The evolution of cyber threats in the AI era

Companies have been making the switch to digital modes of communication for years now. Every piece of vital organizational information is now available online, behind securely encrypted systems. 

However, the move to digital has always warranted a certain amount of risk. With data being the new currency, cybercriminals are constantly on the lookout to breach into organizations' systems and steal data that could be used for illegitimate purposes. The result is an exponential increase in cyberattacks over the past few years. 

Over time, the mechanism of cyberattacks has evolved, now reaching a state that's sneaky, deceptive, and even indecipherable to the human eye. This made data protection harder for cybersecurity officers. Now, with the prevalent use of artificial intelligence (AI), it has become even trickier. AI has become a revolutionary tool to perform tasks that require human intelligence, through machine learning capabilities, in much less time. 

AI is quickly becoming a formidable weapon in cyberattacks. Hackers are smartly using AI to craft attacks that can escape detection by security systems and humans. To stay ahead of threat actors, an understanding of how AI is used and the types of attacks that can be created is required. 

In this article, let's take a look at the evolution of cyberattacks, the use of AI for cyber threats, and how organizations can protect themselves from AI-engineered cyberattacks. 

The evolution of cyberattacks

Gone are the times when cyberattacks referred to just viruses and spam emails. Over time, both email recipients and email providers became acquainted with the markers of spam emails and anti-virus solutions came into being. This helped reduce the number of malicious emails. However, threat actors got sneakier at creating attacks that could not be detected by the human eye and email providers' security systems. 

Spam emails evolved further into attacks that tried to extract sensitive information from the email recipients. Emails containing viruses and other malicious software morphed into ransomware emails, using which threat actors encrypt important documents, and refuse to let the owner access them until a ransom amount is paid. Threat actors also deploy social engineering tactics to manipulate their targets to attain their goals. In these attacks, cybercriminals create a sense of urgency and use certain impersonation tactics that nudge the recipient into revealing important information. 

Over time, sophisticated attacks such as business email compromise, ransomware, supply chain attacks, vendor email compromise, and CEO fraud became more prevalent as cybercriminals found effective ways to deceive recipients and bypass the security offered by legacy email solutions. 

However, security solutions also evolved rapidly and found ways to detect anomalies and inconsistencies in the emails. This posed the need for threat actors to get smarter. The recent introduction of AI made this achievable.

The new era of cyber threats

AI is a powerful tool that provides solutions for everyday scenarios. Unfortunately, the right weapon in the wrong hands could pose serious consequences, and this is exactly what's happening with AI and cyber threats. AI has made it much simpler to create deceptive threats. Malicious emails can be made to look believable without arousing any suspicion. Using machine learning algorithms, AI creates threats that can bypass every stage of a cyberattack, making these attacks difficult to spot.

The role of AI in cyber threat creation

AI makes creating cyber threats much simpler, reducing the amount of work and time needed. By deploying advanced machine learning algorithms and techniques, AI helps with every stage of the cyber kill chain, making it a formidable tool to look out for. Let's take a look at how AI helps in each of these stages. 

Research and reconnaissance

The first stage in any cyberattack is researching the method of attack and identifying the possible loopholes through which the attack can be propagated. Research includes looking into the targets who would be most vulnerable, identifying their communication or transaction patterns, frequent contacts, and other such information. Usually, cybercriminals do this process manually by scouring through the internet and other available sources to identify how it can be exploited.

However, with AI, searching through these essential pieces of information and having them collated has become much simpler. By using techniques such as data scraping, AI tools can gather information that can help with creating the cyber attack. With data scraping, AI tools can find publicly available information such as social media sites, website information, and other pieces of data to build a rich dataset that can be used to target a cyber attack.

Identifying targets

As part of the research phase, cybercriminals usually identify the targets they intend to launch the attack on. If the target is an organization, they either pick someone who might be vulnerable to the attack or someone from the company who they can easily impersonate and trick other employees in the company. For this case, they typically take over the identity of someone such as the CEO, HR, or other such important personnel who can convincingly ask employees to take important actions or decisions. 

Having AI perform this research makes the data more accurate and comprehensive, ensuring that nothing is left to chance. As part of the research, AI can also identify the target or impersonated person's writing pattern, so that a convincing message can be drafted accordingly for the attack email.

