Since its beta launch in November, AI chatbot ChatGPT has been used for a wide range of tasks, including writing poetry, technical papers, novels, and essays, planning parties, and learning about new topics.Researchers at security firm Check Point Research reported Friday that within a few weeks of ChatGPT going live, participants in cybercrime forums—some with little or no coding experience—were using it to write software and emails that could be used for espionage, ransomware, malicious spam, and other malicious tasks.“Overall, this individual seems to be a tech-oriented threat actor, and the purpose of his posts is to show less technically capable cybercriminals how to utilize ChatGPT for malicious purposes, with real examples they can immediately use.”Yet another example of ChatGPT-produced crimeware was designed to create an automated online bazaar for buying or trading credentials for compromised accounts, payment card data, malware, and other illicit goods or services.At first, the outputted script was fairly primitive:When the researchers instructed ChatGPT to iterate the code several more times, however, the quality of the code vastly improved:The researchers then used a more advanced AI service called Codex to develop other types of malware, including a reverse shell and scripts for port scanning, sandbox detection, and compiling their Python code to a Windows executable.It’s too early to know precisely how it will shape the future of offensive hacking and defensive remediation, but it’s a fair bet that it will only intensify the arms race between defenders and threat actors."