GoKawiil
Tech News
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an open letter warning that AI-driven botnet swarms could seize control of large parts of the internet within six to twelve months, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. He is urging a deliberate slowdown in frontier AI development to buy time for safety and alignment work, a call now echoed publicly by Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has cautioned that rapidly advancing AI capabilities could enable a persistent, AI-driven botnet swarm to take over large parts of the internet within 6 to 12 months, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Former Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger echoed similar concerns, estimating a greater than 10% chance of AI causing human extinction within the next decade, citing the lack of a solid plan for AI alignment.
U.S. and European authorities, alongside CrowdStrike's Counter Adversary Operations team, seized domains tied to the Sality botnet in the United States, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. CrowdStrike also ran a peer-to-peer sinkhole operation that cut off command channels and isolated infected machines from the botnet's controllers, attributed to a Russia-based group tracked as SALTY SPIDER.
Researchers have identified that operators behind the BadBox click-fraud botnet are now targeting Android-powered vehicle head units, exploiting built-in update mechanisms to push malicious software onto the devices. This marks an expansion of the botnet's reach beyond streaming boxes and smart TVs into automotive infotainment systems.
The Justice Department announced it has seized domains used by a Chinese state-linked botnet known as QTFY, run by Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Tech, disrupting its command-and-control infrastructure. The botnet reportedly enabled hackers tied to China's Ministry of State Security to infiltrate U.S. government and private-sector networks, including NASA, the Federal Reserve, several federal departments, and, as recently as this year, the Senate. Lumen, a network provider that assisted the FBI, said it had tracked the group profiling government, defense, and aerospace targets for roughly a year before the takedown.
Kaspersky researchers discovered a new Android malware strain in June 2026 that spreads through the built-in update mechanisms of Android-based automotive head units, marking the first documented infection chain targeting this device category. The app installs silently with no interface, functioning as a multi-stage downloader designed for ad fraud and building a proxy botnet. Kaspersky attributes the campaign with high confidence to MoYu Group, an actor tied to the previously known BADBOX botnet.