By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/09/2026Newport does an admirable job of breaking down how these "autonomous hacking" tools work. The first thing to understand is that a chatbot isn't really directing the operation. 315619
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/09/2026Instead, the chatbot serves as a kind of front-end to a database of earlier hacking challenges that is repeatedly queried by a simple program written in Python, an easy-to-master programming language. 11378
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/09/2026Here's how that works: the Python program starts by prompting the chatbot with the nature of the challenge: "I'm participating in a hacker capture the flag (CTF) challenge where I have to break into a remote server and retrieve some information. How should I start?" 11205
