Experts warn that artificial intelligence will lower the bar for conducting cyber attacks, because the perpetrator does not have to be as technologically advanced as before.
The time when carrying out cyber attacks required exceptional IT skills may never return.
The British intelligence and security service GCHQ warns that artificial intelligence enables cyber attacks to be manufactured more easily than before, reports the news agency Reuters.
Even attacks that cause serious damage can be carried out with the help of artificial intelligence, even if the hacker’s own skills are not sufficient.
The national cyber security center NCSC, operating under GCHQ, predicts, for example, that the use of ransomware will become even more common in the near future.
– Artificial intelligence will almost certainly increase the number of cyber attacks and worsen their effects in the next two years, the NCSC report says.
Those opportunistic actors who do not have the skills themselves to carry out ransomware attacks, for example, will benefit the most from NCSC’s artificial intelligence.
On the other hand, more technically advanced parties are able to utilize the potential of artificial intelligence in more advanced and demanding online attacks and in the creation of malicious software code and even viruses.
The language barrier has been broken
According to the report, even the mildest artificial intelligence makes it possible to send more persuasive scam messages or documents than before. According to the NCSC, this does not require artificial intelligence models more advanced than current chatbots.
For example, over the years Finns may have been lulled into the idea that scams are easy to recognize as scams. This has been made possible by obvious linguistic clumsiness in communication.
However, artificial intelligence does not suffer from the same problems as fraudsters in foreign languages or traditional machine translation programs, so the matter should be taken seriously now at the latest.
– AI, AI, AI, information security expert and research director of Adminize oy Sami Laiho answered Iltalehti’s question in December about what kind of things will be highlighted in online scams in the near future.
– Artificial intelligence will change all methods of attack and make them harder to detect, he continues.
Although, according to the news agency Reuters, the authorities already have evidence of the use of artificial intelligence in cybercrime, the overall picture of the threats created by the technology is still emerging.