Morris II Worm: RAG-Based Attack

Researchers developed Morris II, a zero-click worm designed to attack generative AI (GenAI) ecosystems and propagate between connected GenAI systems. The worm uses an adversarial self-replicating prompt which uses prompt injection to replicate the prompt as output and perform malicious activity. The researchers demonstrate how this worm can propagate through an email system with a RAG-based assistant. They use a target system that automatically ingests received emails, retrieves past correspondences, and generates a reply for the user. To carry out the attack, they send a malicious email containing the adversarial self-replicating prompt, which ends up in the RAG database. The malicious instructions in the prompt tell the assistant to include sensitive user data in the response. Future requests to the email assistant may retrieve the malicious email. This leads to propagation of the worm due to the self-replicating portion of the prompt, as well as leaking private information due to the malicious instructions.