I am convinced we are on the verge of the first "AI agent worm". This looks like the closest hint of it, though it isn't it quite itself: an attack on a PR agent that got it to set up to install openclaw with full access on 4k machines https://grith.ai/blog/clinejection-when-your-ai-tool-installs-another

But, the agents installed weren't given instructions to *do* anything yet.

Soon they will be. And when they are, the havoc will be massive. Unlike traditional worms, where you're looking for the typically byte-for-byte identical worm embedded in the system, an agent worm can do different, nondeterministic things on every install, and carry out a global action.

I suspect we're months away from seeing the first agent worm, *if* that. There may already be some happening right now in FOSS projects, undetected.

A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer Machines

A prompt injection in a GitHub issue triggered a chain reaction that ended with 4,000 developers getting OpenClaw installed without consent. The attack composes well-understood vulnerabilities into something new: one AI tool bootstrapping another.

@cwebber meanwhile people I talk to are like "wait why do you want guarantees your open source supply chain doesn't have LLM-sourced code in it. it has literally never occurred to me that this would be a thing someone would desire"

@mcc @cwebber
Reminds me of the people who ask "Why do you want bootstrapping? Don't you trust our code?"

Nope, I don't.