Vulnerability identification

Be it a software or a human, cybercriminals always look for a weak link that can help propagate the attack. In the case of humans, this could be a specific employee in a company who's slacking when it comes to following security protocols, employees with the access to perform sensitive operations, or someone who has recently joined the organization and might not be aware of all the security protocols that need to be followed. With AI, the important data that could prove vital to planning an attack can be found online. 

Additionally, in the case of cyberattacks such as ransomware, zero-day attacks, and similar threats, it's important to identify any loopholes that exist due to vulnerabilities, errors, or issues in the software. These could be vulnerabilities in the network, firewall, or the hardware and software systems that are in use. 

Sometimes, these vulnerabilities aren't identified by the concerned developers or the organization. Other cybercriminals sometimes maintain a repository of such issues that can be identified and brought to light by AI, and can further be exploited as part of an attack. 

Crafting and automating attacks

In general, there are certain indicators of malicious emails. Certain red flags, such as poor spelling or grammar in the email content, inconsistent sender information, and unsolicited emails or attachments, are common signs that most email recipients are trained to look out for. 

When any of these signs are present in an email, many recipients know to avoid engaging with the email. However, with AI, there's no telling how smartly cybercriminals can craft these emails. 

When AI crafts the emails, it automatically does a language check, barring any mistakes in the email content. It also does sufficient research before the attack is launched. This makes the cyber attack highly personalized and specific in nature. 

If the email looks to be from a familiar email sender or as part of an ongoing conversation, the recipient's suspicion isn't aroused, and the attack goes undetected. Apart from this, AI tools can also help launch the attack to the right set of people and propagate the attack to help the threat actor reach their goal. 

Types of AI-powered cyber threats

AI tools can help create cyber threats in many ways. Applying AI in different contexts, cybercriminals produce different types of threats to trick their victims. We'll look at several of these threats below.

Advanced social engineering

Social engineering refers to the use of deceptive techniques that can psychologically manipulate the target into revealing information or performing a sensitive action. For this reason, threat actors target decision makers or employees who have a high level of access to further their attack. 

AI helps find exactly who these people are by scouring the internet to find social media profiles, company websites, and other publicly available information about a company or its employees. By finding the right person to target or impersonate within a matter of minutes, building the attack becomes much simpler. 

Apart from finding the right target, AI also helps with curating a persona that would attract the attention of the target and nudge them to respond to the email. With its ability to search for relevant information all over the internet, AI also identifies the scenario and communication pattern that the target will respond to. 

With this information, AI can draft a realistic email that the target is most likely to fall prey to. This is done by making the email free of errors, as opposed to most human-written scam emails. 

Equipped with all of the information that's likely to manipulate their targets into taking the desired action, the threat actors can carry out the attack with ease. 

Sophisticated phishing attacks

Phishing attacks are one of the results of social engineering. In phishing attacks, threat actors attempt to retrieve sensitive information from their target or make them take a certain action. 

This could be an act such as password sharing, fund transfers, accessing or revealing company information, or downloading certain files containing viruses or malware. For these attack emails to be convincing, it's vital that the information presented in the email is accurate, convincing, and contextual. Creating such an email with the right scenario and intent can be done with AI. 

Organizations transact large amounts of money to settle payments to their vendors, making it one of the most common attack scenarios. For example, if a cybercriminal intends to extract money from an organization, they might pose to be their vendor, raising an invoice that looks realistic and imitates the original email pattern with exact amount details. 

They even send these emails on dates where the billing cycle matches with the original. All of the relevant information for these kinds of attacks can be identified with the help of AI tools, drafting the perfect email and invoice to make the email look legitimate. 

Similarly, AI tools can help with other phishing cases, such as realistic fake website creation, bank email creation, and more such scenarios.

AI-generated ransomware

Ransomware has grown to be one of the most lucrative threats for cybercriminals in the past few years. With easy access to AI tools, finding vulnerabilities in software solutions and creating the right kind of ransomware that can take control of systems has become faster and easier. 

From curating the email that will get the target to download the malicious attachment to ensuring the encryption of sensitive files on the user's system, AI takes care of everything. Even when the organization tries to stop the spread of the virus to other networks or systems, AI can help adapt the ransomware attack so that it maximizes the attack surface. 

