The biggest threats in AI hacking (Video)

Kostadin Ivanov talks about AI in hacking and what it means for companies and their Cyber Security strategies. Watch the video or read the summary in this blog article.

Our hacking expert Kostadin Ivanov explains in his presentation why AI has enabled hackers worldwide to further develop their hacking methods and malware. However, organizations and Cyber Security experts can also profit from artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT to get more insights into hacking methods and strengthen security systems efficiently.

The biggest threats to organizations

Social Engineering

Nine out of ten attacks either are or start with a social engineering attack. What does that mean? Social engineering starts with a communication via social media, mail, SMS, etc. that engages a user and manipulates them into clicking harmful links, opening harmful documents or - in most cases - providing sensitive information such as passwords, IDs, etc.

Since social engineering has become incredibly elaborated and often starts with emails that look like they are from official companies or close relations, it is crucial to be able to identify and prevent/block it (read more about it here).

AI trends in social engineering:

With further AI technology, social engineering can even copy voices and images for modern authentication methods such as facial or voice recognition.

Malware

Malicious software - malware for short - "sneaks" into your systems and harms them. It is often used to either corrupt or block a system, e.g., to "free" it for money in a blackmail attempt. However, it can also go nearly undetected to gain access to sensitive information.

Malware often gains access via social engineering but can also access systems through interface weaknesses, hardware (such as USBs with the malware installed), remote access, etc.

AI trends in malware:

ChatGPT can not only write texts but also code and is therefore currently used to develop malware in huge numbers.

How can you secure yourself from these attacks?

Even though hackers use AI to further scale and develop their attack methods, companies and Cyber Security experts can also make use of AI to not only protect themselves against these attacks but even anticipate them through offensive testing.

Professional "ethical hackers" create social engineering methods and malware not to harm a company but instead test its security measures and strengthen them by identifying gaps and weaknesses.

In fact, artificial intelligence can be used to create security systems that are able to independently learn from these test attacks. In fact, instead of having Cyber Security experts manually go through individual lines of codes, these systems can self-diagnose and detect weaknesses and anomalies and notify the Cyber Security experts who can then set up the next steps.

Just like hackers use automation to increase the quantity of attacks, security systems can equally automate processes and analyses to assist the Cyber Security experts who can then concentrate on complex task that necessitate manual work.

AI-generated plugins, AI-based analyses and machine learning are therefore incredibly strong and helpful tools to manage the sheer amount of hacking methods, malware, and general attack and security data and support the Cyber Security team.

Our Cyber Security experts at DIGITALL have a wide range of experience when it comes to offensive testing, Security Operations Centers, awareness training and other ways to not only test your organization's security level but also optimize it.