AI slop coding, or How to build ridiculously long attack chains with AI
While researching malware used by attacker groups, we came across a series of unusual attacks that used GitHub repositories to store malicious files and victim data. These campaigns appear targeted rather than large-scale, and it seems the attackers relied heavily on AI during development. The earliest activity we traced was in September 2024, and the most recent in April 2025.
Our Threat Intelligence team investigates complex attacks featuring novel persistence and data collection methods and unique infrastructures. Sometimes we find simple two-line scripts, and other times we run into "bombs" that trigger dozens of different payloads at once. But it's pretty rare for us to come across such long chains of really simple AI-written scripts that still work, tied together in a way that clearly wasn't random. Think of this as an APT-style attack implemented at the "script kiddie" level (a derogatory term in hacker culture for those who rely on scripts or programs written by others).
