GoKawiilTwo major technological advances—AI and quantum computing—are the impetus for significant innovation across industries. Unfortunately, the cybercriminal ecosystem is no different.
Cybercriminals' experimentation with AI, the threat quantum computing poses to encrypted data, and the rapid adoption of digitized value are resulting in massive changes, says Ian Rogers, chief experience officer at Ledger, a provider of secure signer platforms.
“We have lived through the ‘once in humanity’ digitization of all information, and now we are living through the ‘once in humanity’ digitization of all value,” he says. “And I would say, we may all have a bit of whiplash from the internet, but you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
The ubiquity of AI and continuing advances in quantum computing will transform the security landscape and change what companies and users need to safeguard their digital assets. Quantum computing poses challenges for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, especially for those areas not updated to use post-quantum cryptography, while AI lowers the barriers to creating synthetic identities and convincing fake information.
“We have lived through the ‘once in humanity’ digitization of all information, and now we are living through the ‘once in humanity’ digitization of all value,” he says. “And I would say, we may all have a bit of whiplash from the internet, but you ain’t seen nothing yet.” Ian Rogers, chief experience officer, Ledger
The impact? Unless companies and digital-asset owners adopt more stringent security, they face more advanced threats and risks to their portfolios.
Disruption, but when?
As demonstrated by the mentorship scam, AI already poses a threat to technology users. A variety of other AI-augmented attacks have popped up as well. Attackers use AI code generators to produce variations on their tools, often successfully evading malware detectors and antivirus software. In one instance, a cybercrime group known as GreedyBear generated 150 wallet extensions for Firefox using AI code-generators. The malicious campaign stole more than $1 million from users.
“As a user, it is very difficult to know if you are interacting with a human or with a bot,” he says. “How do you know that you are, today, interacting with me and that I’m a human? Because it’s already quite easy for AI to impersonate me.” Charles Guillemet, chief technology officer, Ledger
Increasingly, AI is being used to masquerade as executives at companies or create synthetic identities for fraud. The attacks are often very convincing, even fooling tech-savvy victims, says Charles Guillemet, chief technology officer at Ledger.
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