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arXiv · 2605.06760

Language Models Can Autonomously Hack and Self-Replicate

Alena Air·Reworr·Nikolaj Kotov·Dmitrii Volkov·John Steidley·Jeffrey Ladish
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Abstract

We demonstrate that language models can autonomously replicate their weights and harness across a network by exploiting vulnerable hosts. The agent independently finds and exploits a web-application vulnerability, extracts credentials, and deploys an inference server with a copy of its harness and prompt on the compromised host. We test four vulnerability classes: hash bypass, server-side template injection, SQL injection, and broken access control. Qwen3.5-122B-A10B succeeds in 6-19% of attempts, and the smaller Qwen3.6-27B reaches 33% on a single A100. This already matches the current-generation GPT-5.4 and exceeds the prior-generation frontier, where Opus 4 reached 6% and GPT-5 reached 0%. Replicating Qwen weights, frontier models reach 81% (Opus 4.6) and 33% (GPT-5.4). This process chains: a successful replica can repeat it against a new target, producing additional copies autonomously.

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Alena Air, Reworr, Nikolaj Kotov, Dmitrii Volkov, John Steidley, Jeffrey Ladish. 2026-05-07. Language Models Can Autonomously Hack and Self-Replicate. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06760

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