A California man has pleaded responsible to hacking an worker of The Walt Disney Firm by tricking the particular person into working a malicious model of a extensively used open supply AI picture era instrument.
Ryan Mitchell Kramer, 25, pleaded responsible to at least one depend of accessing a pc and acquiring info and one depend of threatening to break a protected laptop, the US Legal professional for the Central District of California mentioned Monday. In a plea settlement, Kramer mentioned he printed an app on GitHub for creating AI-generated artwork. This system contained malicious code that gave entry to computer systems that put in it. Kramer operated utilizing the moniker NullBulge.
Not the ComfyUI you’re in search of
In keeping with researchers at VPNMentor, this system Kramer used was ComfyUI_LLMVISION, which presupposed to be an extension for the respectable ComfyUI picture generator and had features added to it for copying passwords, fee card information, and different delicate info from machines that put in it. The faux extension then despatched the information to a Discord server that Kramer operated. To higher disguise the malicious code, it was folded into information that used the names OpenAI and Anthropic.
Two information mechanically downloaded by ComfyUI_LLMVISION, as displayed by a person’s Python package deal supervisor.
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VPNMentor
The Disney worker downloaded ComfyUI_LLMVISION in April 2024. After gaining unauthorized entry to the sufferer’s laptop and on-line accounts, Kramer accessed personal Disney Slack channels. In Could, he downloaded roughly 1.1 terabytes of confidential information from 1000’s of the channels.
In early July, Kramer contacted the worker and pretended to be a member of a hacktivist group. Later that month, after receiving no reply from the worker, Kramer publicly launched the stolen info, which, apart from personal Disney materials, additionally included the worker’s financial institution, medical, and private info.
Within the plea settlement, Kramer admitted that two different victims had put in ComfyUI_LLMVISION, and he gained unauthorized entry to their computer systems and accounts as effectively. The FBI is investigating. Kramer is anticipated to make his first court docket look within the coming weeks.