Ransomware attacks are slightly risky for cybercriminals because they involve interacting with their victims to extract the ransom amount. If AI takes care of the communication, the ransom note curation and display, and provides the correct details for payment transfer, the attackers are kept safe, with no risk of revealing their identity.

Deepfakes

Deepfake refers to the technique of using AI-generated videos, audios, or images to deceive people. In a deepfake, the identity and voice of a well-known person is used to create the content that can trick people into revealing information. 

Using a deepfake is one of the initial steps in ensuring a successful phishing attack. When someone with high authority in a company, such as the CEO, CFO, or other C-suite employees, shares a video with their identity, employees are bound to take the required action. 

For example, threat actors may send videos on corporate policy amendments or other such organization-level changes. In such emails, the employee might be required to take an action such as accepting the policy or updating their account details. These actions might be recorded and used for the threat actor's benefit. If they steal the account credentials when the employee enters details, it could be used as part of an account takeover attack, or the employee might even get locked out of their account completely.

Protecting your business from AI engineered cyber threats

While it seems bleak that cybercriminals are equipped with AI tools to propagate their attacks, certain protective measures can be taken to identify and thwart them in the initial stages of the attack. Let's take a look at some steps that can be taken to protect your organization. 

Monitor traffic and systems regularly

Threat actors use the cyberattacks they create in multiple ways. Some yield results immediately, and with some attacks, they plant the seed and silently collect information, making it a longer-term attack. 

In cases where the attack is occurring over an extended period, the cybercriminal is constantly monitoring all of the activities that are taking place in the organization. In such cases, the ongoing attack can be identified, and security can be tightened accordingly by checking the network traffic, account activity, and other such data. 

The organization's administrators should make it a practice to check for these abnormalities by setting up systems that can track this data. Any indicators—such as unusually high traffic, unsolicited payment requests, and account logins from different locations—should be spotted, and the required action, such as account logout, password change, and thorough analysis, should be done. 

Develop an incident response plan

An incident response plan refers to the process of outlining the steps to be taken by an organization in case a cyberattack strikes. Detailed instructions regarding the immediate data that is to be safeguarded, the backup solutions that should be activated, the people to be informed, and the employees who need to be in charge of each of these steps should be outlined in the plan. 

Having such a plan in place ensures that if there is an incident, the time required to recover from the incident is minimal. By getting your business back up quickly, you can ensure that the disruption time for your business is low. This way, you don't lose out on essential business, and you'll also retain your customers' trust and brand reputation.

Conduct periodic security awareness training

One of the common reasons cyberattacks spread quickly is because of human error. Without realizing the nature of the email, the organization's employees might interact with the email and download malicious files or disclose sensitive information. 

To curb this at the human level, the organization's administrators need to educate their employees about the nature of cyber threats, including indicators of such emails, recent trends, and other information that will help them grasp the gravity of cyber threat evolution and its repercussions. 

Conduct structured training programs among your employees and ensure that there are in-depth trainings for employees who have a higher level of access in your company. Because they may be targeted more commonly compared to the others, it's vital that they have sufficient knowledge to identify and report these threats. You can also make sure that there's role-based access for important actions such as fund transfers, vendor payments, and more. 

Use a robust security solution

While many measures can be taken to stay ahead of cyber attackers, having a robust email security solution in place is the way to keep these threats out of your mailboxes. By seeing what the human eye can't see, security solutions spot the threats that can wreak havoc on your company's day-to-day functioning. 

Specifically, with threat actors using AI to create cyberattacks, it's becoming harder for humans to spot the attacks. But the minute details of the attack and the inconsistencies can be spotted by software solutions that will alert you about any red flags contained in the email. 

Wrapping up

As artificial intelligence shapes the digital landscape, it brings with it increasingly complex security challenges. Cyber threats are no longer confined to simple malware or phishing emails. They now include AI-generated deepfakes, automated social engineering attacks, and rapidly evolving adaptive malware. While AI empowers cybercriminals, it also equips security officers with advanced threat detection, real-time analytics, and predictive capabilities, helping them stay a step ahead of cybercriminals. 

eProtect is a cloud-based email security and archiving solution that provides an additional layer of security for email accounts. The solution offers advanced threat detection mechanisms that can secure on-premise and cloud email accounts from evolving email threats. eProtect is the security solution powering Zoho Mail, a platform trusted by millions of users.