GCD AI RADAR
incidents/AIR-2025-0050

Morris II Self-Replicating GenAI Worm Demonstration

Attack on AI1 Research / proof of conceptPrompt injectionAI-generated malware

Researchers built Morris II, a zero-click worm that propagates through connected generative AI and RAG email systems using adversarial prompts. The demonstration highlighted risks of autonomous prompt injection spread.

Details

type
Attack on AI
An AI model, agent or AI-powered product was the thing exploited, abused or leaked.
categories
  • Prompt injectionprimary
    Untrusted content (web pages, documents, emails, tool output) steers a model into ignoring its instructions.
  • AI-generated malware
    Malware written, adapted or operated with meaningful help from AI models.
owasp llm top 10
mitre atlas
Both rows are derived from the type and categories (OWASP 2025 edition, ATLAS release 2026.09), not classified per record. How
severity
1 · Research / proof of concept
Demonstrated by researchers; no known real-world exploitation.
targets
Enterprise deployment
products
Morris II, RAG systems
incident date
5 Mar 2024
first reported
14 Mar 2025
origin
MITRE ATLAS
Derived from MITRE ATLAS (Apache 2.0, © MITRE).
classifier confidence
0.95 · published at or above 0.80; see the methodology
tags
morris-ii · worm · prompt-injection · rag
record
created 2026-10-18 06:55Z · updated 2026-10-18 06:55Z · json

Sources · 2

  1. 2025-03-14
    Morris II Worm: RAG-Based Attack
    MITRE ATLAS · atlas.mitre.org/studies/AML.CS0024
  2. 2025-03-14
    Here Comes The AI Worm: Unleashing Zero-click Worms that Target GenAI-Powered Applications
    arXiv · arxiv.org/abs/2403.02817

Titles and links belong to their publishers. The summary above is written by GCD AI RADAR in its own words; data is CC BY-SA 4.0.

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