Introduction Artificial Intelligence has been the flavour of the month for quite a while now, and understandably so. Any time a new technology is developed or introduced; people wonder what it could be capable of, and AI is no different. It has the potential to be a paradigm shifting technology or simply another tool in the arsenal of both good and bad actors.
security posture? The great thing about AI, from a defender’s perspective, is that as outlined above it isn’t one specific technology which only does one specific thing. Rather, it should be seen as a tool which can be used in a number of different ways to facilitate its wielder in achieving whatever their specific goals are. How can AI be used maliciously? Just as security teams and other benevolent actors can use AI to facilitate working at a faster pace than humans are capable of, or as a tool to greatly increase the available resources to a team with limited resources of skilled human workers, malicious actors can also use AI in such a way. It can be used in a “fire and forget” manner for the management of bots, for example. Management of the botnet can be relegated to the AI tool, freeing up the human threat actor to dedicate their time to other activities such as engaging in social engineering.
AI has been around in various forms for years now, though has exploded into the public consciousness through the introduction of generative tools like Chat GPT and CoPilot. Due to this public interest, uncertainty around what exactly AI is, and queries from our client base, NCC is using AI as a handy topic to introduce a new feature to our monthly Threat Pulse; the Theme. AI will be examined in various details across the quarter, with this first edition being used as an introduction to the topic.
We will be examining:
• What is AI? • How can it be used by security teams to facilitate defensive measures? • How can it be used by bad actors? • Should you be worried about it?
What is AI? In its broadest sense, Artificial Intelligence is a form of computer science which develops methods for computers to execute tasks which are commonly associated with human intelligence such as analysing data, identifying patterns and behaviours, or making recommendations. It is not a specific technology itself, but rather a set of technologies implemented within a system to enable it to display these behaviours. How can we use it to improve our
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