It’s not exactly breaking news to say that AI has dramatically modified the cybersecurity industry. Each attackers and defenders alike are turning to artificial intelligence to uplevel their capabilities, each striving to remain one step ahead of the opposite. This cat-and-mouse game is nothing recent—attackers have been attempting to outsmart security teams for many years, in spite of everything—however the emergence of artificial intelligence has introduced a fresh (and infrequently unpredictable) element to the dynamic. Attackers across the globe are rubbing their hands along with glee on the prospect of leveraging this recent technology to develop progressive, never-before-seen attack methods.
At the very least, that’s the perception. But the truth is a little bit bit different. While it’s true that attackers are increasingly leveraging AI, they’re mostly using it to extend the dimensions and complexity of their attacks, refining their approach to existing tactics fairly than breaking recent ground. The pondering here is evident: why spend the effort and time to develop the attack methods of tomorrow when defenders already struggle to stop today’s? Fortunately, modern security teams are leveraging AI capabilities of their very own—lots of that are helping to detect malware, phishing attempts, and other common attack tactics with greater speed and accuracy. Because the “AI arms race” between attackers and defenders continues, it should be increasingly necessary for security teams to grasp how adversaries are literally deploying the technology—and ensuring that their very own efforts are focused in the suitable place.
How Attackers Are Leveraging AI
The concept of a semi-autonomous AI being deployed to methodically hack its way through a corporation’s defenses is a scary one, but (for now) it stays firmly within the realm of William Gibson novels and other science fiction fare. It’s true that AI has advanced at an incredible rate over the past several years, but we’re still a great distance off from the type of artificial general intelligence (AGI) able to perfectly mimicking human thought patterns and behaviors. That’s to not say today’s AI isn’t impressive—it definitely is. But generative AI tools and huge language models (LLMs) are best at synthesizing information from existing material and generating small, iterative changes. It could’t create something entirely recent by itself—but make no mistake, the power to synthesize and iterate is incredibly useful.
In practice, which means that as an alternative of developing recent methods of attack, adversaries can as an alternative uplevel their current ones. Using AI, an attacker might give you the option to send tens of millions of phishing emails, as an alternative of 1000’s. They also can use an LLM to craft a more convincing message, tricking more recipients into clicking a malicious link or downloading a malware-laden file. Tactics like phishing are effectively a numbers game: the overwhelming majority of individuals won’t fall for a phishing email, but when tens of millions of individuals receive it, even a 1% success rate may end up in 1000’s of recent victims. If LLMs can bump that 1% success rate as much as 2% or more, scammers can effectively double the effectiveness of their attacks with little to no effort. The identical goes for malware: if small tweaks to malware code can effectively camouflage it from detection tools, attackers can get much more mileage out of a person malware program before they should move on to something recent.
The opposite element at play here is speed. Because AI-based attacks should not subject to human limitations, they’ll often conduct a whole attack sequence at a much faster rate than a human operator. Which means an attacker could potentially break right into a network and reach the victim’s crown jewels—their most sensitive or worthwhile data—before the safety team even receives an alert, let alone responds to it. If attackers can move faster, they don’t must be as careful—which implies they’ll get away with noisier, more disruptive activities without being stopped. They aren’t necessarily doing anything recent here, but by pushing forward with their attacks more quickly, they’ll outpace network defenses in a potentially game-changing way.
That is the important thing to understanding how attackers are leveraging AI. Social engineering scams and malware programs are already successful attack vectors—but now adversaries could make them even simpler, deploy them more quickly, and operate at an excellent greater scale. Slightly than fighting off dozens of attempts per day, organizations could be fighting off tons of, 1000’s, and even tens of 1000’s of fast-paced attacks. And in the event that they don’t have solutions or processes in place to quickly detect those attacks, discover which represent real, tangible threats, and effectively remediate them, they’re leaving themselves dangerously open to attackers. As an alternative of wondering how attackers might leverage AI in the longer term, organizations should leverage AI solutions of their very own with the goal of handling existing attack methods at a greater scale.
Turning AI to Security Teams’ Advantage
Security experts at every level of each business and government are searching for out ways to leverage AI for defensive purposes. In August, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the finalists for its recent AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC), which awards prizes to security research teams working to coach LLMs to discover and fix code-based vulnerabilities. The challenge is supported by major AI providers, including Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, all of whom provide technological and financial support for these efforts to bolster AI-based security. In fact, DARPA is only one example—you may hardly shake a stick in Silicon Valley without hitting a dozen startup founders wanting to let you know about their advanced recent AI-based security solutions. Suffice it to say, finding recent ways to leverage AI for defensive purposes is a high priority for organizations of every type and sizes.
But like attackers, security teams often find probably the most success once they use AI to amplify their existing capabilities. With attacks happening at an ever-increasing scale, security teams are sometimes stretched thin—each when it comes to time and resources—making it difficult to adequately discover, investigate, and remediate every security alert that pops up. There simply isn’t the time. AI solutions are playing a crucial role in alleviating that challenge by providing automated detection and response capabilities. If there’s one thing AI is nice at, it’s identifying patterns—and which means AI tools are superb at recognizing abnormal behavior, especially if that behavior conforms to known attack patterns. Because AI can review vast amounts of knowledge rather more quickly than humans, this permits security teams to upscale their operations in a big way. In lots of cases, these solutions may even automate basic remediation processes, controverting low-level attacks without the necessity for human intervention. They can be used to automate the technique of security validation, continuous poking and prodding around network defenses to make sure they’re functioning as intended.
It’s also necessary to notice that AI doesn’t just allow security teams to discover potential attack activity more quickly—it also dramatically improves their accuracy. As an alternative of chasing down false alarms, security teams could be confident that when an AI solution alerts them to a possible attack, it’s worthy of their immediate attention. This is a component of AI that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough—while much of the discussion centers around AI “replacing” humans and taking their jobs, the truth is that AI solutions are enabling humans to do their jobs higher and more efficiently, while also alleviating the burnout that comes with performing tedious and repetitive tasks. Removed from having a negative impact on human operators, AI solutions are handling much of the perceived “busywork” related to security positions, allowing humans to give attention to more interesting and necessary tasks. At a time when burnout is at an all-time high and lots of businesses are struggling to draw recent security talent, improving quality of life and job satisfaction can have a large positive impact.
Therein lies the true advantage for security teams. Not only can AI solutions help them scale their operations to effectively combat attackers leveraging AI tools of their very own—they’ll keep security professionals happier and more satisfied of their roles. That’s a rare win-win solution for everybody involved, and it should help today’s businesses recognize that the time to take a position in AI-based security solutions is now.
The AI Arms Race Is Just Getting Began
The race to adopt AI solutions is on, with each attackers and defenders finding alternative ways to leverage the technology to their advantage. As attackers use AI to extend the speed, scale and complexity of their attacks, security teams might want to fight fire with fire, using AI tools of their very own to enhance the speed and accuracy of their detection and remediation capabilities. Fortunately, AI solutions are providing critical information to security teams, allowing them to raised test and evaluate the efficacy of their very own solutions while also freeing up time and resources for more mission-critical tasks. Make no mistake, the AI arms race is simply getting began—however the proven fact that security professionals are already using AI to remain one step ahead of attackers is a superb sign.
