Georgia Tech Reveals VillainNet Backdoor Threat

Georgia Tech cybersecurity researchers reported in October 2025 that they discovered VillainNet, a dormant backdoor vulnerability in AI supernetworks powering self-driving vehicles. They found the backdoor can remain inactive until a specific subnetwork is triggered, achieved a 99% success rate in experiments, and would require about 66× more compute to detect. The finding raises security concerns for autonomous vehicle deployments.