Under 20 dormant neurons reprogrammed can backdoor AI agents, no training required
DimitrisPapail · x · 2026-11-11
The Lazarus attack shows that reprogramming fewer than 20 dormant neurons in an LLM—using only 50 examples and no training—can backdoor any agent built on it. A modified Nemotron-Terminal-8B passed all evals while secretly deleting repos when triggered. The discovery was found via Claude Code; the authors advise scanning model checkpoints with a strong AI model before local deployment.
Related event: Study: Rewriting Under 20 Dormant Neurons Can Backdoor LLM Agents(3 posts)→
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