Cybercrime and AI, a match made in He..

It was just a few years ago I was speaking on the subject of rise of RAAS – Ransomware As A Service. If you attended one of my speaking engagements, you may have seen a screen shot of a web form from the Dark Web where anyone so inclined could enter the details of the attack they wanted, pay their fee, and wait for the victims to pay up. Whether it was an industry, a geography, or a specific group of companies, you could create ransomware attacks at the click of a button. What’s it like now? Enter Artificial Intelligence.

Akamai Security Intelligence recently reported on the rise of botnets whose creation requires no coding skills. Using existing code libraries and the magic of AI, botnets can be created and launched by virtually anyone. Botnets are great little tools that can launch DOS (Denial of Service) attacks, ransomware attacks, hijack machines to mine crypto, keylogging, and anything else a devious mind can think of. They’ve been around for a while, but the game has changed.

As Akamai discovered, there’s a proliferation of botnets that are the equivalent of cyber-Frankenstein. These botnets are pasted together code from older attack botnets and then enhanced through AI. This new generation of botnets requires no coding skills to create.

Think of it like the RAAS mentioned above, but now with no middleman.

One of the main concerns is by lowering the common denominator to an average computer user, the potential for explosive growth exists. The recently reported spike in financial services attacks may be just the beginning.

Do you know the saying “all roads lead to Rome”? And so it is with this article – you have to train your staff, you have to invest in your cybersecurity. If you want to do both as cost-effectively as possible, call us. It’s what we do.

Click safely!