Artificial intelligence is speeding up timelines for cyber attacks, a new report has found, creating what the authors call a widening “cybersecurity speed gap” between bad actors and defense efforts.
The report from Booz Allen Hamilton, published this month, shows that cyber criminals are now moving from initial access to broader system compromise in less than 30 minutes on average — and sometimes in seconds. And attackers are using AI as a collaborator in their speedier attacks. For example, AI is helping cyber criminals quickly create realistic phishing emails, research multiple targets in minutes and write malicious code even if they lack coding skills.
Read more…
Source: Government Technology News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Pass the Passkey: A Novel Attack Surface in Passwordless Authentication
August 3, 2026
This article analyzes new attack classes against passwordless authentication, focusing on Google’s synced passkey ecosystem and the Cloud Authenticator used by desktop clients. The attacks demonstrate how malware on a compromised endpoint can misuse onboarding, recovery and device trust workflows to take over passkey-protected accounts. Palo Alto Unit 42 shows how an attacker can authenticate ...
- INTERPOL report finds AI linked to more than half of cybercrime in Africa
August 3, 2026
Artificial intelligence is enabling 55 per cent of reported cybercrimes across Africa making attacks faster, more scalable, and increasingly difficult for victims and platforms to detect, according to INTERPOL’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026. With more than 1.1 billion mobile subscribers recorded in 2025, Africa’s digital transformation is expanding rapidly. However, cybercrime legislation is fragmented and AI readiness ...
- An analysis of incidents at Brazilian educational institutions
August 3, 2026
Because of the amount of data that can be obtained and the high impact that successful attacks may have, educational institutions are frequent targets of cybercriminals. Both public and private schools and universities rely on software for managing personally identifiable information (PII) that is often insecure or insufficiently tested against known vulnerabilities. In addition, machines ...
- FBI: Alert to Countries, Companies, and Other Entities Regarding North Korean IT Workers
July 31, 2026
North Korea relies upon a network of skilled Information Technology (IT) workers, deployed within and outside of North Korea, to obtain false identities and remotely earn income to fund North Korea’s unlawful nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. North Korean IT workers impersonate nationals of other countries to obtain work and income through online platforms operated ...
- Midnight Blizzard targets travelers worldwide for malware delivery and credential theft
July 31, 2026
Since early May 2026, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed Storm-2945, a sub-cluster of Midnight Blizzard, conducting widespread but targeted traffic manipulation attacks involving hospitality sector networks served by captive portals worldwide. Despite some tactic, technique, and procedure (TTP) similarities to the Forest Blizzard DNS hijacking operation that we publicly disclosed in April 2026, we attribute this campaign, ...
- Toy Ghouls’ new toy: the GenieLocker ransomware
July 30, 2026
The new GenieLocker ransomware family has been active since March 2026. It has been used in attacks against organizations in the Russian Federation, primarily in the manufacturing sector, and attributed to the Toy Ghouls group by open-source intelligence (link in Russian). The Toy Ghouls, also known as Bearlyfy, Labubu and Laboo.boo, is a financially motivated extortion group, which ...

