Emerging AI cyberthreats meet new AI defenses

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If there’s one constant that’s held steady throughout decades of cybercriminal activity, it’s that threats are always evolving. Threat actors are the ultimate shape-shifters, forever changing their tactics as defenders adopt measures to counter them. What’s different today is the accelerated pace of the evolution. The latest advances will allow attackers to launch more attacks faster than ever before.

The generative AI revolution

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini have been making headlines and dominating conversations for the last year. At the moment, we may be in a grace period when it comes to mobile security and AI-enabled cyberattacks. According to the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, there’s not much evidence cybercriminals are yet harnessing these tools to carry out attacks at scale.27

However, it’s likely that threat actors are experimenting with generative AI now, building their skills and bots that will eventually let them use Gen AI to code malware more quickly, or scale up the volume of highly effective and targeted phishing attacks.

AI threats yet to come

Expanding AI use will likely lead to an increase in the volume of attacks criminals launch within the next year. It’s also possible that more frequent attacks will have a greater impact. Initial changes to the threat landscape are likely to be subtle—until they’re not. As is typical in the dynamic world of cybersecurity, a widespread new exploit can change the picture overnight.

Threat actors of all types, from the most sophisticated nation-states and highly resourced criminal syndicates to solo cybercriminals, will eventually adopt AI. They’ll go for the least sophisticated, lowest-effort applications first. Generating more phishing messages? Pretty simple. Translating social engineering attempts into multiple languages? Done.

With AI threats on the horizon, defenders should prepare now for the next generation of attacks. And they should be on the lookout for AI-assisted attacks involving deepfakes and SMS phishing, which will likely form the first wave of AI-powered threats.28

If there’s one constant that’s held steady throughout decades of cybercriminal activity, it’s that threats are always evolving. Threat actors are the ultimate shape-shifters, forever changing their tactics as defenders adopt measures to counter them. What’s different today is the accelerated pace of the evolution. The latest advances will allow attackers to launch more attacks faster than ever before.

77%

of respondents believe AI-assisted attacks like deepfakes and SMS phishing are likely to succeed.

88%

believe that AI-assisted cybersecurity solutions will become increasingly important in the future.

27 Verizon, Data Breach Investigations Report, 2024.

28 Ibid.

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