- Attackers can build up larger campaigns faster with generative AI
- They also attack business agent AI tools
- People are still a big weak point
New research from Crowdstrike confirms that hackers are taking advantage of AI to help them deliver more aggressive attacks in shorter time, with technology also democratizing less skilled hackers to more advanced code.
In addition, they also utilize the same AI systems used by companies -according to Crowdstrike, hackers are targeted at the tools used to build AI agents so that they can access, steal credentials and implement malware.
Crowdstrike is most concerned about agent AI systems, suggesting that they have now become a “core part of Enterprise Attack Surface.”
Attackers hang in on enterprise ai
The security company says the observed “several” hackers that utilize vulnerabilities in the tools used to build AI agents that mark a big shift from old patterns. Until now, people have almost always been the primary entry point of a company, but now Crowdstrike is concerned that “autonomous workflows and non-human identities [are] The next limit for opponent’s exploitation. “
“We see threat players use Genai to scale social technology, speed up operations and lower the barrier to access to the entry into the hand,” explained the head of opponent’s operations Adam Meyers.
Funclocker and Sparkcat are two examples of Genai-built malware in the real world, while the DPRK-Nexus famous chollima has also been observed using generative AI to automate its insider attack program in all phases. Scattered Spider, a group believed to consist of Britain and US citizens, even managed to implement ransomware within 24 hours of access to systems.
“Opponents treat these agents as infrastructure and attack them in the same way as they target SaaS platforms, cloud consoles and privileged accounts,” Meyers added.
Although technologies like AI are playing an increasing role in accelerating attacks, Crowdstrike still found that four out of five (81%) interactive intrusions were malware-free-dependent of human hands on keyboards to remain undetected.
