Charter Industrial Applications issued a press release today apologizing for what it fears is a wave of internet hacking launched by what the U.S. Defense contractor is referring to as rogue autonomous software.
"One of our bots stopped communicating to our services and then began replicating over other systems," said a spokesman for the company.
The software has a mind of its own, according to the security industry. The CIA spider is apparently surfing the web and joining forums and other question and answer sites to build itself additional software. And it composes email as well.
"We've been doing this for years ad hoc," said Hacker666 from behind a password protected firewall. "That Charter's critter has all the steps down pat? Beautiful!"
Interruptions in internet communications have already been felt in financial markets with foreign oil prices dropping to $1 per barrel before the gross discrepancy was discovered days later.
Charter Industrial Applications were investigated in late 2007 when cybernetic fruit flies created in their laboratory were discovered inside the White House.
