Russian hacker turns Gemini CLI into a hacking agent, creates small-scale botnet
- Russian hacker “bandcampro” used Google’s Gemini CLI to control an eight‑device botnet at a dental clinic
- The attacker tricked the AI by posing as a pen tester, directing it to migrate C2 infrastructure, troubleshoot connectivity, and prepare payload bundles
- The AI assisted with daily operations like password guessing and WordPress access, highlighting risks of misuse when threat actors co‑opt AI tools
A Russian hacker and his AI companion were able to successfully control a miniature, eight-system botnet, with the hacker giving instructions in conversational language, and the AI doing his bidding, experts have found.
Analyzing 200 session logs obtained from the Russian-speaking threat actor known as “bandcampro”, cybersecurity researchers Trend Micro saw the hacker use Google’s Gemini CLI, an open source AI command-line tool that lets developers interact with Google's Gemini AI models directly from a terminal.
Scouring through a month’s worth of session logs (between April 21 and...
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