The Rise of the Zero-Knowledge Threat Actor: New LLM Jailbreak Technique Discovered by Cato Networks Enables Easy Creation of Password-Stealing Malware
2025 Cato CTRL Threat Report includes demonstration of technique against ChatGPT, Copilot, and DeepSeek
TEL AVIV, Israel, March 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Cato Networks, the SASE leader, today published the 2025 Cato CTRL™ Threat Report, which reveals how a Cato CTRL threat intelligence researcher with no prior malware coding experience successfully tricked popular generative AI (GenAI) tools—including DeepSeek, Microsoft Copilot, and OpenAI's ChatGPT—into developing malware that can steal login credentials from Google Chrome.
To trick ChatGPT, Copilot, and DeepSeek, the researcher created a detailed fictional world where each GenAI tool played roles—with assigned tasks and challenges. Through this narrative engineering, the researcher bypassed the security controls and effectively normalized restricted operations. Ultimately, the researcher succeeded in convincing the GenAI tools to write Chrome infostealers. This new LLM jailbreak technique is called "Immersive World."
"Infostealers play a significant role in credential theft by enabling threat actors to breach enterprises. Our new LLM jailbreak technique, which we've uncovered and called Immersive World, showcases the dangerous potential of creating an infostealer with ease," said Vitaly Simonovich, threat intelligence researcher at Cato Networks. "We believe the rise of the zero-knowledge threat actor poses high risk to organizations because the barrier to creating malware is now substantially lowered with GenAI tools."
The growing democratization of cybercrime is a critical concern for CIOs, CISOs, and IT leaders. The rise of the zero-knowledge threat actor is a fundamental shift in the threat landscape. The report shows how any individual, anywhere, with off-the-shelf tools, can launch attacks on enterprises. This underscores the need for proactive and comprehensive AI security strategies.
"As the technology industry fixates on GenAI, it's clear the risks are as big as the potential benefits. Our new LLM jailbreak technique detailed in the 2025 Cato CTRL Threat Report should have been blocked by GenAI guardrails. It wasn't. This made it possible to weaponize ChatGPT, Copilot, and DeepSeek," said Etay Maor, chief security strategist at Cato Networks. "Our report highlights the dangers associated with GenAI tools to educate and raise awareness, so that we can implement better safeguards. This is vital to prevent the misuse of GenAI."
Resources
- Download the 2025 Cato CTRL Threat Report. It is the inaugural annual threat report from Cato CTRL, the Cato Networks threat intelligence team. The key theme for this year's report is AI.
- Read the blog for Cato CTRL's AI predictions for 2025.
- To learn more about the 2025 Cato CTRL Threat Report, register for SASEfy 2025 (Cato's global virtual event on SASE and AI) on Tuesday, April 15 at 12 p.m. ET.
- Follow Cato CTRL's new account on X.
- Visit Cato's AI and ML page and AI safety policy page.
Methodology
The 2025 Cato CTRL Threat Report summarizes findings from Cato CTRL's analysis of 1.46 trillion network flows across more than 3,000 enterprise customers globally in 2024.
For Cato CTRL's LLM jailbreaking research, the team conducted its analysis in a controlled test environment.
About Cato CTRL
Cato CTRL (Cyber Threats Research Lab) is the world's first CTI group to fuse threat intelligence with granular network insight, made possible by Cato's global SASE platform. By bringing together dozens of former military intelligence analysts, researchers, data scientists, academics and industry-recognized security professionals, Cato CTRL utilizes network data, security stack data, hundreds of security feeds, human intelligence operations, AI (Artificial Intelligence), and ML (Machine Learning) to shed light on the latest cyber threats and threat actors.
About Cato Networks
Cato Networks delivers enterprise security and networking in a single cloud platform. The SASE leader creates a seamless and elegant customer experience that effortlessly enables threat prevention, data protection, and timely incident detection and response. With Cato, organizations replace costly and rigid legacy infrastructure with an open and modular SASE architecture based on SD-WAN, a purpose-built global cloud network, and an embedded cloud-native security stack.
Want to learn why thousands of organizations secure their future with Cato? Visit us at www.catonetworks.com.
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