AI Algorithm Warfare: The Next Stage in Cyberattack Evolution

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IncreaseMax Heinmeyer
Max Heinmeyer
Darktrace 's director of threat hunting Max Heinmeyer writes for Information Age about AI-powered cyberattacks that can only be countered by using AI to defend against them.

More than three decades have passed since the Morris Worm infected about 10% of the 60,000 computers that had access to the Internet in 1988. It was a personal project of Harvard graduate Robert cayman islands whatsapp data Morris. It is considered to be the first cyberattack in history.

Today, cyberattacks rank alongside natural disasters and climate change among the most serious threats to global society, according to the World Economic Forum. As businesses, schools, hospitals, and virtually every other thread in the fabric of society connect to the Internet, cybercrime has evolved from an academic research project into a global marketplace for professional hacking services. And in the geopolitical arena, governments are using cutting-edge cyberattack tools to inflict physical damage and disrupt key infrastructure on their adversaries.

For years, hackers have followed the old adage: where there’s a will, there’s a way. Defenders have created new rules for their firewalls or developed new signatures to detect attacks. And hackers have continually changed their attack methodologies to evade defenses, leaving organizations playing catch-up and scrambling for a plan B if they encounter an attack. The paradigm shift occurred in 2017, when the devastating WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware worms caught security professionals off guard, bypassing traditional tools like firewalls and crippling thousands of organizations in 150 countries.