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:
- A new Mirai-style botnet is targeting the financial sector
April 5, 2018
A botnet made up of hijacked internet-connected televisions and web cameras has a new target, security researchers have found. Three financial sector institutions have become the latest victims of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in recent months. New research by Recorded Future’s Insikt Group published Thursday points to what’s likely to be the IoTroop botnet, used to pummel financial ...
- Retail sector top cyber attack target
April 5, 2018
The retail sector suffered the most breach incidences (16.7%) in 2017 as attackers became more organised, the latest Trustwave security report shows. The retail sector was followed by the finance and insurance industry(13.1%) and hospitality (11.9%), according to the 2018 Trustwave global security report, which is based on the analysis of billions of security events worldwide, hundreds ...
- Russian Hacker Who Allegedly Hacked LinkedIn and Dropbox Extradited to US
March 30, 2018
A Russian man accused of hacking LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring in 2012 and possibly compromising personal details of over 100 million users, has pleaded not guilty in a U.S. federal court after being extradited from the Czech Republic. Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin, 30, of Moscow was arrested in Prague on October 5, 2016, by Interpol agents working in collaboration with the ...
- Atlanta, hit by ransomware attack, also fell victim to leaked NSA exploits
March 27, 2018
It’s been almost a week since the City of Atlanta was hit by a ransomware attack, which encrypted city data and led to the shutdown of some services. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in a press conference Monday that the city’s government is working on recovering the network after ransom notes appeared on computer displays on Thursday afternoon. ...
- Mastermind behind EUR 1 billion cyber bank robbery arrested in Spain
March 26, 2018
The leader of the crime gang behind the Carbanak and Cobalt malware attacks targeting over a 100 financial institutions worldwide has been arrested in Alicante, Spain, after a complex investigation conducted by the Spanish National Police, with the support of Europol, the US FBI, the Romanian, Belarussian and Taiwanese authorities and private cyber security companies. Since ...
- A Closer Look at APT Group Sofacy’s Latest Targets
March 23, 2018
Threatpost talks to Kaspersky Lab researcher Kurt Baumgartner who was instrumental in tracking the latest activities of the Russian-speaking Sofacy APT gang. Research shows a continual march toward Far East targets and overlapping of activities with other groups such as Lamberts, Turla and Danti. Baumgartner, a researcher with Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team, presented his ...