Hackers Obfuscated Malware With Verbose AI Code

Attackers Hid Malware in Vector Image Rashmi Ramesh (rashmiramesh_) • September 24, 2025

Hackers behind a phishing campaign appear to have used artificial intelligence-generated code to hide malware behind a wall of overly complex and useless code, said Microsoft.

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The computing giant said Wednesday it ran code culled from credential phishing malware through its own AI tool. Microsoft Security Copilot pronounced the code to be "not something a human would typically write from scratch due to its complexity, verbosity and lack of practical utility."

The attack began with phishing emails that employed a self-address tactic, where the sender and recipient addresses matched, while the actual targets were hidden in the BCC field to bypass basic detection systems. The emails contained messages crafted to resemble file-sharing notifications, with attachments named "23mb – PDF- 6 pages.svg" designed to appear as legitimate PDF ...