Artificial intelligence has the potential to bring a select set of advanced techniques to the table when it comes to cyber offense, researchers say.
On Thursday, researchers from Darktrace said that the current threat landscape is full of everything from script kiddies and opportunistic attacks to advanced, state-sponsored assaults, and in the latter sense, attacks continue to evolve.
However, for each sophisticated attack currently in use, there is the potential for further development through the future use of AI.
Darktrace believes that in the future, malware bolstered through artificial intelligence will be able to self-propagate and use every vulnerability on offer to compromise a network.
If chosen vulnerabilities are patched, for example, the malware could then switch to brute-force attacks, keylogging, and other techniques which have proven to be successful in the past in similar target environments.
As the AI could sit, learn, and ‘decide’ on an attack technique, no traditional command-and-control (C2) servers would be necessary.
It is possible that AI could be used to further adapt to its environment. In the same manner, as before, contextualization can be used to blend in, but AI could also be used to mimic trusted system elements, improving stealth.
AI could not only provide a conduit for incredibly fast attacks but also “low and slow” assault, but also be used as a tool to learn what data transfer rates would flag up activity to security solutions.
Instead of relying on a hard-coded threshold, for example, AI-driven malware would be able to dynamically adapt data theft rates and times to exfiltrate information without detection.
Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-is-how-artificial-intelligence-will-become-weaponized-in-future-cyberattacks/
Submitted by: Arnfried Walbrecht
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