Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

How do you "hack a lab and synthesize something"?

Remember Stuxnet? Hack one of these, wait until the right compounds are physically loaded, then execute https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/products/chemistry-and-bi...

Stuxnet misconfigured industrial equipment that was already set up to run, and all it did was break that equipment. This scenario sets a much, much higher bar.

I guarantee there's misconfigured chemical analysis equipment out there exposed to the internet.

I don't think the grandparent was implying the AI would be controlling robot arms to mix things directly (or at least I didn't interpret as such), but it could very well sit in the network until it notices two dangerous compounds in the same machine, and trigger a breakage that causes a harmful mixture. Break a vial containing a virus, then break two more that cause an emergency evac and maybe that's enough to get something out there.

I have no doubt that somewhere there's chemical equipment an Internet attacker could break, or, maybe, if I have to stipulate, misconfigure enough to, like, poison someone. But my question is about the notion that you could synthesize a specific scary substance.

Well right now this would be highly implausible (still possible though).

But what I garner is that AI/robotics led wet lab work is in progress. And hacking the AI running the wet lab to make a virus is definitely plausible as that seems to be one of the directions we’re going in the AI+biopharma space

First, hack into a factory and invent machines that can do lab-bench chemistry. Then...

These days you can only try, that's why I wrote that :)

But in the near future labs will be more automated I guess.

The other option you can try these days is maybe social engineering, impersonation, etc. where you try to persuade someone to do that for you.

It’s complete science fiction so they’re allowed to say anything. They could have said the AI will upload itself to the internet, start self replicating, hack the stock market. Whatever they want because it’s all made up nonsense.

Do you even need to hack a lab? Can't you just send an arbitrary sequence to some company and they'll do it for you?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com