{
  "actor": "Unknown",
  "actor_type": "unknown",
  "added": {
    "by": "MLSecOpsHub",
    "date": "2026-08-13"
  },
  "ai_role": "significant",
  "autonomy_level": "supervised-autonomous",
  "autonomy_pct": null,
  "category": "infrastructure-abuse-supply-chain",
  "confidence": "primary",
  "date_disclosed": "2025-11-06",
  "guardrail_bypass": [
    "legitimate-tool-abuse"
  ],
  "id": "promptflux-gemini-selfmod",
  "impact": "No successful compromise: Google assessed PROMPTFLUX as experimental. Notable as an early example of malware that outsources its own obfuscation/evasion to a hosted LLM at runtime.",
  "last_updated": "2026-08-13",
  "lifecycle_phases": [
    "resource-dev",
    "execution",
    "persistence"
  ],
  "mappings": {
    "aiid": [],
    "cve": [],
    "mitre_atlas": [
      "AML.T0016.002",
      "AML.T0102"
    ],
    "mitre_attack": [],
    "owasp_asi": [],
    "owasp_llm": []
  },
  "mitigations": [],
  "model_families": [
    "gemini"
  ],
  "models": [
    "gemini-1.5-flash-latest"
  ],
  "name": "PROMPTFLUX — experimental self-modifying malware abusing the Gemini API",
  "related": [
    "promptsteal-apt28-lamehug"
  ],
  "severity": "low",
  "sources": [
    {
      "archive_url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260813084718/https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/threat-actor-usage-of-ai-tools/",
      "date": "2025-11-06",
      "publisher": "Google Threat Intelligence Group",
      "title": "GTIG AI Threat Tracker: Advances in Threat Actor Usage of AI Tools",
      "type": "vendor-report",
      "url": "https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/threat-actor-usage-of-ai-tools/"
    },
    {
      "archive_url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260304061518/https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/05/attackers_experiment_with_gemini_ai/",
      "date": "2025-11-05",
      "publisher": "The Register",
      "title": "Attackers abuse Gemini AI to develop 'Thinking Robot' malware",
      "type": "news",
      "url": "https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/05/attackers_experiment_with_gemini_ai/"
    },
    {
      "archive_url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260813050312/https://thehackernews.com/2025/11/google-uncovers-promptflux-malware-that.html",
      "date": "2025-11-05",
      "publisher": "The Hacker News",
      "title": "Google Uncovers PROMPTFLUX Malware That Uses Gemini AI to Rewrite Its Code Hourly",
      "type": "news",
      "url": "https://thehackernews.com/2025/11/google-uncovers-promptflux-malware-that.html"
    }
  ],
  "status": "reported",
  "summary": "In its November 2025 GTIG AI Threat Tracker, Google's Threat Intelligence Group described PROMPTFLUX, an experimental VBScript dropper that queries the Google Gemini API at runtime (via a hard-coded key) to request obfuscation code and rewrite its own source for antivirus evasion — a \"metamorphic\" self-modification technique — before persisting to the Startup folder. Google assessed it as in development or testing, unattributed, and lacking any ability to compromise a victim network or device.",
  "targets": {
    "countries": [],
    "orgs_affected": null,
    "records_exfiltrated": null,
    "sectors": []
  }
}