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As artificial intelligence (AI) advances, I am seeing a lot of discussion on LinkedIn and in the online media about the advantages it may bring for either the threat actors (“batten down the hatches, we are all doomed”) or the security defence teams (“it’s OK, relax, AI has you covered”). It has occurred to me that while AI could be a powerful tool for cyber criminals, allowing them to automate attacks and evade detection more effectively, it could also be a powerful tool for security professionals, allowing them to detect and respond to threats more quickly and efficiently.
The polarising predictions have also got me wondering … might the impact of AI advances in cybersecurity end up balancing out? Could every advance made by the bad guys be met with equal progress from the good guys? All supported by the same tools? Of course this balancing act only works as long as everyone keeps up with the competition; as cyber criminals become more adept at using AI, security professionals will also have to ensure they are making use of more advanced tools and techniques to defend against these attacks.
So in a boxing match style, let’s take a look at who is in the red corner and who is in the blue. Exactly how might cybercriminals and security professionals make use of AI? And who will win?
In the red corner: The Cyber Criminals
- Using AI for the identification of targets; scanning the internet for vulnerable systems
- Programming AI-bots to mimic human behaviour in order to more effectively evade detection by security systems
- Generating highly targeted phishing emails with AI, perhaps trained by multiple data sets acquired on the Dark Web so that they include credible details to help lure the target and build trust (with the public becoming more used to interacting with AI-bots for customer service, impersonating these chatbots could become a useful social engineering tool for malicious actors).
- Creating evermore sophisticated malware, such as using AI to find exploitable patterns in security systems and creating malware that is specifically designed to evade detection, or designing AI-powered evolution