North Korea has somehow managed to not only get its hands on AI but also become the first country publicly confirmed by the US to use AI in cyber warfare, new reports claim.
North Korea is known for its cyber attacks, but this latest innovation in its internet warfare methods is a new level of concern for both countries and companies around the world.
The hermit kingdom has shown its penchant for devastating hacks on multiple occasions, with the 2017 WannaCry hack and 2014 Sony hack at the top of its repertoire.
A dangerous development
The latest development was confirmed in a statement by Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser, during a press conference on Wednesday. “We have seen North Korean and other nation states and criminal actors attempt to use AI models to accelerate the creation of malicious software and identify systems that can be exploited.”
As many of us have seen, AI like ChatGPT or other AI Writer software can be used to dramatically increase the speed of everyday processes, but this combination of AI and cyberattacks could be used to create new exploit code at an alarming rate.
There are also fears that North Korea could use machine learning to train and develop its cyber intelligence, allowing the regime to increase not only the volume of its attacks but also the quality.
With sanctions from around the world, North Korea has had to turn to other methods to generate much-needed revenue, and cyber attacks have become a very lucrative way to generate money.
Fortunately for the rest of the world, AI is also used as a defensive tool to protect against cyber attacks. Nueberger stated that competitions such as the DARPA AI Cyber Challenge are used “to incentivize and incentivize defensive hackers who use AI to build cybersecurity defenses.”
Through Venture Beat