- AI exploitation by cybercriminals.
We are going to see improvements in the exploration of generative AI and large language models by criminals in phishing, sms, and various social engineering attacks. These technologies will allow attackers to increase the scale of their operations which leaves victims talking to bots.
We are likely to see automated phishing Campaigns – AI can automate the creation and execution of phishing campaigns, enabling attackers to send large volumes of phishing emails to potential victims. Such technologies can be used to analyse vast datasets to personalise phishing messages, making them more convincing and tailored to specific individuals or organisations. This makes it harder for individuals to distinguish between legitimate and malicious communication, as the phishing emails may appear more natural and convincing.
We are likely to see ai being leveraged to provide evasion from detections – AI can be used to develop phishing attacks that can evade traditional email security measures. By constantly adapting and changing the characteristics of phishing emails, AI can make it more challenging for security systems to accurately identify and block malicious messages.
2. State actors will continue to play an active role in this space
We are likely to continue to see the exploration of zero-day vulnerabilities by state actors as geopolitical tensions around the world persist. There has been a notable increase in the use of zero-day vulnerabilities in the last few years and 2024 is unlikely to be any different. We will see espionage as well as disruptive tactics. Zero-day vulnerabilities typically require significant investment for you to find them which points towards significant resources being channeled into this arena.
3. Cloud attacks and usage will continue to grow
Organisations have moved significant workloads to the cloud and attackers are following suit we are likely to see a focus on exploiting the hypervisor and associated tools in cloud deployment to gain a foothold in the cloud. We will also see attacks being launched from serverless infrastructure as they enjoy the same benefits legitimate users go serverless.
4. Disinformation and fakes
We are going to see an increase in fake news, wrong information, and deep fakes particularly around the political space.
5. Supply chain attacks
Attackers are increasingly targeting the supply chains of businesses to gain access to sensitive data or disrupt operations. We are likely going to see a continued focus on supply chain attacks including machine learning models. We are likely going to see focus and growth in adversarial machine learning where attackers seek to poison the data models learn from to influence them.
6. Ransomware Attacks
Ransomware attacks are expected to continue to rise in 2024 these attacks have been around for years and show no signs of slowing down. These attacks involve encrypting a victim’s data and demanding a ransom payment in exchange for the decryption key. Organisations need to have a backup plan in place in case they are hit by a ransomware attack. They should also invest in security measures that can help to prevent ransomware attacks from happening in the first place.