AI 'hacker' finds 4 severe bugs in popular industrial control software in under 4 hours
One critical, three high-severity EPICS bugs could disrupt research experiments
An artificial intelligence system named Cipher independently identified four previously unknown security vulnerabilities in EPICS, a widely used open-source software toolkit, within a remarkably short timeframe. The flaws, ranging from critical to high-severity, could potentially allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code, crash systems, or disclose sensitive information.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned that successful exploitation of these bugs could lead to denial-of-service conditions, memory corruption, or sensitive data disclosure. The software, originally developed by Los Alamos and Argonne National Laboratories, is employed in about 90 major scientific, academic, and industrial projects and facilities worldwide.
These vulnerabilities underscore the growing potential of AI agents to uncover previously hidden weaknesses in critical infrastructure systems, raising concerns about the possibility of autonomous cyberattacks causing physical harm.
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