Project Ire is Microsoft's autonomous AI that reverse engineers software to detect malware without prior knowledge or human intervention.

Microsoft has introduced a groundbreaking artificial intelligence system named Project Ire that can independently analyze, detect, and block malware without any human intervention. This prototype AI agent represents a significant leap forward in cybersecurity by automating what is traditionally a highly manual and expert-driven process—fully reverse engineering software files to assess whether they are malicious.

“It was the first reverse engineer at Microsoft, human or machine, to author a conviction case — a detection strong enough to justify automatic blocking — for a specific advanced persistent threat (APT) malware sample, which has since been identified and blocked by Microsoft Defender,” the Ire research team said.