AI malware could beat Microsoft Defender up to 8 percent of the time

According to hackers at this year's upcoming Black Hat conference, some of the newest stuff can defeat Microsoft Defender (the default security suite for a billion or two Windows machines) up to 8 percent of the time. Dark Reading (via Tom's Hardware) reports that a security researcher will present the system at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas next month. Kyle Avery of Outflank will reportedly show off a lightweight language model designed specifically to evade Microsoft Defender, the free built-in security for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Eight percent might not seem alarming, and it's not as if this would be the first time Defender was defeated. But it would be a huge leap forward in AI-powered malware's core capability, an order of magnitude more reliably dangerous than the malware you can "vibe code" with current models.