The underground market for criminally oriented generative AI has moved beyond the early hype surrounding ‘malicious chatbots.’ The gradual integration of AI as a productivity layer within cybercrime operations has become the dominant story, indicating that while the potential for fully autonomous AI hacking systems is possible, attackers are not embracing them as expected. Instead, threat actors are increasingly using AI to accelerate routine, but operationally significant, tasks to scale their operations. Drafting phishing lures, profiling targets, debugging code, generating forged documents, modifying malware, translating victim communications, and processing stolen data at scale were once time-consuming activities that AI has made significantly easier. AI does not replace cybercriminals; it lowers friction, increases speed, and expands the range of actors able to perform tasks that previously required more time, skill, or external support.
Read more…
Source: Rapid7 News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- SilverTerrier: 2019 Nigerian Business Email Compromise Update
March 31, 2020
In 2019, Business Email Compromise (BEC) maintained its rankings as both the most profitable and the most prominent threat facing our customers. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which recently released its annual report, US$1.77 billion in losses were attributed to BEC attacks over the course of 2019. This number ...
- Zeus Sphinx Banking Trojan Arises Amid COVID-19
March 30, 2020
According to researchers Amir Gandler and Limor Kessem at IBM X-Force, Sphinx (a.k.a. Zloader or Terdot) began resurfacing in December. However, the researchers observed a significant increase in volume in March, as Sphinx’s operators looked to take advantage of the interest and news around government relief payments. First seen in August 2015, Sphinx is a modular ...
- Social Engineering Based on Stimulus Bill and COVID-19 Financial Compensation Schemes Expected to Grow in Coming Weeks
March 27, 2020
Given the community interest and media coverage surrounding the economic stimulus bill currently being considered by the United States House of Representatives, we anticipate attackers will increasingly leverage lures tailored to the new stimulus bill and related recovery efforts such as stimulus checks, unemployment compensation and small business loans. Although campaigns employing themes relevant to ...
- Cyber criminals shift focus to target remote workers
March 27, 2020
Criminals are only just getting started when it comes to exploiting the global spread of coronavirus to profit from hacking and cybercrime, and the number of attacks is likely to rise, Europe’s law enforcement agency Europol has warned. The new report on how criminals profit from the COVID-19 pandemic details the increase in coronavirus-themed attacks, including phishing emails and spam ...
- Ryuk Ransomware Keeps Targeting Hospitals During the Pandemic
March 26, 2020
The Ryuk Ransomware operators to continue to target hospitals even as these organizations are overwhelmed during the Coronavirus pandemic. Last week BleepingComputer contacted various ransomware groups and asked if they would target hospitals and other healthcare organizations during the pandemic. With the amount of strain healthcare organizations are under during this pandemic, I was hoping that ransomware operators would ...
- Ransomware Maze
March 26, 2020
The Maze ransomware, previously known in the community as “ChaCha ransomware”, was discovered on May the 29th 2019 by Jerome Segura. The main goal of the ransomware is to crypt all files that it can in an infected system and then demand a ransom to recover the files. However, the most important characteristic of Maze is the ...