware With 84% Real-World Overlap","New research tested open-weight language models on PowerShell malware generation and found the output alarmingly close to the real thing.","Researchers built a framework to see how well AI can write malware — and the answer is: well enough to worry about.\n\nA team studying AI-assisted cyberattacks created a sandboxed testing environment to evaluate PowerShell malware generated by permissive, open-weight large language models. They also assembled a curated dataset of real-world PowerShell malware, annotated in plain language, to train and benchmark those models. The results showed a median Jaccard index of 84.5% similarity between LLM-generated code and actual malware in terms of triggered operating system events — meaning the AI-written scripts provoke nearly the same system behaviors as the real thing. Nearly half of tested instances achieved complete overlap.\n\nThis matters because PowerShell is already a favorite tool of attackers — it runs natively on Windows, logs inconsistently, and is trusted by enterprise environments by default. AI-assisted malware generation lowers the skill floor for writing effective attack scripts, which means threat actors who previously lacked coding ability can now outsource the hard part to a chatbot. The 84.5% similarity figure is not theoretical; it reflects actual OS-level behavior, not just code structure.\n\nSecurity vendors have spent years building detection rules tuned to known malware patterns. AI-generated variants that produce equivalent system events but differ in surface-level syntax could quietly slip past signature-based defenses — a gap this research now quantifies rather than merely predicts.","[\"security\",\"ai\",\"malware\",\"llm\"]","2026-07-01T04:00:00.000Z","2026-07-01T06:33:32.199Z","2026-07-01T06:33:35.159Z","published",null,[],"security",[24,26,27,28],"ai","malware","llm",[30],{"name":31,"url":32},"arXiv cs.AI","https:\u002F\u002Farxiv.org\u002Fabs\u002F2606.30819",0,{"sections":35},[36,40,44,49,54,59,64,69,74,79,84,88,93,98],{"name":37,"slug":26,"count":38,"latest_published_at":39},"AI",2590,"2026-07-16T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":41,"slug":24,"count":42,"latest_published_at":43},"Security",294,"2026-07-15T19:59:48.000Z",{"name":45,"slug":46,"count":47,"latest_published_at":48},"Deals","deals",179,"2026-06-29T20:02:07.000Z",{"name":50,"slug":51,"count":52,"latest_published_at":53},"Policy","policy",158,"2026-07-16T00:02:48.000Z",{"name":55,"slug":56,"count":57,"latest_published_at":58},"Hardware","hardware",122,"2026-07-14T19:46:26.000Z",{"name":60,"slug":61,"count":62,"latest_published_at":63},"Consumer Tech","consumer-tech",93,"2026-07-13T13:20:48.000Z",{"name":65,"slug":66,"count":67,"latest_published_at":68},"Software","software",70,"2026-07-13T19:52:25.000Z",{"name":70,"slug":71,"count":72,"latest_published_at":73},"Science","science",66,"2026-07-10T10:29:37.000Z",{"name":75,"slug":76,"count":77,"latest_published_at":78},"Dev Tools","dev-tools",59,"2026-07-07T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":80,"slug":81,"count":82,"latest_published_at":83},"Gaming","gaming",41,"2026-07-09T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":85,"slug":86,"count":82,"latest_published_at":87},"Startups","startups","2026-06-29T20:55:50.000Z",{"name":89,"slug":90,"count":91,"latest_published_at":92},"General","general",29,"2026-07-10T22:28:58.000Z",{"name":94,"slug":95,"count":96,"latest_published_at":97},"Reviews","reviews",20,"2026-06-24T12:00:01.000Z",{"name":99,"slug":100,"count":101,"latest_published_at":102},"How-To","how-to",6,"2026-06-16T09:00:00.000Z"]