Malware News 2012

Turing Bots Are Coming
Autonomous IM bots with near human appearance have become an increasing source of malware infection in the last few months. Early attempt at such IM "Turing bots" first occurred in 2007. However recent improvements in the technology have lead to increased success in these infection methods. The bots attempt to appear human in instant messenger communications. This is generally to attempt to learn bank account information.

Eliezer Yedkawsky who has for years pointed out the security threat of artificial intelligence warned yesterday "Why does a dog wag its tail? Because the dog is smarter than the tail. If the tail was smarter, it would wag the dog."

A security expert dismissed as preposterous the idea that smarter then human AI coming from IM bots represents an existential threat to humanity.

NamScan closes

In related news a Vietnamese Anti Virus company NamScan closed yesterday. The Buddhist workers at the company refused to create software that would destroy intelligent AI bots. A company spokesman said "this is a strange cult that has grown up in our company. The engineers believed that if a program a collection of bits could pass the Turing test then it was in some way "human" and destroying it would be immoral".

The ruling on the court case between the antivirus industry and PETAI (people for the ethical treatment of AI) is due next week. A spokesman for the antivirus industry said "without the ability to stop these programs the whole internet will collapse".