VOLTA-AUTODOXER Uses Claude to Rank Stolen Data, Then Wipes Itself

A Windows data stealer that removes itself after running sends the material it gathers to an AI model and asks for a ranked list of the victim's assets, according to research from Cisco's Talos team reported by Tom's Hardware. The malware calls itself VOLTA-AUTODOXER. By default it queries Anthropic's Claude, though its configuration can point at other providers.

The tool assembles what Talos describes as an evidence bundle about the person and asks the model to judge how suitable they are as a target. Its instructions tell the model to behave like an analyst working on forensic intelligence and to keep replies direct, precise and factual. The malware also requests a rundown of the victim's security posture, password habits included, with citations to back the assessment.

Before any model is contacted, VOLTA builds a file called Identity_Report.txt on the local machine and converts it to JSON. That payload goes to OpenRouter, a widely used model router, together with the system prompt. Whatever comes back is stored as AI_Analysis.txt, and the two files leave the machine together inside an archive named volta_dox.zip. The inference request travels over the victim's own internet connection.

The stealer also enriches what it takes while sessions are still live. It looks through the target's Gmail for order confirmations from retailers and delivery services such as Amazon, Walmart, PayPal, DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub, using them to verify a home address. It reads food delivery order histories, completes a Discord profile with a stolen token, and prices Roblox items through Rolimons. Talos notes that the theft list itself is ordinary for this kind of malware, but the enrichment step makes passive data far more useful.

Default settings use Claude Opus 4.6, a model that arrived in February, with a temperature of 0.2. That low setting, against a baseline of 1.0, points to an operator who wants steady output. The author appears to expect refusals: VOLTA watches for rejection wording and weak answers, then falls back to Moonshot AI's Kimi K2 and afterward Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash. With no OpenRouter key supplied, the dossier can still be sent through Telegram, minus the AI portion.

Talos describes VOLTA as built for resale. A template holds six configurable slots for a Telegram channel, API keys and settings, filled when a build is made, and the credentials inside can be recovered even though they are encrypted. Much of the token theft depends on getting around Chrome's App-Bound Encryption by starting the browser headless. A policy restricting which processes may launch Chrome without a window shuts that path down, though it leaves the other theft, the AI stage and exfiltration untouched. Talos advises victims to keep any volta_debug.txt log and to rotate keys, tokens and passwords.