AI tools are increasingly the weapon of cyber criminals. Hackers abuse the tools to create malicious content and carry out sophisticated attacks. Artificial intelligence is popular among hackers because it perfectly manages to bypass traditional antivirus software.
Acronis provides more insight into the use of AI tools by cyber criminals. According to the cyber security solutions provider’s latest semi-annual cyber threat report, hackers are increasingly turning to the help of such tools. Mainly in the creation of malware and for complex attacks, the tools appear to prove their usefulness.
According to the company, hackers are deploying public AI models, such as ChatGPT, during attacks. Artificial intelligence helps hackers find source code vulnerabilities and bypass monitoring tools.
Phishing remains front-runner
For the report, Acronis combined data from more than 1 million endpoints worldwide. Most of the data collection points are Windows-based. From the total, we note that attacks using AI are still rather the exception. Only one percent of cyber attacks involved advanced attacks. Phishing remained the most popular threat, accounting for 73 percent of the attacks analyzed.
In the first half of 2023 alone, email phishing attacks increased 464 percent from 2022. Acronis’ security solutions must block the dangerous URLs from phishing emails before a user can pass on their personal information to hackers. In the month of April, we see that the solution intervened mainly at European companies, with 20.9 percent of blocked URLs occurring at German organizations. Also in the top ten are European countries Italy (11.7%), UK (10.3%), Switzerland (9.1%), France (7.1%), Spain (4.5%) and finally the Netherlands (2.6%).
‘AI also the solution’
As a solution to the problems, Acronis also sees a role for AI. “By using an advanced solution that combines AI, machine learning and behavioral analysis, the risks of ransomware and data theft can be reduced,” the company said in a press release.
Also read: Researchers use ChatGPT to generate malware and phishing mails
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